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El Quintron
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join:2008-04-28
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El Quintron

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Teksavvy Peeps chime in on my (possibly) new router

Hey guys I think I'm going to take the plunge and get a

WNR3500L

»www.tigerdirect.ca/appli ··· WNR3500L

and

»www.onhop.ca/catalog/pro ··· 10746131

It also has the ability to install alternative firmware:
»www.myopenrouter.com/

That last link is operated by Netgear so excuse the fluff but they do go into great detail on how to install the big alternate firmwares so I'll deal for now.

My questions: Do you guys like the router? Is it a good deal for a hackable N router?

If not what other choices would you suggest.

One Caveat:

I am looking for a router with customizable firware so if it don't do that then I'm not interested.

Thanks again!

derekm
join:2008-02-26

derekm

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Don't know if they've resolved these issues yet.

El Quintron
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El Quintron

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Said by Guspaz on the slashdot site:
said by Guspaz :
As the developer of a popular fork of Tomato, I'd like to address a few points:

Not all features supported

Specific to their Tomato port:

1 > WPA is not working.
2 > There is no support of SAMBA server .
3 > NAS is accessible only through command line using ftp. No GUI support to
access NAS is available till now.

1: Presumably, WPA2 is, which means that this isn't a showtopper, just a big annoyance. There's actually only one missing feature here, WPA support. The rest would not be expected.

2/3: Mainline Tomato doesn't support any of this on USB-supporting routers anyhow.

Binary kernel modules

This is no different than mainline Tomato, which also relies on binary kernel modules. In fact, most opensource firmwares DO.

Looking at this from the perspective of one of the authors of Tomato/MLPPP (bonding multiple DSL lines using a fork of Tomato), only WPA is really of any concern, and even then, you can work around it by using WPA2. This router adds support for 802.11N, more (MUCH FASTER) RAM, and a far faster CPU (200 -> 480MHz, plus other architectural improvements). Considering that memory throughput/latency and CPU power are our main bottlenecks when bonding multiple DSL lines, this router remains quite interesting despite the lack of WPA.

Good to know there are some issues I've overlooked though I'll be scanning the site more and looking for fixes to those issues...

I find older laptops running linux don't do well with WPA2 which is not cool so thanks for the heads up.

AOD
Premium Member
join:2008-01-24
M9B

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said by El Quintron:

Hey guys I think I'm going to take the plunge and get a

WNR3500L

»www.tigerdirect.ca/appli ··· WNR3500L

and

»www.onhop.ca/catalog/pro ··· 10746131

It also has the ability to install alternative firmware:
»www.myopenrouter.com/

That last link is operated by Netgear so excuse the fluff but they do go into great detail on how to install the big alternate firmwares so I'll deal for now.

My questions: Do you guys like the router? Is it a good deal for a hackable N router?

If not what other choices would you suggest.

One Caveat:

I am looking for a router with customizable firware so if it don't do that then I'm not interested.

Thanks again!
if true wireless N isnt a issue go with the ASUS RT-16N
xdrag
join:2005-02-18
North York, ON

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»www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/inde ··· s_RT-N16

RT-N16 is a beast....

If you don't need 5ghz, it's should be great.

Mr_Derp
join:2004-11-10
Plainfield, ON

Mr_Derp

Member

said by xdrag:

»www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/inde ··· s_RT-N16

RT-N16 is a beast....

If you don't need 5ghz, it's should be great.
I was going to suggest the same unit, but these you gents beat me to it.

RT-N16, it runs dd-wrt with native MLPPP support.
HKPolice
join:2002-08-09
Scarborough, ON

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DD-WRT is crap compared to Tomato. Tomato USB works with the Asus RT-N16 but no MLPPP support.

If all you need is a router for routing a 5-6mbit DSL connection then a regular WRT54GL + tomato will do.

El Quintron
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El Quintron

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said by HKPolice:

DD-WRT is crap compared to Tomato. Tomato USB works with the Asus RT-N16 but no MLPPP support.

If all you need is a router for routing a 5-6mbit DSL connection then a regular WRT54GL + tomato will do.
My WRT54GL is a solid router but it's beginning to show its age... I have a 10/1 cable connection I have approximately 8 Wired devices and two wireless laptops that are connected through a series of switches across the house.

I don't need MLPPP or USB support but I'm going to need something with a bit more guts than the WRT54GL.

So Tomato does with on the RT-N16 without MLPPP support?

Mr_Derp
join:2004-11-10
Plainfield, ON

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said by HKPolice:

DD-WRT is crap compared to Tomato. Tomato USB works with the Asus RT-N16 but no MLPPP support.

If all you need is a router for routing a 5-6mbit DSL connection then a regular WRT54GL + tomato will do.
How exactly is DD-WRT crap compared to Tomato?
It's a very robust solution, and for a consumer router that you're not trying to bond 8 lines with, works pretty darn well.

El Quintron
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OK I'm being more and more sold on the RT-N16...

It says on the Tiger Direct site that it has 1 Gbps ports, can anyone confirm?

»www.tigerdirect.ca/appli ··· y=RT-N16
said by Tiger Direct :
WAN Port(s): 1
10/100/1000 Mbps Ports: 4
Dimensions: 216 x 161.9 x 40.5 mm

This router seems to be a close to perfect as it can get, plus it runs tomato... sounds awesome to me

AOD
Premium Member
join:2008-01-24
M9B

1 edit

AOD

Premium Member

said by El Quintron:

OK I'm being more and more sold on the RT-N16...

It says on the Tiger Direct site that it has 1 Gbps ports, can anyone confirm?

»www.tigerdirect.ca/appli ··· y=RT-N16
said by Tiger Direct :
WAN Port(s): 1
10/100/1000 Mbps Ports: 4
Dimensions: 216 x 161.9 x 40.5 mm

This router seems to be a close to perfect as it can get, plus it runs tomato... sounds awesome to me
Yes they are Gigabit ports

El Quintron
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said by AOD:

Yes they are Gigabit ports
Even better! Looks like I'm going for my mandatory trip to Tiger Direct today.

AOD
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join:2008-01-24
M9B

AOD

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said by El Quintron:

said by AOD:

Yes they are Gigabit ports
Even better! Looks like I'm going for my mandatory trip to Tiger Direct today.
»aod999.ca/tomato.jpg

Jayar
join:2005-01-16

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might wanna look here first!

»www.swiftgamers.com/Prod ··· e=RT-N16

El Quintron
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said by Jayar:

might wanna look here first!

»www.swiftgamers.com/Prod ··· e=RT-N16
Markham is far away from my home and I'm one of those "I want it now!" people. (when it comes to some stuff)

I did notice a lot of good stuff on their website though so I bookmarked the link. Do you buy most of your gear online?

Jayar
join:2005-01-16

1 edit

Jayar

Member

most of the time. I actually used shopbot.ca to fetch the lowest prices, you should bookmark that as well. Just enter the model number and a list should pop up. I usually use this list to pricematch with NCIX, even more so now that they have a warehouse in Markham which is very close to me.

and lol, I'm the same way.
bt
join:2009-02-26
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Tiger Direct seems to be about the most expensive place to get it.

»www1.canadacomputers.com ··· d=027834

And assuming none of their many locations are close to you...

»www.shopbot.ca/pp-asus-r ··· 879.html

Angelo
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join:2002-06-18

Angelo

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ncix 29.99 this week

Jayar
join:2005-01-16

Jayar

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... the Asus RT-N16?

clarknova
join:2010-02-23
Grande Prairie, AB

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said by El Quintron:

My WRT54GL is a solid router but it's beginning to show its age... I have a 10/1 cable connection I have approximately 8 Wired devices and two wireless laptops that are connected through a series of switches across the house.
How is it showing its age? I friend of mine started an ISP and was up to 50 customers before his Linksys router started to flinch, and that wan't the venerable GL, nor was it running proper firmware.

Neither should a 10/1 connection tax its CPU even beyond half, unless you're running vpns or something extra.

Still, there are scenarios where the Linksys woudn't be appropriate. I'm just curious what makes you think yours has expired.

El Quintron
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said by bt:

Tiger Direct seems to be about the most expensive place to get it.

»www1.canadacomputers.com ··· d=027834

And assuming none of their many locations are close to you...

»www.shopbot.ca/pp-asus-r ··· 879.html
You're right about that, I just checked Canada Computers and there is one fairly close to me... so I think I'll be picking it up there instead of Tiger Direct. I love spending an hour inside of there but some items can be way over priced, and some are way under priced so yeah... I'll be heading over to CC for that.
TheMG
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join:2007-09-04
Canada
MikroTik RB450G
Cisco DPC3008
Cisco SPA112

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said by clarknova:

Neither should a 10/1 connection tax its CPU even beyond half, unless you're running vpns or something extra.
That's assuming you aren't using any CPU and RAM intensive features such as QoS or applications which stress the router's NAT greatly (ie: P2P, Steam server browser).

I can bring a WRT54GL running any firmware to its knees in a matter of seconds, and that's on a 6/1 DSL connection.

Now, if you don't need QoS, don't do heavy P2P, and don't mind the Steam server browser taking its sweet time loading, the WRT54GL will do just fine.

Seriously, your friend was running an ISP off of consumer networking hardware?!?!? It may have done the trick but in the long run would not have been a reliable solution. One word: MikroTik.

clarknova
join:2010-02-23
Grande Prairie, AB

clarknova

Member

said by TheMG:

Now, if you don't need QoS, don't do heavy P2P, and don't mind the Steam server browser taking its sweet time loading, the WRT54GL will do just fine.
I've done heavy P2P with QoS on an ASUS WL-520gu and 10/2 mlppp just fine. Average CPU was less than 50% at load. VPN obviously is a different story.
Seriously, your friend was running an ISP off of consumer networking hardware?!?!? It may have done the trick but in the long run would not have been a reliable solution.
Heh. That's when I met him and offered him a more suitable solution. Two months later his network was still growing and things were really coming unglued. I dropped in m0n0wall on good hardware and that's when business really took off.

He's a rural ISP and he wasn't even pushing 6mbps at the time, so it's no surprise the Linksys coudl handle the bandwidth, but the session count is what was killing him. He managed to buy himself a couple weeks by turning of the dhcp server and assigning static IPs to everybody.

Yeah, it was ugly.
Gami00
join:2010-03-11
Mississauga, ON

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Member

does anyone make any non wireless GigE routers?

i don't really care to have the best wireless router in a spot where it isn't really a good place to be for a wireless AP node.

clarknova
join:2010-02-23
Grande Prairie, AB

clarknova

Member

If you have a router that you like and you're not planning to get 100+ mbps internet then you may want to consider just getting a gigabit switch and plugging it into your existing router. This will cost you less than buying a new router (assuming you don't buy a piece of garbage router) and performance will be as good or better if all you LAN hosts are plugged into the new switch.

El Quintron
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Update...

I just walked in the door with my new ASUS RT-N16... for those of you wondering why I needed something a little more hardcore than my WRT54GL (I'm looking at you you clarknova See Profile )

I use one of my machines to stream 1080 HD Content over my network and I *also* have an HDHomerun connected to the network... and I'd like to be able to do P2P while all of this is going on.

The big "local network hogs" are my HD Homerun and my two WDTV Lives that stream HD content from a dedicated server in my house.

No my next question for you folks in going to be... should I leave the out of the box firmware on or should I skip immediately to Tomato?

The default firmware does look pretty feature rich, I'm just wondering if it performs as advertised.

Other question, is it easy to give out a static lease with the the default firmware? That would be one reason to go straight to Tomato.

Mr_Derp
join:2004-11-10
Plainfield, ON

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Mr_Derp

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Glad to see you went with a good choice El Q.
Personally, I'd try the oob FW and see what your experience is like.

If it's less than optimal, get your Tomato on.

El Quintron
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said by Mr_Derp:

Glad to see you went with a good choice El Q.
Personally, I'd try the oob FW and see what your experience is like.

If it's less than optimal, get your Tomato on.
Tomato is da bomb but this thing as automatic QoS, and something like a 300 000 sessions right out of the box.

I was reading the list of stuff and it sounds amazing. So I'm tempted to give it a chance.

Stuff I would like to see out of the box is Static DHCP leases and good UPnP management if it does all of this from the get go there may be no reason to switch... my love for Tomato is strong though, decisions decisions...

clarknova
join:2010-02-23
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said by El Quintron:

The big "local network hogs" are my HD Homerun and my two WDTV Lives that stream HD content from a dedicated server in my house.
Those are switch functions rather than router functions. I don't know how the inbuilt switch of commodity routers performs or whether lots of LAN traffic would have any noticeable effect on its routing function, but it's an interesting thought.
No my next question for you folks in going to be... should I leave the out of the box firmware on or should I skip immediately to Tomato?
It's always interesting to see what the vendors are offering, but I wouldn't be too optimistic.
The default firmware does look pretty feature rich, I'm just wondering if it performs as advertised.
That would be a first in my experience, but please prove me wrong.

El Quintron
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said by clarknova:

Those are switch functions rather than router functions. I don't know how the inbuilt switch of commodity routers performs or whether lots of LAN traffic would have any noticeable effect on its routing function, but it's an interesting thought.
In a nutshell...

If you're streaming 1080p while simultaneously uploading on on Bit Torrent your video will become unwatchable because there isn't enough bandwith on the upload... now its very possible that this is because it's choking at the serving computer's NIC level but I'm not convinced.
said by clarknova:

That would be a first in my experience, but please prove me wrong.
I'm certainly not looking to prove you wrong... I'm looking to get the most route-ability out of this router... so I'm testing the default firmware and switching as soon as there are issues (if any)