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Cubytus
join:2007-08-24
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| Most reliable and speedy variety of WRT54G for Toomato/MLPPP
Hi to all,
My question should be common here, but still. There are many different models of WRT54G Linksys' routers here, some of them much more powerful than others, some being sporting weak specs, some others powerful, but discontinued.
This router will be necessary to support MLPPP connection, wether it being single-link or dual-link through Tomato/MLPPP firmware. Of course I would prefer to have a wired only router, but it seems they haven't even being considered for use in this application. Crap.
So, I'm asking advice from "experts" about which current model of WRT54G can give satisfaction on:
1- stability:
2- speed, especially on the wired ports: gigabit ethernet, if available, would be a great plus.
3- enough power to run Tomato/MLPPP firmware as if it was the original firmware
4- WPA2 wireless security (I understand that part of this security is given through Tomato's functionality)
5- Very good QoS: the router will be in front of a VoIP adapter and will have to support heavy, constant use of the internet as well as extensive VoIP use; I want it to pass VoIP traffic without a hitch without slowing the LAN connections to a crawl, as is the case with a badly coded QoS.
Would be appreciated, but not mandatory:
5- 801.11n compatibility
6- High range
7- Ability to easily turn off wireless part.
At last, what is the best price I can expect on the model you advise? Currently, I seen a WRT54GL on tddirect.ca for $53+tx.
Thanks for advice | |
Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
·Colbanet
| All WRT models that can run Tomato/MLPPP are exactly the same specification wise. The only one currently on sale is the WRT54GL, so there is simply no choice in the matter.
There are routers from various other brands, but we did all our development and testing on the WRT54GL, so it's the preferred choice.
To answer your points:
1) Should not be dependent on router model
2) I don't believe Tomato/MLPPP runs on any routers that have gigabit, so they're all the same in that regard
3) Tomato in general provides better performance than the original firmware on any hardware
4) WPA2 support is software-dependent, so won't change depending on router. Routers also may not have sufficient CPU power to do both WPA2 and MLPPP if you're bonding multiple links.
5) QoS is done in software, and so the model/brand again doesn't matter.
Most of your points are done by the firmware in software, so the point would be if a given firmware supports it, not if the routers do.
5-2) Tomato/MLPPP doesn't run on any 802.11n routers
6) I can't comment on any other models. This actually would possibly change based on harwdare
7) This can be done on any router, it's a dropdown.
Best price you can get the WRT54GL for is $50 before tax/shipping. There were some on sale for $40 for a whiel, but I think that sale is over. | |
Cubytus
join:2007-08-24
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1 edit | reply to Cubytus
Hi Guspaz 
On wikipedia's page about Tomato Firmware, it states that some Buffalo routers based on the same vhipset do run Tomato;
of particular interest was the Gigabit connectivity of the WAN ports.
4) As far as I'm concerned, I may turn off wireless entirely, but still, you think that 200MHz of CPU may not be enough to support both maximum wireless security and MLPPP? Or will limitations appear only when bonding two links (modems), and not MLPPP one link?
Incidently, the WZR-G144NH from Buffalo sports a 300MHz CPU AND gigabit connections. Is the info on wikipedia page false? Or is it the exception router that Tomato/MLPPP wouldn't run on?
5) Same question applies; is Tomato QoS excellent, or "could be better", under high load?
5.2) (Lol on this one) That's sad. 802.11n routers as well as dual-mode routers are becoming the norm; are they more difficult to code for?
7) I knew that, but shutting wireless off isn't just removing the antenas; this could be dangerous to the router, hence my question about a software (or safe hardware) way to do that.
I also saw a lowest price for WRT54GL at $53+tx, approximately, on NCIX; the other router seems impossible to find. 
Oh, I forgot one essential matter: does Tomato sports a rock-solid firewall? Essentially, the DI-604 it is going to replace gave me full satisfaction on this point (once in a while, D-Link...). Well, the systems I'm running are pretty secure, but I worry a bit about my roommates, non-tech-savvy Windows users.
Thanks for the advice! | |
Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC | I can't link you to the Tomato site (I'm on my cellphone) but the list of supported hardware can be found there. There are definitely no 802.11n routers on that list, and any n or gigabit router would not use the same chipset as the gl. | |
Cubytus
join:2007-08-24
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| reply to Cubytus
Heh, smartphone adopter?
Well, on this page (»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato_Fir···_Routers), there are some Buffalo routers (longer list than Tomato's site), and the one which is listed WZRG144 is supposed to have a Broadcom CPU, so *theoretically* supported. It's listed nowhere else, so that could be an original claim from the guy who made the edit on the article.
Also, have you got ans answer on the other question?
Thx | |
Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
·Colbanet
| reply to Cubytus
Not even a smartphone, Opera Mini on a regular clamshell
I'd be cautious about the WZRG144. It may require the "ND" version of Tomato, and we've never got it to compile, so we don't have an "ND" version of Tomato/MLPPP. I believe ND stands for "New Drivers".
Tomato does the pretty standard firewall affair for a NAT router. Inbound protection is via NAT, there is no outbound protection, and it can allow or block incoming ICMP, and lets you control NAT loopback.
The WRT54GL is internally simply a Linux computer, and Tomato (tracing its ancestry back to the original Linksys firmware) is also a Linux-based OS. As such, all routing and firewalling is done via IPTABLES. While the Tomato UI doesn't support more advanced firewall features (like selectively blocking outbound traffic), you can write IPTABLES firewall rules and paste them into the "Firewall" scripts page in the Tomato UI. These are firewall scripts that the router will run for you when it rebuilds the IPTABLES rules. | |
Cubytus
join:2007-08-24
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| Well, glad to read this about the Buffalo. So far, I understand it's only *theoretically* supported, so i guess I will go with the WRT 54 GL.
As for the firewall, having everything on IPTABLES rules may seem very powerful, but I was never able to configure IPTABLES rules properly; they were too complex for me to understand/I was too stupid/lacked time to learn how a rule is written. Plus, when I tried that on my Ubuntu box through Firestarter, it screwed the whole system network functionalities.
But, if Tomato's default firewall interface sports the same kind of functionality as a standard router's one (say, allow incoming traffic on selected ports and redirect it to a given internal IP adress, block incoming port scans, have stealth mode as default), that would be good enough for me to start with.
As for your phone, you managed to find a decent plan for Internet access from a canadian carrier?? | |
Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
·Colbanet
| I'm a very satisfied Virgin Mobile customer.
My current prepaid plan is:
$20 - 200 anytime minutes
$10 - Unlimited local incoming minutes
$7 - Unlimited on-phone internet (I use the GMail and Opera Mini apps)
Plus the e911 fee and tax. | |
Cubytus
join:2007-08-24 | reply to Cubytus
Well, back to the topic, what do you think about the WRT54GS ? It is supposed to contain a more powerful processor, and more RAM and Flash, but only one antenna. | |
Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
·Colbanet
| Tomato (and most other custom firmwares with a few exceptions) will only run on WRT54GS equal to or before v4 (which had two antennas).
v1 through v3 of the WRT54GS featured 32MB of RAM and 16MB of flash. In practice, the RAM might be slightly useful, but the extra flash isn't. These versions have not been sold for many years now, and I don't recommend buying a used one.
v4 of the WRT54GS was identical in every way to the WRT54G v4 and the WRT54GL. They all have the same chipset, RAM, and flash.
As for clockspeed, other than v1 and v1.1 of the WRT54G (which ran at 125MHz), all models since (be they G, GS, or GL) run at 200MHz. The one exception was the G v3.1, but that was just Linksys overclocking to 216 in firmware to get around a race condition bug in their firmware; you can overclock any 200MHz router to 216 yourself if you want.
Seeing as how the G and GS are no longer sold in forms that are compatible with Tomato (only dd-wrt micro runs on them), and the GL is the only one still on sale, the choice is rather clear on this: get the GL. | |
Cubytus
join:2007-08-24 | Well, that's the way I will go. Just looking for the cheapest brand new one oround there.
Now i still need to find an ISP that provides both no caps and supports MLPPP and is still cheap enough for me to rent 2 lines without getting ruined. | |
Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
·Colbanet
| Only ISPs that I know that are confirmed to support MLPPP at this point in time are TekSavvy and Velcom. Somebody mentioned that ZiD supports it, but they resell Colba for 24mbit service (a huge strike against them in my book), and we have no confirmed cases of people successfully using MLPPP with them.
eBox and Acanac are both currently working on getting MLPPP support working, but don't have it at the current point in time. | |
Cubytus
join:2007-08-24
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| Well, I heard about Velcom, but didn't got any feedback. As far as Acanac is concerned, it would have been my first choice since their price is so low I could even have rented 3 lines.
Last, you told in another post on the forum that you saw a "2.4" upstream link, was it simply a keyboard mistake? | |
Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
·Colbanet
| 3x800=2.4 if somebody had three lines.
In random other news, my second line finally got hooked up. It's only 5 meg (other is 6), so I'm seeing 8.6 down and 1.3 up.
I've asked to get my 5 meg bumped up to 6 to match the other. it's not guaranteed that they'll be able to get it done, but it'd take me up to about 10.2/1.3 rather than 8.6/1.3. | |
Cubytus
join:2007-08-24 | reply to Cubytus
Hi,
sdeems price isn't much of an ssue to you. Still waiting for Acanac's answer on their MLPPP support. At $18.95, it means they are still doing profits! Imagine how too much we pay for high speed! | |
Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
·Colbanet
| Actually, Acanac sells their $18.95 service at a loss. It costs them ~$25 per month to provide the service (~$20 of that alone goes to Bell).
They do this because they can leverage unused downstream bandwidth from their hosting company (Canaca), and because they hope enough people will remain customers after the one-year promotional rate is up to make a profit. Their normal rate after the first year is $34/mth, I believe.
Companies selling DSL service at $30 are working with a profit margin of maybe $5.
They pay Bell about $20 per line, and in the remaining $10, have to cover all other expenses. Those include staff salaries, office expenses (rent, heating, electricity, etc), equipment (routers, switches, servers, etc), connectivity ($1.30 per megabit to Bell), transit ($4-$10 per megabit to companies like Cogent), and so on.
So, for an ISP like TekSavvy, where we estimate they make at most $5-7 per customer on average, a user who does 320GB per month is losing them money. That's why TekSavvy had to raise the price of their Unlimited service (targeted at users who use over 300GB).
In short, we're not being overcharged for internet services by the wholesalers. The only place you might consider to be overpriced is what Bell charges the wholesalers for access to the telephone network, since that's where over two thirds of your monthly payment goes. | |
Cubytus
join:2007-08-24
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| Well, thanks for the enlightenment. I knew that someone in the chain did took way too much money. Seems it's still the Big Blue Shit. 1.3 megabit/s surely doesn't cost near to $1.30 with all those black fibers underground.
Just to know, you don't have the numbers for Video-trou wholesale division? Seems they are very high.
Oh yeah, time to RANT on-topic:
As the WRT54GL was the only router compatible and available for Tomato, I checked first on RedFlagDeals, then CanadaPrice to get the best deal. I went with the cheapest listed, NCIX.
I bought a WRT54GL late yesterday evening just before the special price of $52.99+tx would end.
The order went through...At $73 approximately, taxes and S&H included
Then I just received a link from a friend telling "déniaise si t'en veux un!". Same router, same store, at $39.99+tx, which makes a bit less than $60 w/S&H and tax. There was still 71 routers in stock.
I was pwnd by $13, T.B.RN.K!!!!! Really would have better put this money elsewhere!
Why is CanadaPrice unable to provide a given item's average price over time ? Is it so difficult to add this little function in their script? Holy crap what is this bunch of lazy bastards doin'? | |
Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
·Colbanet
| Bell charges, IIRC, $1300 for a GigE (might have been $1800, going on memory), so that's where the $1.30 per megabit comes from.
Cogent advertises prices as low as $4 per megabit (for transit, to the internet), but that was, IIRC, only on 10 gigabit on a 3 year contract. Their prices are as high as $9 per megabit for 10mbit commits and up with no contract. So their pricing is between $4 and $9 per megabit.
Videotron charges wholesalers $20 per line, and then has a $50 bandwidth overage cap. So effectively, Videotron charges the wholesalers $70 per line, since almost every customer would use more bandwidth than Videotron's 20GB cap. | |
Cubytus
join:2007-08-24 | Oh, that's why third-party cable resellers are so expensive, and not so discounted compared to Vid's prices.
Isn't the CRTC suppopsed to regulate the tariffs? Seems so high.. | |
Cubytus
join:2007-08-24
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| reply to Cubytus
Time to rant again:
never EVER choose UPS as a delivery company, if you have a choice. Oh yes, the *package* will be in the delivery truck as said, in 2 to 3 business days, but they will systematically attempt to deliver it when you are at work.
If you change the adress to have your package at your office instead, they will try no further if they find a locked door, or an interphone, even if the number is given on file, and instead return to the storage.
Of course, ppl answering the phone will make no effort to help you, for example phoning the driver if he is still in the vicinity to tell him to wait a minute, enough for you to run with your ID papers to get it, even on Friday.
Because, of course, these incompetents do work 24/7, but won't give you YOUR package on non-business days, and will keep it in an inaccessible storage place.
And you will end up having prefered to use the traditional post. | |
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