▲ 2 points

Ask HN: Thoughts and experiences on third party router firmware?

by tapper·9y ago·4 comments·view on hn ↗

Hi people of HN. I have bin a long time user of different router firmwares Openwrt, Ddwrt, Gargoyle and Tomato. For a list of router fermwairs see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_router_firmware_projects

I am now using a Linksys WRT1900AC AC1900 with Gargoyle on it and i have 2 APs that are TP-LINK Archer C7 flashed with LEDE.

The wrt1900 ac is set up as a router and the c7s are setup as dumb APs.

I would like to know if you use third party firmware and which one? If you don't use third party firmware why not? If you have thaught about flashing your router with third party firmware but haven't I would like to know why not? what stopped you?

I came up with the thought about starting this thread after reading a number of articles about attacks on routers. Like this one: http://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2016/12/home-routers-under-attack-in-ongoing-malvertisement-blitz/

The reason I use Gargoyle on my mane router is for it's really good QOS and family safety features. Gargoyle is built on top of Openwrt witch is Linux baste. It has a plugin system witch lets you install plugins like it's grate addblocker and a ping watch dog. https://www.gargoyle-router.com/index.php Latest Gargoyle builds for the wrt1900 AC can be found here: http://lantisproject.com/gargoyle_mvebu/newgui/

On my APs i use a build of LEDE from here: https://kau.toke.dk/lede/airtime-fairness-builds/ar71xx/generic/

The LEDE build has new airtime-fairness patches for the ath9 and ath10 wifi drivers in it made by the guys over at make wifi fast. https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/make-wifi-fast/ http://blog.cerowrt.org/post/make-wifi-fast/

I am Hoping to help any one who would like to flash there router out. I am a mod on the Openwrt and Gargoyle forums. I have no vested interest in any project apart from helping people. Thanks for reading and sorry about any spelling mistakes. :)

I used to use Tomato, and I was satisfied with it, but the problem was that typical home router is weak hardware. Once I started hosting things, it just couldn't keep up.

I moved to fanless PCs (like ALIX / Netgate / Soekris) running OpenBSD. A 500 MHz x86 beats the pants off of the neglected MIPS chipsets most home routers are built around.

OpenBSD because pf is just easier to manage than iptables, and having all of the config as text files makes it easy to track changes with source control.

Cool I did think about getting a small form factor PC to run OPNsense, but a verry nice man of the Gargoyle forums posted me the WRT1900 AC v2 which has a 1.6 ghz duel core CPU and i don't host any thing. For what i use it for it does just fine. One of the things that keeps me with Gargoyle is it works grate with a screen reader which i have to use as i am blind. I can use ddwrt and openwrtI just like the lay out of Gargoyle better.

Another benefit to fanless PC is that being able to install custom software is a given.

Back in my old custom firmware days, I always had to be careful about router revision numbers to make sure I was getting a model that I could re-flash. Sometimes, the hackable revisions were in short-supply.

Perhaps that is less of a problem these days?

Yeah it can still be a pane with some routers. TP-Link are constantly making very small upgrades to routers and making a v1 v2 pissing people off lol The werst thing is wen they make a v1 and then a v2 with a completely different chip set.