R8000 Nighthawk: Tomato by shibby Now Available

Installed and tested, this release kicks pure ass.  So far everything just works, no ridiculous latency issues  at all!

I tried to flash from dd-wrt to tomato directly and fortunately I followed the port 233 way to trace the encrypted username and password to fix the problem.

how do I revert back to OFW? Anyone tried?

Hello,

This is the first time I'm trying tomato.

What is the default admin userid and password?

thanks.

admin

password

I am so pissed off this is teh second time I have tried to use this site to update my router an bricked it. WTF how do I fix this it is impossible to find an answer on here. It appears all my ports are dead and it just continues to not hand out ipaddress or allow me to telnet which I am not even sure I am doing it right. It there any solid step by step help on here to actually connect to a router and unbrick it? All I want to do is restore my router.

SOMEONE PLEASE HELP

Thanks

last router I was suckered into buying some cable which did nothing at all. Does anyone have a link or picture of the actual working cable???

I had to erase nvram and then use one of shibby's OFW located on his site. I really wanted tomato to work for me but unfortunately I had some serious range issues. RSSI was terrible outside the immediate room the router was in. Increasing the transmit power to its max didn't help. Changing the region also didn't help. Reverting back to dd-wrt resulted in no range issues whatsoever. 

HI All,

Although I do love shibby distro and releases for ASUS, this one for R8000 has serious issues with the signal. Both 5.1 channels have different latency and even receptions are different. I couldn't get the signal at all outside of my house whether Kong distro did it well.

Anyway, for people who's trying to get back to Genie:

Preparations:

1. Download file dd-wrt.v24-K3_AC_ARM_R8000.bin from http://tomato.groov.pl/download/K26ARM7/Netgear%20R-series%20back%20to%2...
2. Download the latest available firmware either from Netgear site of from here - http://tomato.groov.pl/download/K26ARM7/Netgear%20R-series%20back%20to%2...

Upgrade:

1. On Tomato - go to Configurations and reset to erase all NVRAM

2. Once router back, go to Upgrade and upload dd-wrt.v24-K3_AC_ARM_R8000.bin. This step will bring you to DD-WRT password screen. Change user/password, Apply and go to Administration/Upgrade, select erase NVRAM and browse to the file you downloaded - R8000-V1.0.3.4_1.1.2.chk 

3. Once router back, you might see no ping reply and general hardware errors. Here I couldn't find the recipe... you might need to restart router quite few times, hit the reset button. Nevertheless, one of those ways will work for you and you will get your router back

4. Once your machine got DHCP and you can connect to genie:
username - admin
password - password
Good Luck!!!
Now the question to other people include shibby, if he is reading those posts - has anyone had significantly better wifi performance from the original netgear firmware? If yes, then what was wireless configurations? I tried to increase TX on both wireless, however signal became even worse..
Thanks in advance, as I still would like to stay with Shibby due to significant number of the features, however I need primarily the strong wifi coverage

BTW, the problem with Kong releases is that just stuck every few hours... And then either restarting itself or I need to reboot it manually. The one I was using is from May 10, 2016

Thanks

Router is torched just upgraded to R8500 - You wont see me again this is # 2 using upgrades from here.....375.00 thanks

Hi Kelly,

I'm not sure what are you implying here - do you think you've bricked your router and bought the new one?
Ask questions and I might to help you. no needs to run buying the new one - if you are here at this forum, meaning you are looking for open source firmware. That also means you should be ready for any negative outcomes as there is no warranty here.
You also want to use other features dd-wrt or tomato offer for free, so no needs to get pissed.
Nowdays it's really hard to soft brick the router, so follow my steps as above and hopefully you'll be good

The problem is that getting back from tomato distro to the stock one - you cannot just upload .chk file, but there is a process

Hi Gennadiv and other experienced Tomato users, 

This is my first run with opensource router firmware so I would really appreciate a little guidance if anyone has some relevant insight.

Coming off the standard Netgear firmware, the initial Tomato flash went fine, but after commencing the AIO flash, I then lost all ability to communicate with the router. I have attempted the following to reestablish access to the web interface so far (all multiple times):

• Ethernet cable direct from PC to router network discovery
• Attempting the default router IP addresses I know 192.168.1.1 / ...0.1 / 10.1.1.1 etc
• Pressing the hardware Reset button with a pin for 10 seconds, and when that didn't work 30 seconds. Attempting to hard reset appears to have no effect whatsoever.
• Free network scanner software, NetSpot

When turned on, the router appears to cycle indefinitely, all the lights will come on for ~1 min, then just the power and the port I'm connected into for <5 mins, then all back on again, with other lights turning on and off here and there. Also when the PC is networked exclusively to the router it assigns itself a 169.254.229.xxx IP address with 255.255.0.0 subnet, which I believe means the PC just has no idea what's going on. 

I figured a must have bricked it so have purchased the exact USB interface cable referenced in the following article and was going to have a crack at working through the process, but before I do that, do you have any other (easier / safer) suggestions to resolve this issue? Or if not, would you happen to know if (by and large) the process described in the article can be used as a guide for the R8000?

http://myopenrouter.com/article/how-debrick-or-recover-netgear-r7000-r63...

(if it matters, I'm in Australia)

Thank you,

Matt

Hey all, I was running dd-wrt then flashed the unzipped initial tomato .chk file. The modem came back on and is handing out IP's but no login password combo works for either ssh or web. Any ideas?

Thanks

admin/admin? That's as I believe is Tomato default

If not, then hard reset (small button on the back) router to get this default back

I don't believe you could brick the router even following the instructions first loading the initial tomato file and then AIO. So don't rush to de-brick it

I suggest first to unplug router from the power, hit and hold the reset button on the back of your router while plugin power back. Once the power back and LEDs are on, then release reset button. Or try 30-30-30  - http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Hard_reset_or_30/30/30

I had the same issue after getting off Tomato f/w back to the stock one. And couldn't even get a ping. So quite few resets helped me get my router back

Good Luck and let me know if it helped

Hi,

After flashing  tomato firmware, the internet LED is not light up even the WAN is up. Is anyone encounter the same or only mine had this issue?

I am having the same issue as you on my netgear R8000 flashed with tomato aio which I upgraded from DD-WRT. Also, I neither can reset my nvram nor flash back the netgear stock firmware. The firmware upload interrupts after 5-6 secs.

Can anybody help me with my issue so that I might be able to flash back the netgear stock firmware for the R8000?

Anybody's help shall be much appreciated.

Many thanks beforehand and kind regards

You did not follow the instruction. You can flash from Tomato to dd-wrt directly, but you could not flash from dd-wrt to tomato, you must flash to Netgear factory first.

dd-wrt has ID/passwd encrypted. Shibby provided a way to recover them here: http://www.myopenrouter.com/forum/r7000-bricked-flashed-dd-wrt-tomato-ca...

Here are steps:

1. run router and wait for 2-3 minutes
2. push and hold wifi on/off button for 25 secs.
3. use telnet on port 233 and log in to router without password
4. run command: nvram get http_username (use as username)
5. run command: nvram get http_passwd (use as password)
6. when you log in to tomato remember to erase nvram
7. then flash with the full tomato version 

I used this way to recovered R8000.

BTW, I found with tomato, no matter how I changed the antenna power, I got weaker signal and slower speed. I have to revert back to dd-wrt. I love to use Tomato, but I just cannot stream 1080p video from my master bedroom while I can with netgear/dd-wrt.

Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones but I'm having much better success with Shibby's Tomato build than Kong's ddwrt on my R8000. I tried ddwrt builds for the past year or more and every single build had reboot issues and transmission errors. I did full resets and power cycles every time and manually reentered the settings. There were no shortcuts taken. 

Per the instructions on this website, you CAN flash this tomato build from ddwrt. You have to rename the file extension and it flashes just fine. If you're having trouble, try following the instructions exactly.  They worked perfectly for me. It takes 2 flashes total, exactly as it is described in the instructions.  

Regarding the wireless signal strength, after matching the ddwrt TX power setting of 70, I see virtually no difference.  Tomato default is a lower TX setting for less noise. Change that and the difference for me was virtually nonexistent and some devices actually picked up a stronger signal. 

Performance wise, I've streamed hours of Netflix continuously on a 4k TV with not one stutter or degradation in picture quality.  

This Tomato build has been up for over 17 days. The longest any ddwrt build lasted for me in the last year on the R8000 was 13 days before rebooting randomly. 

I can't thank Shibby and My Open Router enough for providing this firmware! 

Happy routing, 

Mark

Did you try enabling CTF (Cut Through Forwarding)? 

Mark

Here is some fun findings using Tomato version 137 by Shibby on R8000 if using USB3 HDD.

Connect a Sandberg USB3 HDD case with a Samsung 840 PRO 250GB SSD and the router becomes unstable. Some times it looses the drive. Sometimes the router can´t recognize the right file system(EXT4). Sometimes it connect as USB2 and some times it connect as USB3. The 2,4GHz radio had random blackouts (2-3 times per minute) and some devices can not connect. Wifi performance was generally bad. I was close to reflashing stock.. Reboot did not make any difference.

Then I took the SSD out and put into a Lacie Rugged mini case with USB3 and the the router was steady as a rock. No blackouts, nothing. Acceptable read/write speeds from PC to USB through wifi and LAN. Wifi performance was as expected.

The difference I noticed was that the using the Sandberg HDD case, it presented it self in Tomato as a “Innostor Ext. HDD” but connecting the Lacie Rugged mini it presented it self as “Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series”. So the router does not see the controller only the drive.
There is a lot of possibilities to why the last option works, like better cable, better controller, less power use and so on. I can only conclude that the SSD works with Tomato as it should and I am happy with my R8000 and Tomato. …now. :-) (after 10 hours of trouble shooting)

Best regards

NinJa

Roy2001,

I readt the OP five times and all the replies three times just to understand before asking. For clarificaiton, is the instruction for flashing from DD-WRT to Tomato is first use the Initial flash file follow with the upgrade files of either VPN or AIO?

Thanks

either its late at night or my brain is not processing or i can't see well, but its on your reply. 

The instruction for flashing from DD-WRT to Tomato is first revert back to Netgear Genie then use the Initial flash file follow with the upgrade files of either VPN or AIO?

Thanks

R8000 bricked and no usb-ttl around.. no internet for the night, here's hoping Amazon saves my ass tomorrow morning.

what's the difference between tomato-R8000-ARM--138-AIO-64K.trx and the one labeled ac3200? can't find any info, wtf.

anyway after applying tomato-R8000-1.28.ARM--134-initial-64K.chk I got through the dashboard, went to upgrade and applied tomato-R8000-ARM--138-AIO-64K.trx: BRICKED

thanks.

From what you wrote I believe you skipped the "initial" from the 138 build.

When you look into the directory of 138 build you will see it contains the "138 initial"
So what i think is the correct procedure:

Netgear stock > tomato-R8000-1.28.ARM--134-initial-64K.chk
tomato-R8000-1.28.ARM--134-initial-64K.chk > tomato-R8000-ARM--138-initial-64K.trx
tomato-R8000-ARM--138-initial-64K.trx > 138 AIO or VPN trx

I might be wrong, but this seems logical

will this work for R7900 router? the 7900 is also an X6 Router

RT-AC3200 is for Asus router not Netgear.

Follow this video to flash for Netgear.

https://youtu.be/w10jLqRmdLM

set ip4 192.168.0.2

255.255.255.0 mask

and 192.168.1.1 as gateway als as dns without it doesnt work

go into network adapter and ipv4 settings and set static ip and the rest of info above. that is the problem causing your issues.