How to install Tomato on WNR3500L?

@Csimbi - I think your issue with loss of WAN connectiivity has been solved in a newer beta - checke the lastest release notes:

<snip> 

1806

* More fixes for udhcpc. Thanks to fedor for his help.

* In GUI, prevent '.' in numeric fields, but allow as port set separator.





1804

* Change back udhcpc behavior when renewing. May help in problems where initial

  request is ok, but not renew.

<snip>

@uscallesen
Thanks for the info.
Where did you find it? I could not locate any release info/changelog.

BTW: which build are you using?
ND/NDUSB?
-Ext/-Lite/-Std/-vpn?

The info is (well hidden) on the Tomato homepage http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

Scroll down to the Beta section.

I haven't received my unit yet - only prepping for the installation so far :)

@uscallesen
Ah, I see. Problem is, I am not sure that the one you're referring to hase been ported to the WNR3500L. These have been (the MIPSR2 variants):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tomatousb/files/

I got my unit yesterday - and flashed to the recommended DD-WRT (based on the dd-wrt router database) - first the "mini" and then the "Standard" firmware.

I'm also experiencing the WAN IP drops like Csimbi - I've got some debugs running on the CMTS - but it definately looks like a faulty DHCP client in dd-wrt and Tomato.

Other than that I pretty disappointed by the throughput on dd-wrt - with the Netgear firmware I could recv/send with 290/128 Mbps - with dd-wrt it is down to 124/96 Mbps without any features besides the SPI firewall enabled.

I haven't moved to Tomato yet - If there indeed is an issue with dhcp on both dd-wrt and Tomato I'd like to get some debugs before moving on to Tomato.

How stable is the latest Tomato release ?

Flashed with tomato-1.27-ND-9044MIPSR2-beta07-Std.bin - and everything went smooth. I noticed that Tomato has some logging options for the DHCP client and even an option to "Reduce packet size" for DHCP WAN requests - Csimbi you might wonna look into this.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=302143&sid=43fe0152f073a481...

Hi,
why is it neccessary (?) to flash first the mini version of DD-WRT when one wants to use Tomato?
Why does the Tomato author not fix this?

Well it's not really an issue - AFAIK the problem is actually with the Netgear firmware that needs to be wiped in a specific way during the first flash - I'd prefer ONE well tested firmware for this purpose over 5 different firmwares maitained by different people.

uscallesen said:
Flashed with tomato-1.27-ND-9044MIPSR2-beta07-Std.bin - and everything went smooth. I noticed that Tomato has some logging options for the DHCP client and even an option to "Reduce packet size" for DHCP WAN requests - Csimbi you might wonna look into this.
http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=302143&sid=43fe0152f073a4817bc80...

Thanks for the link. However, the issue does not occur for me on DD-WRT (there is almost nothing to configure on WAN, I guess it's all automatic). WAN drops happened only when I used Tomato; did not try the beta7 yet though.

Ralf said:
Hi,
why is it neccessary (?) to flash first the mini version of DD-WRT when
one wants to use Tomato?
Why does the Tomato author not fix this?

You will find that firmwares come in different formats (containers): .chk, .bin, .trx.

The Neatgear firmware comes in .chk format and it can flash only .chk firmwares.

DD-WRT comes in both .chk and .bin formats; you just download the one that you are able to flash.

Tomato comes in .trx format, so the Netgear firmware cannot use that for update and therefore, you need some other firmware - such as DD-WRT - to flash it. So, first you flash the DD-WRT .chk and using that you are able to flash the Tomato .trx

As for the question of why not fixing this. Well, I guess he does not care. The best would be if he did not need to care; if there was a converter that is.

Tathagata Das said:
You can also convert Tomato.trx to Tomato.chk using tools which are provided in Tomato script in MOR. This Tomato.chk can be used to upgrade firmware.

If you are referring to 1.25, my advise is stay far away from that rubbish unless you want a defunct router.

What is the difference between the big and small firmware?

Tathagata Das said:
What are the problem you are facing in Tomato-1.25 ? Are you facing those on both WNR3500L and WGR614L ?

WNR3500L. See the first reply of this thread.

@sjau

Nobody can answer you that on this forum. The best you can get is a link to some feature tables/checklists. See this thread for DD-WRT:

http://www.myopenrouter.com/forum/thread/17842/Differences-between-mini-...

@sjau
deltoid posted two links here, one describing the difference between the versions and the other about the Tomato release for WNR3500L.
http://www.myopenrouter.com/article/17506/Installing-Tomato-Early-Firmwa...

3500L running stable since Tomato beta 3 here.
I have a 50Mbit cable connection and have had some lengthy downloads and I never noticed any Wan disconnects.
The only thing I'm slightly disappointed by (not Tomato related I think but the 3500L) is that the range is not as good as my 6 years old Belkin Pre-N router. I got a better connection upstairs (2 floors up through concrete) with the Belkin but usually I'm working about 5 meters from the 3500L and I'm getting full speed (with whatever firmware I'm using) so I'm happy. I've must have tried about a thousand different combination but never got the range as good as the old Belkin (so if any of you have any tips)

I agree the range is not near as good as my older WRT54G.
A external antennae mod might help.

MarcelE said:  I've must have tried about a thousand different combination but never got the range as good as the old Belkin (so if any of you have any tips)

Btw, the 3500 should be standing up, not laying flat, for the best wireless signal.

I Just upgraded to tomato Beta7, and well, now I have a truly open router, just not the good kind.

 I keep getting asked for the DD-WRT password like Plex mentioned on page 1, but unlike him, I have been unable to get it to go away via reset.  I've done 30-30-30, and even 90-90-90 because I became desperate.

 I have tried any and every possible login/password combination with no luck.  Tried telnetting in, again, login/pass issues.

 Already have somebody in the neighborhood on the connection as I can see his Windows share, so I'm shutting this down, as it has essentially become bricked until I can figure out the password it is looking for.

 Any ideas/help would be greatly appreciated.

Did you try "root" and password "admin"?
I believe that's what DD-WRT sets it to.

Skraut said:
I Just upgraded to tomato Beta7, and well, now I have a truly open router, just not the good kind.
 I keep getting asked for the DD-WRT password like Plex mentioned on page 1, but unlike him, I have been unable to get it to go away via reset.  I've done 30-30-30, and even 90-90-90 because I became desperate.
 I have tried any and every possible login/password combination with no luck.  Tried telnetting in, again, login/pass issues.
 Already have somebody in the neighborhood on the connection as I can see his Windows share, so I'm shutting this down, as it has essentially become bricked until I can figure out the password it is looking for.
 Any ideas/help would be greatly appreciated.

I had the very same problem. I wrote it down; there is a link from the very first post in this thread to the solution that worked for me.

Hi Plex - you did a site survey ?

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/14250

I'm getting excellent coverage with mine.

New firmware out for those who willing to risk a beta release (beta10). Get it here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tomatousb/files/
Changelog (note that not all of these apply):

build 45 - 04/03/2010
---------------------

Improved stability of wireless link when using router in wireless client
or wireless ethernet bridge modes.

Automatically load network routing table supplied via DHCP from ISP with
GUI setting to disable it if desired (enabled by default).

Replaced vconfig application with Busybox applet.

Fixed WLAN led for Asus WL500GPv2.

Use kernel driver (in both - 2.4 and 2.6 - based builds) for PPTP and L2TP
connections to improve speed and reduce CPU load, replaced pptp-client
with accel-pptp pppd plugin ver. 0.8.4.

Allowed to specify server for PPTP and L2TP connections as either IP address
(as before), or domain name.

Allowed PPTP connections with dynamic IP addresses ("Use DHCP" GUI setting).

Fixed bug causing constant reconnects for some PPPoE connections (introduced
in previous build 44).

Added display of current wireless link rates to the "Status->Overview" and
"Status->Device List" pages.

Display N-capability of AP in Wireless Survey results.

Country selection on Advanced->Wireless page changed to obtain the list of
available countries from the wireless driver.

Fixed USB auto-share to only share actually mounted partitions, and not any
other directory under /mnt.

Bind HTTP daemon to LAN interface only instead of 0.0.0.0 to simplify
binding of other applications (like pixelserv) to an alternate LAN IP.

Force hard reset if reboot hangs for longer then 10 secs.

Execute .autorun scripts located in /jffs when mounting JFFS partition.

Fixed Bandwidth history loading when it's trying to load a corrupted remote
file.

Busybox: patches from trunk for awk, unzip, wget, modprobe, syslog, fdisk,
ping, top, wc, ash, tail, vi. Added flock applet to the Extras build.

Software updates: ntfs-3g (in Extras build) 2010.3.6, MiniUPnPd 1.4 20100308,
pppd (used by PPTP and L2TP connection) 2.4.5, GNU Zebra 0.95.

Minor fixes and cosmetics.

* Kernel 2.4-based builds only:

Fixed memory leak in "recent" iptables match.

Fixed flood of zombie cifsd processes in case of CIFS connection problems.

* Kernel 2.6-based builds (changes from beta05 to beta07):

Various fixes backported from kernel 2.6 tree to improve stability and
reduce memory allocation errors.

Fixed bug writing random values into Ethernet controller registers at
startup.

Fixed USB support for BCM5354 chipset (Asus WL500GPv2, WL520GU).

Fixed USB support for Netgear WNR3500L.

Fixed SSL certificates being rewritten on every reboot.

Added support for additional devices to USB option driver.

Fixed memory leak in USB hotplugging code.

Fixed bug preventing Scheduled Access restriction to be turned off.

Fixed setting conntrack hash table size via GUI.

* Kernel 2.6-based builds (changes from beta07 to beta10):

Added support for Linksys WRT160Nv3 router.

Adjustments to correct LEDs behavior on Netgear WNR3500L.

Fixed support for large files (4GB+) in Samba 3.

Tune up the default Samba 3 configuration (can be overriden by specifying
"socket options" settings in the "Samba Custom Configuration" box).

Fixed support for non-standard block sizes (!= 4KB), and the max file
size calculation for Ext2 and Ext3 file systems (backports from kernel
2.6 tree).

Optimized OpenVPN build to utilize kernel epoll support (VPN builds).

Fixed VPN server/client "Stop Now"/"Start Now" button not working, and/or
zombie vpnserver/vpnclient processes left when using this button (VPN
builds).

Backports from kernel 2.6 tree to optimize and speed up memory allocator
and network routing, and to improve overall stability. Enabled page
allocation fallback.

Fixed IMQ driver causing network slow-downs and freezes when loaded,
allowed to specify IMQ hooking behavior via module parameters.

Support for additional USB modems and bug fixes in USB option driver.

Fixed GRE/PPTP conntrack helper being broken preventing clients to
connect to remote PPTP servers.

Fixed USB Setup GUI page being inaccessible when some USB storage devices
are connected to the router.

Bug fixes in kernel Netfilter modules: connlimit, recent, u32 and time
matches, TCPMSS target, added hashlimit match.

Busybox: patch from trunk for lsusb.

Software updates: usb_modeswitch ver. 1.1.1.

Got Beta 10 this AM and so far so good. Except for the led light deal.
http://www.myopenrouter.com/forum/thread/18354/Orange-power-led-in-tomat...

I will get this router in a few days. Iam abit confused about upgrading this router.
I first need to install DD-WRT firmware right? http://www.myopenrouter.com/download/18819/DD-WRT-for-WNR3500L-v24-svn14...
This one should be ok?

Then i should install this one: tomato-K26-1.27.9045MIPSR2-beta10.01-Std.trx
Correct?
I need to rename *.trx to *.bin?

Do you have any other tip (special rebooting etc.) or this is it??

Thanks

Doesn't matter since you will be flashing with Tomato immediately afterward. I would just do the Mini and then go straight to Tomato.