Hi all,
I am a complete noob to DD-WRT and need some kind assistance in my persuit of open router freedom!
Unfortunately, the information available all over the internet really distorts the actual process required to upgrade any router to DD-WRT. From videos, forums, written blogs, wiki guides, its really all over the place and well, rather confusing for a first timer hence my request. I do not want to "brick" my router so I thought it would be best to ask for some help rather than making potentially flawed assumptions.
So I have a nighthawk R8000 which is currently running the lastest firmware and connected to a fibre optic broadband vendor with no username or password required for a connection.
In my research on this excellent site, I found and began following Subhra's guide http://www.myopenrouter.com/article/how-flash-dd-wrt-open-source-firmware-netgear-r8000-nighthawk-x6 but have become confused with some of the items in it.
Following the guide introduction (before the actual steps are covered), I access the Netgear support site and downloaded the initial firmware from : http://www.netgear.com/support/product/R8000#Firmware%20Version%201.0.0.46%20(Initial%20Release)
Question 1: Can I not just reset my new router to it's factory settings instead of doing this? What's the difference between each approach?
Following on to download the DD-WRT firmware (still in the guide introduction) from http://www.myopenrouter.com/download/list?cat=100 I arrive at a page with various downloads for different routers. Even after filtering by the R8000 model, I am still presented with various download choices.
Question 2: Does one download the latest DD-WRT by Tathagata (Rev. 29627 as I write this message) or do I need something else?
Question 3: How do I use Kong's package, do I install it over the top of DD-WRT or skip the above and go straight to installing Kongs package instead?
At this point, I am ready to go and have backed up my current configuration settings file, I just need to know which software to use and in what sequence.
Thanks in advance for your patience.
Kylee
I know it's not about DD-WRT, but you mention fiber option connection. Do you have Gbps speeds? If so, you'll never reach them with DD-WRT as it doesn't have HW accel. Might wanna look into Tomato for that as it has a working CTF on ARM routers
@ microchip - Thanks for that.
At this point in time, I'm getting roughly 100mbps download speeds which is not the fastest by any means. Even so, my personal preference is security over speed which is why I am chasing up the use of DD-WRT.
Thanks again, I appreciate your input.
In Netgear, set to factory default, then update firmware with Kong initial one named as *.chk. After that, update to latest firmware named as *.bin. Then erase nvram, that's it.