Tomato for Netgear Nighthawk R7000

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TwistedAx
TwistedAx's picture
Tomato for Netgear Nighthawk R7000

Shibby's first release for Netgear Nighthawk R7000 specific. Looks quite promising. :)

 

Be sure to follow the instructions EXACTLY as stated by Shibby.

 

If on DD-WRT, flash back to OFW first, then to Tomato. Doing otherwise may brick your R7000.

You may need to Reset the R7000 once or twice to be able to log in after installing Tomato.

 

OFW (or Reset Default in Netgear Genie) > Initial v118 > AIO v118 >  AIO v121.

 

http://tomato.groov.pl/

http://tomato.groov.pl/download/K26ARM/

http://tomato.groov.pl/download/K26ARM/118/R7000/

http://tomato.groov.pl/download/K26ARM/121/R7000/

 

Forum:

http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/tomato-for-arm-routers.69719/

 

Credits go to Shibby, I have had no hand in development in any way.

Peter Redmer
Peter Redmer's picture
I'm glad this has been posted

I'm glad this has been posted! Last I checked, it was not yet ready :)

I've already flashed it and got it running with my VPN.

I'll be sure to post the downloads and my review soon.

kamaaina
kamaaina's picture
Peter, I assume you flashed

Peter, I assume you flashed back to Netgenie first? I tried to go straight from the latest DD-WRT build and it failed. So, let this be a warning to anybody out there. Follow instructions to the point. Don't try to shortcutâ?¦

Peter Redmer
Peter Redmer's picture
Yes, I did - I followed the

Yes, I did - I followed the instructions in the video exactly.

I had to do an additional reset of the R7000 after restoring to the original firmware, though, as the login wouldn't work otherwise. Other than that, installation was very smooth!

Peter Muster
Peter Muster's picture
Hi

Hi

Did you try a hardware reset more than one time? After the third hardware reset it should finally reset your router configuration.

http://192.168.1.1
admin
password

Peter Redmer
Peter Redmer's picture
Hi Peter,

Hi Peter,

I had to do it twice - first time was a 30-30-30, second time was a simple reset. After that, I was able to log in.

kamaaina
kamaaina's picture
Hi Girlpopup,

Hi Girlpopup,

welcome to the club. I think (hope) there is a good chance to recover, but the serial cable might be needed. Mine should arrive next Thu, won't have time before to deal with it anyway. The good news is I have spare routers, so I did not mess up my connection. Only play with it when you have backup, I guess. I will post my experience next weekend when the box is hopefully back online.

Without the cable, difficult. Nobody posted any secret pins to short like on the 3500 that would cause the R7000 to get into recovery modeâ?¦

shibby
shibby's picture
http://www.myopenrouter.com
TwistedAx
TwistedAx's picture
http://www.myopenrouter.com
DougRoberson
DougRoberson's picture
So is anybody running the

So is anybody running the Tomato firmware also using PIA? If so, are you dropping periodically?

kamaaina
kamaaina's picture
Hi Doug, not yet. Happy to

Hi Doug, not yet. Happy to recover my router yesterday. I just sat down to reconfigure PIA and iVPN on the Tomato fw now. Another thing I like about Tomato is that you can configure 2 OpenVPN clients at the same time, while in DD-WRT you always have to override the settings as only one config options. So, let's see next week what the status is.

DougRoberson
DougRoberson's picture
Do you assign a VPN to a

Do you assign a VPN to a particular MAC address or VLAN or how does it work?

kamaaina
kamaaina's picture
No, all outgoing traffic
DougRoberson
DougRoberson's picture
So doesn't encrypting traffic

So doesn't encrypting traffic twice really slow things down?

kamaaina
kamaaina's picture
If you encrypt on the router,

If you encrypt on the router, you need a really fast (powerful CPU) router. The new Linksys WRT1900AC is the fastest avail, with stock speed listed as 1.2 Ghz, but no third-part firmware yet, the R7000 is second in line, with 1Ghz stock speed. The Asus AC68U has 800 Mhz. All three are dual-core machines, though OpenVPN clientsupposedly only supports single core yet. My old E3000 (48o Mhz, old CPU) w/ Tomato could only get 8-9 Mbit/s download speed in the house when encryption (VPN) was running. With the RT-N66U/R (600 Mhz) I got to about 13-15 Mbit/s, with the RT-68U to about 25-30 Mbit/s DL (stock speed), The R7000 about 30-35 with stock speed. But all depends on your VPN provider and time of day of course.

With the R7000 can be overclocked (big plus), and overcloked to 1400Mhz the VPN with PIA is pretty fast it seems. I have a 57/11 connection "list speed" (but also varies on time of day etc.)

Peter Redmer
Peter Redmer's picture
@Doug - I'm at 4 days uptime

@Doug - I'm at 4 days uptime now, no dropouts on PIA. Good news. I'm thrilled, actually - it sucked having to restart the VPN sometimes multiple times a day when I was on DD-WRT.

Peter Redmer
Peter Redmer's picture
kamaaina said: If you encrypt

kamaaina said: If you encrypt on the router, you need a really fast (powerful CPU) router. The new Linksys WRT1900AC is the fastest avail, with stock speed listed as 1.2 Ghz, but no third-part firmware yet, the R7000 is second in line, with 1Ghz stock speed. The Asus AC68U has 800 Mhz. All three are dual-core machines, though OpenVPN clientsupposedly only supports single core yet. My old E3000 (48o Mhz, old CPU) w/ Tomato could only get 8-9 Mbit/s download speed in the house when encryption (VPN) was running. With the RT-N66U/R (600 Mhz) I got to about 13-15 Mbit/s, with the RT-68U to about 25-30 Mbit/s DL (stock speed), The R7000 about 30-35 with stock speed. But all depends on your VPN provider and time of day of course. With the R7000 can be overclocked (big plus), and overcloked to 1400Mhz the VPN with PIA is pretty fast it seems. I have a 57/11 connection "list speed" (but also varies on time of day etc.)

Yep, I just hit 41 Mbps on my connection, without overclocking. Seems fast to me. My native connection is ~55 Mbps or so.

kamaaina
kamaaina's picture
With iVPN.net the speed is

With iVPN.net the speed is much lower, on the same R7000 router. Assume it's partly their servers plus the higher level of encryption.
I configured them both to test initially. I will let PIA run now for a week and see if I need to reboot or restart the VPN connection. Otherwise all good.

DougRoberson
DougRoberson's picture
I'm feeling pretty dense at

I'm feeling pretty dense at this point, but I'm still not seeing the benefit of running two VPN clients at once on a router. Is this a failover scenario or something else?

Regardless, based on peter's results, I'm thinking of rolling back to stock and installing Tomato. I've had a lot of router reboots the last three weeks.

kamaaina
kamaaina's picture
Oh, you don't run the 2

Oh, you don't run the 2 clients at once. You just have them "pre-configured" and run one. Good for testing with different providers, as in my case, or to setup different servers with one provider, e.g. one in the U.S. and one in the UK or France or wherever you might want to have content from.

Regarding the reboots, that's what go me frustrated in the first place. DD-WRT is great but my key why I got the R7000 in the first place is that I wanted the fastest VPN possible. Everything else was working fine with DD-WRT, but it would always freeze after 1-3 days with the VPN running. And I knew I had it stable with Tomato on an old E3000 before with PIA. So, I can't vouch for it yet, it's only be up for about an hour now. Just make sure, if you go Tomato, to go back to stock first and always clear the NVRAM in between flashes. Good luck.

DougRoberson
DougRoberson's picture
That was the key bit of

That was the key bit of information I was missing and it makes a big difference to me. Looks like I've got a project lined up for next weekend, if nobody else sees any issues.

Babyzone2
Babyzone2's picture
Flashed back from DD-WRT to

Flashed back from DD-WRT to Genie,Reset, Flashed to Tomato. smooth installation.

Interface runs fast than DD-WRT.

Both 2.4G and 5G LED light are not on after Flash. Keep Waiting for the future updates. Great work shibby!!

Jennifer Melfi
Jennifer Melfi's picture
I am currently running

I am currently running Netgear Genie V1.0.3.56_1.1.25. This is the latest version.

Can I flash straight to Tomato or should I use the given OFW first?

Thank you.

DougRoberson
DougRoberson's picture
Hi Dr Melfi - the OFW is just

Hi Dr Melfi - the OFW is just to get you to Netgear Genie. I've used the same version you're using to upgrade to both Tomato and DD-WRT

Jennifer Melfi
Jennifer Melfi's picture
Thanks, Doug. Bada Bing! :)

Thanks, Doug. Bada Bing! :)

I'll give it a try this weekend.

rockman412
rockman412's picture
Real-time bandwidth reports

Real-time bandwidth reports just fine, but none of it is logging in the historical data. On another device with tomato I had to add exclusions to certain interfaces to make this work, but even still with this knowledge I haven't got it to play nicely.

Has anyone successfully got this this device to retain historical WAN bandwidth info? And if so what did you set?

Thanks!

Jennifer Melfi
Jennifer Melfi's picture
Tomato v119 was released

Tomato v119 was released yesterday: http://tomato.groov.pl/download/K26ARM/119/

Should I get v118 up and running first, or can I go straight from Genie to v119 via the v118 initial?

Thank you.

kamaaina
kamaaina's picture
I don't see the "initial"

I don't see the "initial" version in the 119 stack. Since I went bricking and unblocking mine I recommend you go from genie to 118 initial, 118full, and then 119. Save yourself the adrenalin and better be safe than sorry. http://tomato.groov.pl/download/K26ARM/118/R7000/

Sportager
Sportager's picture
I'm a newbie here and I want

I'm a newbie here and I want to install v119 Tomato to the R7000 I just purchased. As I read the directions, I want to revert to the original firmware, then install the initial Tomato firmware, then finally the AIO version 119.

Why do the OFW and AIO packages contain files that end with .trx and the Initial Tomato file ends with .CHK? Can someone offer suggestions?

Jennifer Melfi
Jennifer Melfi's picture
Thank you, kamaaina! I was

Thank you, kamaaina! I was able to successfully load Tomato v119 from Genie, via v118 initial -> v118 AIO -> v119 AIO. Sportager, you don't need to load OFW. Just reset Genie to default config then proceed. You should watch the YouTube tutorial video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w10jLqRmdLM

Having said all this. I decided to switch back to OFW. Overall, I was impressed with the performance and features of Tomato on R7000, but I couldn't get QoS to work. Traffic was not classified correctly, so the QoS rules were being ignored. Does anyone else experience this issue?

kamaaina
kamaaina's picture
IMHO, traditionally Tomato is

IMHO, traditionally Tomato is the firmware with the best reputation for QoS because it's the easiest to setup and has the best options. DD-WRT and others I found confusing, and the stock firmware usually does not provide much options. Tomato has QoS options for SIP, Skype, SkypeOut, etc.

Have you looked at the links provided in the about page:
http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/using-qos-tutorial-and-disc...
This thread by Toastman is great because he is the one who built the QoS component within Tomato.

Here is another one as well:
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3800416/How-to-Manage-T...

Hope this helps.

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