Hello, I'm new to this but will receive my router today. I'm just curious which firmware to use (tomato, dd-wrt, etc...)?
I will use the router mostly on wifi, however going to ps3 is hard wire. Also, I have usb sata hard drive to connect to the router and am curious which firmware does best with streaming music/video files from usb on the router to ps3, windows, linux, etc?? I guess my question is which firmware will perform best using the usb interface and has the latest broadcom drivers?
If usb doesnt perform well enough I will setup a software raid using linux, however I was hoping the usb on the router would be "quick enough" to perform?
I was thinking to try the firmware kong listed here. How is the performance compared to default/tomato/etc? http://www.myopenrouter.com/forum/thread/20394/DD-WRT-Kong-Mod-Update-sv...
I will alsoexperiment with the other router features...thanks and sorry for the newb question!
Haha thanks...
I thought some of the firmwares perform better/quicker than others and some are slower???? Which firmwares perform best on the 3500L?
Ok I loaded this firmware last night (kong update with SMB auto mount, etc)
http://www.myopenrouter.com/forum/thread/20394/DD-WRT-Kong-Mod-Update-sv...
Everything seems OK, except.... Where is the DLNA options?? Is it the same thing as UPNP? I enabled it however I can't get PS3 to recognize the usb sata HD I plugged into the router. Windows can see it if I browse like \\192.168.1.1, but PS3 will not.
Is there something I need to do for this? I've enabled SMB open access, UPNP, USB support, etc. My ddrive is currently fat32 also.
I even tried to install optware and uShare (with failure... haha). Either the documentation is old or the versions of software I got were old. They didnt play nice.
I'm unclear if I need to load 3rd party software (like uShare) or if I can just use built in feature UPNP?
Optware seems cool! Package management for router haha...
Are there any advantage to something like say tomato over what I have loaded?
Dlna is not yet in the dd-wrt build, I have created a test firmware which already includes minidlna, but the webinterface setup pages are not ready yet. The updated firmware with included minidlna should be available in the next few weeks.
Ok great, cant wait!! Will it by chance include optware? Is there somewhere I can see a list of apps available through optware?
Not to hijack the thread - but to continue it:
I just bought the 3500L to replace an aging WRT54gs. I've got some N capable devices, and the thought of attaching a drive to it interests me greatly.
So let me add a few things. I've been using Tomato on the GS, specifically viktec's mod Version 1.25.8515.
Features that I like best: Easy to configure QOS, and graphing / bandwidth utilization AND QOS graphing.
With regard to the USB thing - Can one use a USB HUB off this and connect more than one drive/device? I know that the usb port can only sustain a certain max transfer rate, but I'm curious to know the capabilities - is it possible, and what are the other concerns (beyond the 400mbps USB rate limitation).
I'd also like to have dual SSID's if possible, and have a rate-limited or total bandwidth per month limited "guest" network...
Yes USB Hub is possible, if you connect a few drives you should use a active USB Hub with dedicated power supply.
Hey thanks Kong.
I was once active on the dd-wrt boards, but found Tomato and was very happy... but now my WRT54GS seems not to be working as well as it should. In fact with stock netgear firmware my internet performance is better - but without graphs I have no real way to compare..
So having read my post, what suggestions have you to accomplish my goals? Does DD-WRT now have active graphing like Tomato? or should I just go "tomato"?
Yes dd-wrt has graphs for some time, you can checkout some older demo:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/demo/index.asp
Well since dd-wrt offers a lot more you should probably test it and then decide if you need dd-wrt or stick with tomato.
Thanks for the link.
I do like the ability to choose type of QOS to implement (htb or hfsc)...
Hmm so many decisions. So which one will be faster with NTFS drives on a USB hub? thanks for helping me narrow it down!
NTFS is in any case slow, I'm not sure if the original netgear firmware comes with the commercial ntfs-3g, I doubt it.
You can see by tuxeras benchmarks, that the oss version is really slow:
http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-commercial/performance/
So each supported filesystem has its limitations:
-Fat32 is almost as fast as ext3, but does not allow files >4GB
-Ext3 is pretty fast, but is not natively supported on windows
-NTFS is slow as hell, only around 2MB/s read/write
Ext2/Ext3 is actually the best choice, to access it under windows you can use:
http://www.ext2fsd.com/
http://www.fs-driver.org/faq.html
Hey thanks Kong.
Both of those "drivers" / applications seem to focus on ext2?
Does using ext2/3 under windows (xp and 7) maintain any permissions? or is that content wide open to anyone who can connect to the router?
Just looking for a little clarity to determine how I think I want to do this...
Hey thanks Kong.
Both of those "drivers" / applications seem to focus on ext2?
Does using ext2/3 under windows (xp and 7) maintain any permissions? or is that content wide open to anyone who can connect to the router?
Just looking for a little clarity to determine how I think I want to do this...
Hi. Sorry to jump in here as a completely unregistered stranger.
But I was intrigued by bigjohn's dilemma.
Wouldn't it be possible to access a ext3 formatted USB drive connected to the router via SMB/samba? Thus circumventing the entire need for Windows to be able to read and write EXT?
IS there any options for this in the firmware?