I'm new at this, and looking to buy my first router. I've found lots of information about how to flash a Buffalo router to dd-wrt, and about what features dd-wrt has, but can't find a discussion of exactly what's wrong with the native firmware of the Buffalos. Can anyone point me to that?
If it matters, I would want the router to deal with bittorrent well, since that's probably the biggest challenge I would present to a router. Well, maybe also some form of VPN, but I don't really know enough about that to say for sure.
Nope. There's nothing wrong with the stock Buffalo or Linksys firmware for what is included. It's the features that are missing and the general lack of fine tuned settings in the stock firmware that justifies installing DD-WRT or OpenWRT. I couldn't find anything comparing the features of the stock firmware with the others. However, this might help:
formatting link
compares features among a few of the alternative firmware releases. If you go down the list, my guess is that the stock firmware has less than half the features listed.
That's somewhat configurable in DD-WRT. You want to tinker with the number of connections setting (default=128) and the QoS settings (to insure that your upstream bandwidth isn't monopolized by downloaders). You'll see something like this:
in the log files. However, the best solution is to use a Bitorrent client that controls the number of streams and does not allow the router to overload.
DD-WRT comes in several forms, one of which is specifically designed to handle hardware to hardware VPN connections. The standard version includes a PPTP client and server. It's not as secure as IPSec, but good enough for me. I use it to create a VPN between my office and home routers so that it looks like one network. Also for wireless roaming when I wanna grab something from the office and don't wanna deal with hackers with password sniffers.
Ok. I guess it makes sense to flash it then, provided it doesn't void the warranty. And maybe even if it does.
I found this on the utorrent site:
formatting link
I frankly don't understand what was being kept for five days. Why would the router need to track old connections? But it apparently was a severe problem for bittorrent, whatever it was.
By the way, from what I've read, there appears to be no reason to pick a Linksys v5 or later (except the Linux version which is actually a v4 with a new name) over a Buffalo. The later Linksys appear to be universally condemned.
It's not a function that I really need at this point, but I've been listening to Steve Gibson's "Security Now" programs on VPN, and trying to understand them. Not there yet.
Neither do I. I have no clue what they're talking about. There's nothing that is saved for 5 days. Not DNS cache, ARP cache, MAC address cache, or assorted buffers. I have a guess what they're talking about, but I think it would be better if you ask, rather than deal with my guesswork.
Good question. Sorry, no answer.
Not quite. It seems to be a problem with uTorrent. I couldn't find anything similar for other clients with Google.
Correct. The Linksys WRT54G v5 and v6 suck.
(6 pages). My assorted attempts to make these work reliably with both the stock firmware and DD-WRT at several clients have resulted in them being returned to the vendor and exchanged for other makers and models. My current guess(tm) is that instabilities and lack of adequate number of simultaneous connection is a hardware issue and cannot be fixed in software. However, this is a guess(tm) and might be wrong.
I have a bad attitude about Steve Gibson. Anyone that claims to be a security expert, yet does not participate in any of the security related mailing lists, does not attend security conferences, (does not attend hacker conferences), is not a security expert.
formatting link
his advice does have some merit, in most cases, the problems, exploits, and effects are exaggerated far beyond reality and borderning on alarmist. To his credit, he does make some nifty podcasts and web pages, which is something the real security experts have problems doing.
I'm a big fan of dd-wrt (2 of my 3 routers run dd-wrt) and I am also the owner of a Buffalo router that hasn't been flashed to dd-wrt. For my purposes, the stock firmware works perfectly well. The router is very stable even when I throw some major bitorrent action at it. I don't need a VPN solution so that part doesn't matter to me. I will probably flash the Buffalo eventually, but as long as the stock firmware is doing the job, I'll keep it.
Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.