[LurkingLizard]

Hi folks,

So over the last few days I've been reading through all of the current sticky's, announcements and fowl-posts (peacock; though i acknowledge DD-WRT and this form are built on volunteer efforts, given my current frustration, 'fowl' is a tempting nickname); so if I've missed something, please try to be gentle on me.

I've used DD-WRT on my main router for a long time, but the last time i built one, a few years back, i trusted the DB without issue. Now i read that there are issues with the DB, and trusting it could brick my router; so no pressure...

I have 3 WRT54g routers. The v3 and v2 are clearly labeled as such, but the v1 is not clearly labeled and the version was inferred from the v1 photo on wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_WRT54G_series).

So far, I've been focusing on the v3, but i'm presuming all of this is parallel for the other two units.
I've gone through the Linksys guide (https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Linksys_WRT54G_v3.0), and I've managed to get the "trailed 14929 mini build" on to it (and I've set the new password).

Now, which FW version is considered the current stable version?
I'm seeing all of these 5 digit IDs, but the higher FW numbers don't seem to necessarily correspond to a single revision timeline (or am i just imagining things?).

How can i tell which FW version is the most stable, with newest patches, for my hardware?
I've tried searching the forum, but given that my hardware shared half of the letters with the FW project name, 500+ result pages is a bit much.

If it matters for FW selection, the specific features i'm looking to setup include:

basic local DHCP/DNS server
DMZ (layered dual zone/router setup)
firewall/open/closing ports
WiFi w/ mac filtering
longterm, likely use one of these as second AP for internal WiFi
QoS (VoIP, and select IPs as priority)
longterm, likely VPN client setup (max 10Mbps; I'm aware these likely don't have the CPU power for this bandwidth)

Overall, I don't think i'm trying to do anything too fancy.

Any and all input is appreciated, thanks.