[MomenMamdouh]

Hi
I need to flash my R8000 with a stable build of DDWRT, I have tried several ones including the latest build, but, I faced many and many problems such as slow and poor performance compared to ofw, and modifying any setting in gui might cause boot failure.

So, please recommend a stable build for that model.

[MomenMamdouh]

Unfortunately, DD-WRT support for Netgear R8000 is very limited. I have tried several builds starting with the recommended builds on router database page and ending with the latest build r55009 at the time of writing this post.

I suffered from:

- Slow/laggy GUI
- Enabling QoS might cause boot Failure (very random)
- Terrible QoS performance
- 5.0 GHZ is not stable & slow even with using the Broadcom recommended wireless settings
- WIFI 2.4 & 5.0 Ghz not working at all when i've used FOSS-builds.

the remaining options are:

- Converting to the original fw. (Fast/Stable, but very limited)
- Flashing OpenWrt 23.05.2 (Tested!, better stability than DD-WRT)
- Converting to Fresh Tomato (The best performance on R8000)

[Alozaros]

Yep R8000 has never been top of the pops…by stable it could mean anything
try some basic config and add settings one by one and see … as far as alternative firmware's
OpenWRT has its caveats same for Tomato, FT or what ever…eventually if stock is better, move along and use it...
Sadly, not many people are running R8000, reporting it….53562 was the build before the big WIP race..but R8000 shouldn't be affected by the big changes on k6.1xx...to be honest R8000 has been always my "dont get this router" if you can get R7800 or XR500 its a different experience...
Finally using older builds lives the door to unpatched stuff and vulnerabilities...

[MomenMamdouh]

Unfortunately, my friend, I did not have the opportunity to obtain a mid-range router that supports dd-wrt other than this model.

But after two days of experimenting with both 'openwrt' and 'Fresh Tomato', I can confirm that both firmwares work efficiently and with high stability on R8000, but I settled on FT because it is very close to dd-wrt but with a different flavor.

Hope that I can revert back to dd-wrt soon as possible.

[Alozaros]

[MomenMamdouh]

FT still uses the old 2.6 kernel, but I'm happy with that in exchange for stability, smooth performance, and no security breaches. It's a fantastic combination of old and new

[MomenMamdouh]

Another attempt to find out which settings might cause DD-WRT to become unusable on R8000, and after applying the settings one by one, I found out that activating USB support causes the router to become extremely slow, until communication with the device is lost (SSH and HTTP), and sometimes leads to boot failure. Also, one of the accompanying symptoms is that the USB2 and USB3 notification leds are lit together even without any flash installed, and finally activating JFFS2 and trying to read and write data to the partition gives an I/O error message. Unfortunately, i can not provide any logs because they can't survive a reboot. Emphasizing that without activating USB support, dd-wrt works very efficiently on the router.

These symptoms don't happen with openwrt or fresh tomato.The test is done using different builds including the latest dd-wrt build for R8000.

Is there a fix? And should i open a ticket?

[Alozaros]

[egc]

[DiskDoctor]

[IndigentBastard]

I also wanted to install DDWRT having been a long time user of it. But, I was scared after reviewing the forums that there was no consensus on a stable build. I ended up going with fresh tomato, which works fine enough, but I do miss DDWRT. I'll be tracking this thread and hopefully someone will update it when a stable build is available.

[Alozaros]

IndigentBastard there is no such a thing as a stable build...all builds are stable depends from the use....of it...
For the record...unstable builds are more rare than unstable set up or unstable router...
sadly R8000 may pop in this categories...for the record using my set up im happy with the last build
on my R7800 (55262)

[IndigentBastard]

@Alozaros, are you suggesting that the R8000 is simply unstable hardware for DDWRT?

What I would really like to hear is that someone installed build XXX on their R8000 and it is working as expected. Or, alternatively, that someone is using build XXX on their R8000, but don't do X, Y, or Z as that will cause instability.

Is anyone actually using DDWRT on their R8000, can recommend a build number, and could lend some confidence to those considering doing the same?

[Mile-Lile]

I tried r8000 with ddwrt dhd builds and brcmfmac builds. Openwrt with snapshots and my own builds...

I don't know... if you want stable build I would go with ddwrt dhd, you cannot crash it but wifi is very weak... 43602 usb dhd has its own OS firmware and ddwrt can't do much about it... + FA gives you great eth speeds if your ISP plan is over 300Mbps...

Openwrt gives you nice apps like banip etc but wifi is very weak + stalls
sometimes

If you go with ddwrt brcmfmac (use latest available build) and you will have best wifi performance (enable turboQAM) but fw will crash sometimes if you use intensive encrypt apps...

[Alozaros]

IndigentBastard Although i owned one R8000 back in the days..i had it only for a week and it was replaced by R7000...easygoing and rock solid fellow..so, i don't have a real owners view on R8000..but if you go and read the forum threads on R8000, you will get your point of view quickly..
At the end of the day all Broadcom based routers run proprietary WiFi firmware and thus makes them less preferable...among the others... dominated by Qualcom-Atheros...