Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 19:17 Post subject: Is there a version of dd-wrt i can buy that isnt such a pos?
-No support
-Buggy
-Doesnt obey scripts
-Connection drops constantly
Free software turns out is really really expensive to use, ive probably dumped about 20-30 hours into trying to find the right dd-wrt firmware to use and getting it to work almost right. And of course the two guys actually developing this in their spare time dont offer any support, no one else seems to know how to make anything work,
So my question is, is there a company or someone who knows what they are doing that has a verified and supported working version of dd-wrt i can pay for? Or some sort of firmware that has the features of dd-wrt but isnt terrible?
Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 19:34 Post subject: Re: Is there a version of dd-wrt i can buy that isnt such a
dd-wrtscreener wrote:
-No support
-Buggy
-Doesnt obey scripts
-Connection drops constantly
Free software turns out is really really expensive to use, ive probably dumped about 20-30 hours into trying to find the right dd-wrt firmware to use and getting it to work almost right. And of course the two guys actually developing this in their spare time dont offer any support, no one else seems to know how to make anything work,
So my question is, is there a company or someone who knows what they are doing that has a verified and supported working version of dd-wrt i can pay for? Or some sort of firmware that has the features of dd-wrt but isnt terrible?[/quote]
Didn't you tell us, that you moved to tomato, sounds like tomato is also terrible?
tomato works fine if you want a simple router with a few extra features but for things like repeater mode tomato doesnt work so well, so i had to go back to dd-wrt, which now is giving me this:
Edit: using kong firmware 17670M, never versions dont work in repeater mode or dont work at all.
Last edited by dd-wrtscreener on Sun Apr 13, 2014 19:52; edited 1 time in total
Never got a chance to read the replies from that old post, you have kids, you get sick, youre doing this for free, i understand, im not faulting you because this firmware is buggy and unsupported, thats why im asking if there is a professional firmware that has dd-wrt's features where i can pay a company who can provide service and quality solutions even if some of their employees get sick or have kids.
Are there no companies that develop feature rich firmware for consumer routers?
tomato works fine if you want a simple router with a few extra features but for things like repeater mode tomato doesnt work so well, so i had to go back to dd-wrt, which now is giving me this:
Yeah, thats kongfirmware right there, when it works.
Well that looks like your torrent connections fill up conntrack table, if that happens you cannot build up new connections until old ones time out.
For torrenting you need to lower Tcp Timeout under Administration->Management e.g. 300s instead of default 1800.
Or just get a unit that can handle torrents better e.g. a dual arm unit with 256MB ram. _________________ KONG PB's: http://www.desipro.de/ddwrt/
KONG Info: http://tips.desipro.de/
This is really sidetracking the issue, ive already invested so much time into this, i just want a solution that works, anyone know of a paid solution?
Sure you can pay dd-wrt to fix such an issue, but such things are expensive.
I'm sure you know how support for commercial products e.g. your asus router works, you contact them, support guys will give you a few hints, maybe exchange your unit etc. but that may not fix your bug, unless a lot of others report the issue and they decide to reproduce the issue, have a developer look at it and release a fw that fixes it maybe 1 or 2 month later etc.
There is no guarantee in that your issue will be fixed.
Then there is premium support, which costs a lot, but will get you close to people, that can actually diagnose and fix your issue. You don't find that one home routers.
Finally if you a large company you can pay to get 3rd level support and if you have an issue , they will send someone that can fix the issue, then we are talking about minimum $150/h.
Most people probably won't get a home router if they need mission critical support. But I have fixed specific issues for people that actually deployed a large network consisting of 50+ home routers, because they ran tests before deploying and found out, that these home routers with dd-wrt were equally good or better then 10x more expensive enterprise hardware. _________________ KONG PB's: http://www.desipro.de/ddwrt/
KONG Info: http://tips.desipro.de/
I have a very stable home network running on DD-WRT and even employed DD-WRT in semi-professional situations to accomodate 200 devices during an interactive theatre production all distributed over two wireless access points.
Yes, the firmware comes for free thanks to our precious enthusiasts that commit all of their free time to help out the community (even if that implies not always being able to directly respond to every and any possible question on the board here, but hey: take a look on how many questions are being posed here!?)
Please note that if you want to commit to run DD-WRT, there are a few requirements:
1) you need to accept that you can not accept the same support as for a paid product (and even that can be dreadful very often); and thus:
2) you need to have yourself a certain level of tech-savvyness (or just call it geekyness) to understand the materials you're working with, read up on the available resources and troubleshoot yourself (as a technician I can only complain that proper troubleshooting is a lost art);
3) being able to properly formulate your concerns/issues/problems/tips/whatever and then:
4) research with the proper search keywords and if that doesn't give results:
5) post a topic and BE PATIENT!
Ranting like this is not helping your cause.
So, to conclude: I think the problem is on your side. Either you don't comprehend the materials you're working with (you fail to see the limitations of your hardware, you fail to properly configure your unit) or you're just facing some very exotic environmental circumstances. I'm betting on the first one.
To more directly reply to your question: is there paid support out there? No, there isn't. Nothing official any way. Is there anything decent resembling DD-WRT out there that can be paid for? No, not to my knowledge. You're always welcome to revert to stock firmware and ask the manufacturer to offer support with what you want to do (good luck with that!)
Otherwise, you should put your router on eBay and just go for professional products that are designed and sold for the application you're looking for. I hope you can take an extra mortgage for that home application.
I think what he's looking for (and myself too) is for a stable version of DD-WRT.
I wish there was a separate tree of DD-WRT for bugfixes only. No new versions of anything unless whatever is being replaced is totally broken/unusable. i.e., don't replace a wireless driver with a new version because the peak speed is 5Mbps higher. Only replace it if the current version drops connections every 20 minutes.
This would be easy to do for the 3.x version, a new stable branch could be created with each LTS version of the Linux kernel, which will be supported upstream for a long time to come.
You're right that the support from Linksys, Netgear, etc. is terrible and if you run into a bug you just have to cross your fingers that they choose to fix it. One thing they do have going for them though is that basic router functionality generally works better than DD-WRT. Every new build of DD-WRT fixes some old bugs and introduces some new ones, so there never seems to be a good build you can use without lots of caveats and gotchas.
New features are great, but sometimes you just want things to work, even if it means giving up the latest features and support for the newest hardware on the block.
Oh ok, but the main problem here for me with dd-wrt (besides the wonky bandwidth drops) is that i need to block all connections to the internet when my vpn drops, this is a huge problem but no one knows, thats when i ask is there someone i can pay who does know because even the developer himself doesnt seem to understand how to do this.
I mean you put a VPN program in your firmware for a reason right, because people will want to use their router for privacy reasons, but if you make it so that when the vpn drops for whatever reason you are instantly exposed to the normal internet without any warning, how is that anything but reckless? Im having to come on here and bother everyone over something that should be builtin and completely obvious part of the vpn program. I dont know what else to do i keep asking and no one seems to know or care.
Joined: 07 Aug 2007 Posts: 19 Location: New Haven, CT
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 13:01 Post subject:
dd-wrtscreener wrote:
Oh ok, but the main problem here for me with dd-wrt (besides the wonky bandwidth drops) is that i need to block all connections to the internet when my vpn drops, this is a huge problem but no one knows, thats when i ask is there someone i can pay who does know because even the developer himself doesnt seem to understand how to do this.
I mean you put a VPN program in your firmware for a reason right, because people will want to use their router for privacy reasons, but if you make it so that when the vpn drops for whatever reason you are instantly exposed to the normal internet without any warning, how is that anything but reckless? Im having to come on here and bother everyone over something that should be builtin and completely obvious part of the vpn program. I dont know what else to do i keep asking and no one seems to know or care.
I just came across this thread while researching new routers and I'd thought I'd give a potential helping hand.
I think what you want to do for this is to manipulate your IPTables. It's very complex software so you will want to do some reading, however, I put together a set of IPTables rules that will prevent one of my servers from communicating over the internet unless the VPN is up and connected. I don't see why you couldn't manipulate the rules to fit within your router.
I'll post my rules below but I also have it documented here:
#Accept all TUN connections (tun = VPN tunnel)
iptables -A OUTPUT -o tun+ -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -i tun+ -j ACCEPT
#Set default policies to drop all communication unless specifically allowed
iptables -P INPUT DROP
iptables -P OUTPUT DROP
iptables -P FORWARD DROP
If you don't know IPtables, the one thing you ought to know is that the rules must appear in the correct order (they are above) or else the rules will not work as you expect.
Oh ok, but the main problem here for me with dd-wrt (besides the wonky bandwidth drops) is that i need to block all connections to the internet when my vpn drops, this is a huge problem but no one knows, thats when i ask is there someone i can pay who does know because even the developer himself doesnt seem to understand how to do this.
I mean you put a VPN program in your firmware for a reason right, because people will want to use their router for privacy reasons, but if you make it so that when the vpn drops for whatever reason you are instantly exposed to the normal internet without any warning, how is that anything but reckless? Im having to come on here and bother everyone over something that should be builtin and completely obvious part of the vpn program. I dont know what else to do i keep asking and no one seems to know or care.
I just came across this thread while researching new routers and I'd thought I'd give a potential helping hand.
I think what you want to do for this is to manipulate your IPTables. It's very complex software so you will want to do some reading, however, I put together a set of IPTables rules that will prevent one of my servers from communicating over the internet unless the VPN is up and connected. I don't see why you couldn't manipulate the rules to fit within your router.
I'll post my rules below but I also have it documented here:
#Accept all TUN connections (tun = VPN tunnel)
iptables -A OUTPUT -o tun+ -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -i tun+ -j ACCEPT
#Set default policies to drop all communication unless specifically allowed
iptables -P INPUT DROP
iptables -P OUTPUT DROP
iptables -P FORWARD DROP
If you don't know IPtables, the one thing you ought to know is that the rules must appear in the correct order (they are above) or else the rules will not work as you expect.
Do i just paste this into the firewall box and it will block it? I dont know how to customize it to my router, i have the same dd-wrt everyone else has its just that its setup as a repeater so apparently that changes everything.
