There is a lot on the Net about using DD-WRT with Linksys routers. I've got about 5 of these routers, running all the way form v1 to v5. If you've found this blog via Google, looking for information on this firmware, then your probably looking for some answers on is it right to use it or is it right to keep it. I've thought about using Tomato but what disturbed me was the lack of defence for DD-WRT
Now don't get me wrong-I'm not a DD-WRT fanboy, or any of the firmware variants. I nearly got kicked off the Sveasoft forums for questioning the great man-if you want to really feel the pain of non-delivery, crap GUI, broken promises then go over there-he excels in that.I waited 2 years for a hotspot solution-never got one and found DD-WRT. To charge $20 is an affront to commercial business sense but that's another story
Anyway, I digress-DD-WRT is a firmware that exploits the various versions of the Linksys router set (and a few more). It is feature rich (some would say too much but you can never have enough of a good thing).The very first thing that struck me about the DD-WRT stuff was the GUI-it was so much cleaner than anything I had seen before-and you can have it in different colours!
Here my thoughts on some of the crtitcal comments I have seen:

• You have to reboot when you apply new settings-well, if your setting it up, you shouldn't have live traffic on it anyway-and once it is set up, why would you be constantly having to fiddle with it? Not a big problem in my case.
• Its become commercialised and its against the GPL-so what? I'm not into the Linux thing (ohhh-that's going to upset a few people!), I just want something that works.I made a donation through Paypal as it did the job.Pay somebody for a good product if it works-every router I've flashed has worked a treat, even the micro version.Its miles better than the Linksys.
• It is great for extending wireless networks-through WDS, repeater function, whatever-works a treat
• It can be a bit slow when getting an IP address-but as long as you know to wait a while, your sorted

In short, its not for the faint hearted in upgrading it but if you can get one for £20 off Ebay, what have you got to lose? Stick a few 9dB omni aerials on it and you have a cracking SOHO router.Hopefully this counteracts some of the comments on the web-it's only my opinion but as is the way these days, if your top of the pile, the only way is down!

With the launch of ever increasing broadband speeds, I thought I’d do an anecdotal test on how fast your wireless connection is, when compared to wired.When I say wired, I mean using an Ethernet (CAT5) cable plugged into the wireless router.When I say wireless, sitting with the same laptop to the same router but connected by the wireless side of the router.On the same “side” of the router, a server, running some FTP download software that allows me to  download, and upload, files.
The reason for all this is that with the increasing use of wireless, attached to higher speeds courtesy of your ISP, people expect the same speeds for their bucks.They don’t care, or don’t know, why it would be different. To be fair, wireless has never been punted as a Very High Speed Medium (VHSM).Personally, I would only use it for general browsing and downloading and if you look at most companies, wireless is an add-on to the network, not a core function. So now we know how the test was performed, what were the results like? See below:

As you can see, the difference is enormous-now a few caveats before I get slaughtered by the technophiles. This is a 54G network, it is not a N network. G networks can only do theoretical speeds of 54Mb/sec but you can see it’s well down even on that.My laptop was only 2 foot from the wireless router and I had no competing signals. Also, and this I found surprising, was that there was no difference between using encryption and no encryption. The connections on the wired side are 100Mb/sec but some are half duplex so you wont get 100Mb/sec anyway. The point was not to see how fast I could go on wired but the difference between an average wired and wireless network.

I’m going to get a N router (and N adaptor) and do the same tests but I bet I get nowhere near the advertised 300-600Mb/sec. Think about it-you can make such outlandish claims but until you get a home connection that can supply you with VHSM , how do you test it? And even within the home environment, 15-20Mb/sec will quite happily stream HD video (this seems to be the litmus test at the moment) so why do you need N type? Sorry, I digress, the whole point is if you want a high speed home LAN network that doesn’t suffer from interference, that does what it says and gives you a constant and reliable service, don’t choose wireless.Get Ethernet.