OpenWrt vs DD-Wrt. Which one to use?



Why use third party firmware?


Nowadays, everyone is using routers in their home and offices. The router, you use are made for home/office purpose, able to manage a handful of devices. Default firmware provided with the router may have limited features which otherwise could be useful if configurable or comes with the bug (which does not get fixed quickly), stranding you to live with it. This also increases security risk for your home network. Imagine a situation, where an outsider is able to connect to your home network and eat your bandwidth or delete data from your home devices or stealing contacts from your phone. 

For me, the reason behind using a third party open source firmware is mainly performance, complete control of the network, the new version is made available faster and they can run for days without restarting the router.

Installing third party firmware gives you a granular level of control along with business level features, utilizing hardware's maximum capacity. 

Benefits:

  • Most of the third party firmware use Linux kernel. Gives stability.
  • Advance QOS (Quality of Service) features
  • VPN (Virtual Private Network) Passthrough capabilities
  • Built-in DNS (Domain Name System) caching - Faster web browsing
  • VLAN (Virtual LAN) support
  • Fast and functional DHCP server
  • Adjustable antenna power to increase wireless range

Available Firmware

There are many open source third party firmware available on The Internet. 

Following are some famous firmware:
From above list, two firmware stand out from rest: DD-WRT and OpenWrt.



Which one to use DD-WRT or OpenWrt?

DD-WRT

DD-WRT is one of most feature rich firmware. It has been in development for many years and stability is not an issue. Since DD-WRT has many features and configurations provided in firmware, sometimes routers are not able to handle all those things, slowing your network, introducing bugs.

DD-WRT GUI
DD-WRT is also known for its ease of use, even a novice can flash and configure DD-WRT (if he follows step correctly given in the documentation. Web-based GUI is simple and fast. You can also change GUI Theme. Documentation given is straight-forward and easy to understand. Their site also explains various network related configurations and its implementation using DD-WRT. It's really good knowledge base for anyone who wants to try and get a good reliable home network.

DD-WRT is compatible with most of the devices. You can check DD-WRT support for your router here. For new devices, DD-WRT is still in beta release (as of 2015/07/10) and there are bugs. So selecting a good build is very important. 


OpenWrt 


OpenWrt is different from DD-WRT, instead of providing all the feature in a single package, it uses modular approach so the user can install additional packages as per feature requirement. This approach makes OpenWrt slick, light-weight, fully customizable and not to mention, gives solid stability.


OpenWrt GUI
The stable version of OpenWrt comes with web-based GUI called Luci. GUI is a little bit difficult to understand for the first time. However, for few configurations, it might require using command line making it difficult to be used by novice users. And since documentation is not up-to-date, it makes more difficult and requires searching on The Internet. 

OpenWrt supports many devices including supported by DD-WRT. Configuring OpenWrt is very hard for novice and is recommended for only those having time to play with router configuration or have some technical background. OpenWrt gives advance control over configurations, which isn't easy for a novice user. With OpenWrt under the hood, you can control each component of the router like changing function of WPS button.


Conclusion

I 'll recommend DD-WRT for those who don't what to configure each component, but want to get better performance, business grade features and security from the router without having any overhead.

On the other hand, OpenWrt is for those who has a good technical background, have a lot of time available to spend.  (P.S. It is difficult to configure OpenWrt i.e requires knowledge of command lines & time for configuring. But once configured properly it is most powerful firmware available). On a cautious note, utilizing hardware to the last bit may reduce its life. Use it wisely. :)

If you consider overall situation DD-WRT is the way to go. 



Note: Please let me know if you have any problem and should I blog about DDWRT installation.

Comments

  1. UnknownJuly 15, 2017 at 3:03 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. UnknownJuly 15, 2017 at 3:07 PM

    I live with OpenWRT for a long time and I love it. From 2017, LEDE-project is a good alternative to OpenWRT. The other firmwares like DD-WRT, Tomato and Gargoyle are excellent but they are not flexible as OpenWRT/LEDE.
    Thanks for you post, and I found the following post has some value information too:
    OpenWRT vs DD-WRT vs Tomato

    ReplyDelete

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