Hey Hey,

I have a old linksys WRT54G router. I am thinking of flashing the firmware with either tomato or DD-WRT. My router is supported by both firmwares.

The reason is because I want to utilize the built in ssh server on these two firmwares.

Since I can't find a consumer router with a ssh server built in, the above is my only option.

My question is -- has anyone use any of these firmwares and if yes, are they secure, has there been any performance issues like connection speed.

I be much oblige

i use dd-wrt, never used tomato
which you can use depends on what model of wrt54g (how much firmware space it has, mine has 2MB for instance, which so far i have only found DD-WRT supports)

havn't had any real issues with my router since i flashed DD-WRT onto it, if you like me has only 2MB of flash you would want the NEWD micro+ ssh version available here

Thanks for the reply.

My current wrt54g firmware is v4.21.1

I went to dd-wrt.com website and it recommended firmware v24 preSP2 Beta Build 13064 for wrt54g v4.0

If it doesn't have ssh, then I'll try the one you recommended above

Thanks again

I've been using TomatoVPN, a variant of Tomato with openvpn installed for quite some time with absolutely zero issues. I've never used dd-wrt, but I can't imagine that you could make a bad/wrong choice here. To be honest, given the performance and features I've seen with Tomato, I would absolutely never buy a router that isn't supported by 3rd party firmware.

As for security, remember, these are still susceptible to the same sort of nonsense that any other computer is. So if you have an easy password for ssh, it doesn't matter how secure the rest of the firmware is secure or not. Tomato does allow key-based SSH access which I would strongly recommend. It also has ability to limit accepted IP addresses and login attempts.

Having the ssh server with tomato and dd-wrt is a money saver too. No need to have a 500 watt desktop on 24/7 to do ssh tunneling when you're on public insecure hot spots.

much obliged