Going All Custom on Your Router

This is for those people who aren’t afraid of getting their hands a little dirty and doing some tweaking. For those of you out there that have Linksys brand wireless routers, you may have noticed that you have to reboot those routers on a semi-regular basis.  (Linksys is not alone on this, most consumer routers have issues here and there, especially if they are a bit older.)  Most of the time the cause of this is as simple as the router messed up and needs to be rebooted, or maybe the user was downloading too much through bit torrent (!) and locked it up.  Either way, depending on what model you have, there is finally a semi-permanent fix available.

Now, I’ll preface with this warning:  This is *NOT* for the faint of heart or those not intimately familiar with computers.  This involves replacing the built-in software on the wireless router with a completely different program, and while free, is not without danger, the worst of which is rendering your router a useless blue brick!

Ok, with the Public Service Announcement out of the way, I’ll point you in the right direction.  The first thing to do is check on DDWRT and see if your router is support by this firmware.  If it is, and you want to try it, then read through the documentation on the website, and visit all of the forums and posts that it tells you to.  Make sure you understand everything before you do it.  I’ve performed this a number of times on different routers, and each one has its own procedure to get the firmware changed.  Do not deviate from the directions.

Once finished, you will have software on your router that is MUCH MUCH better at handling high connection loads and staying on for months on end with no issues.  I personally run a Linksys WRT-150N at home, and it is notorious for being a *not very good* router. (hey, I got it for free )  Anyway, I upgraded the firmware to DDWRT, and I haven’t rebooted it in over 4 months, and before I’d have to reboot it at least once per week.

I also recently performed the upgrade on my In-Law’s Linksys WRT54GS, and just like at my house, they went from rebooting it a couple times per month to never.  It is a worthwhile upgrade to any compatible router, and you can feel good for supporting Open Source Software!