OpenWrt vs DDWrt

Question

I have a TP-Link Wr1043ND router and I want to install one of these two firmwares:

• OpenWRT
• DD-WRT

I read that I can install custom packages and do much more than I can with the original firmware.

I would like to ask someone with experience in using both OpenWRT and DD-WRT which he would recommend and why. And to give a few reference points I'm interested in:

1. reliability – network stability both on cable and wireless and on the usb drive
2. performance – network speed, very important also usb drive speed
3. configurability – the possibility to add extensions such as a torrent client, FTP, SSH, WWW and SVN server directly
4. ease of use – the ease of installation and configuration of the router
5. support/docs – how much info there is if you stumble upon a problem and you have to find some documentation, or if there's any free support (but that's a longshot)

Of course I don't imagine that I will find the perfect firmware and that one is vastly superior over the other.

Also if there's anyone out there who uses one of these firmwares on a TP-Link Wr1043ND, it would be great to get some feedback about the impact of the changes from the original firmware.

P.S. I'm open also for Tomato if it's the better one.

Answer 1

Dec 2020 update: still all-in with OpenWRT, everything works beautiful.

Overall, OpenWRT if you really want flexibility. I dumped DD-WRT (WRT54G) for OpenWRT (ASUS WL-500gP) because of this (related to this), haven't had a regretful moment yet. Not even close.

1. reliability – I am not aware that one is significantly more reliable than the other. Both have quite lengthy release cycles, which have yet another bunch of users complaining.
2. performance – I'm pretty certain it mostly depends on the hardware device and best compatible drivers most of all.
3. configurability – OpenWRT package management system should win easily here.
4. ease of use – I liked DD-WRT web UI, I don't have a particular problem with LuCI either. LuCI just got bumped to 0.10 branch in 10.03.1-rc5, which is another step up. But overall I'm definitely loving OpenWRT's /etc. Things in there make sense when you need them to.
5. support/docs – Both have phpBB forums with significant traffic.

Answer 2

OpenWRT all the way. Reasons:

• complete control
• modularity
• well organized

Given these parameters, you can judge the coding is in good hands. I am a developer, and I find OpenWRT very modular, very organized, with no limitations imposed. I can pick the modules I like, there are so many available. I can write an application straight in C or C++ and make it work under OpenWRT. I can change the device driver code to suit my needs.

And the whole procedure is documented well enough. Even if you are not a developer, you will find the modular approach in defining your system, stunning. A job well done by the OpenWRT team. And yes, I have used DD-WRT before using OpenWRT.

Answer 3

An important consideration these days is router security.

Out of the three distributions, only the OpenWRT has a security advisories page:

https://openwrt.org/advisory/start

So basically from security standpoint, OpenWRT is the only choice. DD-WRT has nightly builds available, but there is no changelog, and the latest firmware for my particular device has 3.18.140 kernel which is EOL.

Another point is that the SVN repository of DD-WRT has only 1 contributor, while OpenWRT has some 700 contributors. Which is not necessarily mean that there is really only 1 contributor, but when a kernel security fix backport commit doesn't contain much details besides the CVE being fixed, it looks pretty suspicios from security standpoint.

Answer 4

I might add another category (or subcategory) to the main questions:

6. upgradeability/up-to-dateness - Has the core 3rd party router firmware been updated "fairly" recently??

   • DD-WRT; While the widely referred-to Peacock Thread-FAQ and DD-WRT forums predominantly suggest sticking to routers' most stable versions, these firmware versions are with few exceptions over a half-dozen years old! DD-WRT updates are found in the Beta router firmware links organized by year, but it can be surprisingly difficult to find out which exact up-to-date upgrade one really needs :/

   • OpenWrt; The webpage downloads dot openwrt dot org shows last month's release of Chaos Calmer 15.05, so certainly the OpenWrt firmware is extremely up-to-date.

   • Tomato; The stock Tomato router firmware listed at polarcloud dot com's firmware link is currently at version 1.28.... from about five years ago! Sure, there are also a bunch of more updated Tomato firmware distribution variations (a.k.a. modifications or "mods") for various routers listed around, but many people either don't know about these mods or if they even work right!

Answer 5

I have no experience with OpenWRT (I may try it out some time), and my experience with DD-WRT was relatively brief.

But what I can say is that I am very happy with Tomato. While it does not support as many routers and has less features than DD-WRT, it still has a lot of features (I use the Toastman mod) and QoS works very well with it, unlike DD-WRT. It also has an attractive web-interface pretty bandwidth graphs.

Answer 6

I use an old Netgear wndr3700v4 as an extender (a dumb AP) with a powerline adapter backhaul to my main router. I was experiencing wireless dropouts (not signal issues, dropouts) on DD-WRT. I recently switched from DD-WRT over to OpenWRT and the dropouts stopped occurring and wireless performance is much better than it was before (although there is a general limit of about 40Mbps with any firmware for this device .. just doesn't have the CPU for more). Take this with a grain-of-salt though, experience my differ with your device. It's probably best you experiment with both firmware types. IMO, Openwrt has gotten much easier for a first-time user to understand over the past couple of years (heck, I was able to understand it!).

I also use OpenWRT on my main router (Linksys EA6350v3) and it has always performed well and without issue. I also use it as a Samba4 (file share) and miniDLNA server, no issues there as well.

Answer 7

I found DD-WRT on Archer C7 with wifi 5Mhz doesn't work properly and speed even less than on wi-fi 2.5 Mhz! Reflashed to OpenWrt and all problems disappeared. The interface oin OpenWrt is less user-friendly, but the GUI allows go straight to customisation, add packages such as statistic and they appears in Web. Open-Wrt is more stable, I tested it on Dir-300 router and an old router works so well with OpenWrt whereas with DD-Wrt it almost doesn't work (freezing, lags). OpenWrt requires a bit more knowledge what you are doing, so a bit more steps to configure vs DD-WRT. Both are great systems it depends what are you looking for and what are devices have support, how easy to flash.