Tomato Firmware - VRForums - SITEX 2009

&d00 · 09:11 AM

Hi guys, here's an amazing firmware I've been using for a long time.

Grab it here: http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

It runs on:

Linksys WRT54G v1-v4, WRT54GS v1-v4, WRT54GL v1.x, WRTSL54GS (no USB support)
Buffalo WHR-G54S, WHR-HP-G54, WZR-G54
Asus WL500G Premium (no USB support)

The web interface is excellent, everything is AJAX (live statistics) and responsive (no page load delays AT ALL!).

QoS is also easy to configure, using dropdown boxes to configure.

Pictures speak more than words;

[sorry for the missing pics - overhauled server and too lazy to screencap again

]

nckai · May 6th, 07, 01:31 PM

No USB support for WRTSL54GS.

&d00 · May 6th, 07, 01:36 PM

Sadly, but I chose it in favour of any other firmware (having tried everything) and giving up USB for this is worth it!

&d00 · May 6th, 07, 01:37 PM

added bandwidth monitoring graph. it's a live graph, and updates as you watch without refresh.

if you move your cursor over it will display the kb/s at that point too.

it monitors all interfaces by default but i only chose to monitor WAN.

&d00 · May 6th, 07, 01:50 PM

more pictures

gratelemming · May 6th, 07, 11:01 PM

Just curious, but is there any special reason why you're not using L7 analysis to identify bittorrent packets? I've just installed tomato and am trying out things now.

welcomb · May 7th, 07, 12:18 AM

Tomato does has a very nice user friendly QoS for normal users, and I would guess a easy config page too. But USB support is something essential to me and it seems that Tomato doesn't have much features and not very customisable.

But that said I think it looks like a good firmware for beginners or normal users to try. QoS is simple enough for novices but not very customisable for the pros. Using it on a WL-500g Premium seems a pity though cos you lose all the features of the stock firmware.

Just a question, with L7 shaping, would that not make it slower? Well if you don't have a 300MHz proc I mean.

gratelemming · 01:39 AM

I don't think you get the point of tomato... you get live stat analysis on your router rather than having to use something like wallwatcher or samurize.

The config is actually harder than DD-WRT because it doesn't have built-in help and some fields are somewhat obtuse. Seriously after setting up iptables chains are you sure you want to spend more hours cracking your head trying to set up htb scripts for QoS?

If you want your usb support you can always try patching it in yourself. tomato uses busybox just like any other 3rd party firmware... then you can get people to worship your 1337ness.

I never had problems with L7 filtering on my lowly 200MHz processor... its just that the rule in &d00's QoS seems pretty useless if you use something like uTorrent.

Meffy · May 7th, 07, 06:46 AM

Tomato is by far the fastest firmware ive seen for the WRT54g...With utorrent 1.7,You can specify a range of ports for utorrent to connect....than you can set those ports as "low" or w/e you want in QoS..This is WAY faster than some L7 thingy

&d00 · May 7th, 07, 04:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gratelemming

Just curious, but is there any special reason why you're not using L7 analysis to identify bittorrent packets? I've just installed tomato and am trying out things now.

I'm not using L7 and IPP2P because I'm using protocol encryption with uTorrent and I can confirm that it will not be detected by the filter.

Which is reassuring too

&d00 · May 7th, 07, 04:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by welcomb

Tomato does has a very nice user friendly QoS for normal users, and I would guess a easy config page too. But USB support is something essential to me and it seems that Tomato doesn't have much features and not very customisable.

But it's tried and tested to be the fastest firmware around. I was very disappointed by the loading times of DD-WRT and OpenWRT admin pages, as well as the unnecessary complexity.

USB support can be added by extracting an ipackage from OpenWRT and using some firmware modification tools around the net, or you can compile it in from source, which is what I'm going to do and release after my exams.

Quote:

Originally Posted by welcomb

But that said I think it looks like a good firmware for beginners or normal users to try. QoS is simple enough for novices but not very customisable for the pros. Using it on a WL-500g Premium seems a pity though cos you lose all the features of the stock firmware.

http://www.hyperwrt.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=2002

Generated scripts work on tomato.

It does seem to be a pity, but I chose speed over that because I have a seperate file/web/media server.

Quote:

Originally Posted by welcomb

Just a question, with L7 shaping, would that not make it slower? Well if you don't have a 300MHz proc I mean.

200MHz is more than enough - tried and tested before.

&d00 · May 7th, 07, 04:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meffy

Tomato is by far the fastest firmware ive seen for the WRT54g...With utorrent 1.7,You can specify a range of ports for utorrent to connect....than you can set those ports as "low" or w/e you want in QoS..This is WAY faster than some L7 thingy

uTorrent's encryption isn't detected by L7 and IPP2P

welcomb · May 8th, 07, 01:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by &d00

But it's tried and tested to be the fastest firmware around. I was very disappointed by the loading times of DD-WRT and OpenWRT admin pages, as well as the unnecessary complexity.

How does the slow loading times affect you? My computer definitely boots slower than my router and if you leave it on 24/7, it doesn't have to boot. So what loading times do you mean?

Quote:

Originally Posted by &d00

USB support can be added by extracting an ipackage from OpenWRT and using some firmware modification tools around the net, or you can compile it in from source, which is what I'm going to do and release after my exams.

It does seem to be a pity, but I chose speed over that because I have a seperate file/web/media server.

Well if I can get Tomato to support USB with my printer and ext hdd, then I'll probably give it a try. Cos unlike you I need to use my router as a file and printer share.

Oh and another thing, how's the applications base for tomato? Oleg and OpenWRT has a pool of ported applications like Unslung that can be easily installed using the ipkg package system. Does Tomato support this too?

&d00 · May 8th, 07, 08:12 AM

Page loading, not router booting.

Tomato is more of a static firmware. I guess it won't suit your needs for an all rounded device.

Tomato is meant for a wireless router only.

gratelemming · May 9th, 07, 07:29 PM

Been using tomato for the past 2 days. There are many small touches that I like, one of which is the connection tracking when setting timeouts. It will summarise the contents of ip_conntrack, grouping the tcp/udp connections by state so you can see which ones are hogging your table.

Since encrypted BT is unclassifiable, I just let it fall off the table as generic traffic with classification as 'lowest'.

tomato also doesn't have ipkg. The documentation is also quite incomplete. I can guess what 'TTL adjust' is, but what is the 'Inbound Layer 7' checkbox?