Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2015 21:11 Post subject: WRT600N Best Build 2015
Had a WRT54GL running DD-WRT for the past 5 years. Literally the only time it rebooted was due to an extended power outage or when it needed to be moved, etc. For all intents and purposes, indestructible.
Fast forward to October 2015, and just about everything in my house is now gigabit except for the LAN ports on the router.
Inherit a WRT600N from a friend who was running stock firmware on it with no issues, but decided to go to a Netgear Nighthawk. Great! Hello like-new gigabit router.
Read fairly positive things about DD-WRT running on this router (v1.1) so decided to go for it.
Got a higher current power supply for it (4A). Read about how 5GHz radio drivers not so good in 600n build and should use 610n build. Read Peacock thread - recommends 14929, which is pretty old at this point. Go with "dd-wrt.v24_mega_wrt610n.bin" from the r25697 folder as per a couple users' positive feedback. 30/30/30. Update success. Proceed to enter in all WiFi and NAT settings with no trouble (not doing anything crazy). Router is GO!
20 minutes later, internet gone. Check router, WAN IP empty. Release/Renew, no luck. Reboot router. Nothing. Reboot Modem, success! 20 or so minutes later, internet gone again. Read about some ISP's registering router MAC. Clone WRT54GL MAC into WRT600N. Internet solid!
Day or so later, need to relocate router. Power it down. Move it. Power it up. No internet again. WAN empty again. Release/Renew, nothing. Reboot modem. Internet back. Perform these steps a few times. Seems that if the router reboots, the modem must also reboot.
Decide to roll back to Peacock recommended build. 30/30/30. Update success. Re-enter all settings. Things are good. Try reboot test. Gets a WAN IP every time now. Done!
Couple days later, noticed a loss of Internet a couple times, thought it was ISP glitch, moved along. Started to happen with some frequency. Bring up router page. Up time: 1:10. Huh? Long story short, at best I've seen it stay up for 23 hours but it appears to at times reboot within minutes.
Tried deleting bandwidth history logs to clear up NVRAM. No change.
Read about a reboot issue with this router and how to revert to stock Linksys firmware and back, etc.
Thought I'd try another 30/30/30 before I do that, but in the meantime, can someone please recommend a solid build for this router? I was spoiled with the WRT54GL and would really like the same reliability if possible. Should I try anything from 2015 or stick with 14929? Do the newer 600n builds have the radio driver that the 610 builds have, or should I still use a 610 build?
Any info or suggestions would be most appreciated! Thank you for your valuable time!
So I updated to "DD-WRT v3.0-r27858 mega (09/28/15)" yesterday morning and so far I'm up more than a day, which is great, but this time I used the 600n build not the 610n.
Not sure if this is due to using the 600n version and I can't say I notice any difference in wireless connectivity at this point, but am still curious if it is advisable to use the 610n build with later versions.
Slightly off-topic, the only problem I have with wireless (and this has been true of any build I've tried), is that if I change the Wireless Channel on the 2.4 radio to anything but Auto, none of my devices can see that SSID/radio anymore.
As for having to reboot the modem each time the router is rebooted, it seems this problem is back, even with the MAC of my old WRT54GL in place on the MAC Cloning tab. However, I discovered that instead of rebooting the modem, if I just click "Apply Settings" on the Setup tab, this seems to make the router grab a WAN IP again. Not ideal, but better than rebooting the router. Still looking for a way to solve this though:
- Is there a different MAC I should be using/cloning?
- Is this because the modem already issued a lease for whichever MAC was in there before the router rebooted and is not issuing a new one until whatever "Apply Settings" is doing differently than "Reboot Router"? Seems odd.
One fix I have noticed with this build is that LAN port 1 LED is now showing orange instead of green as it was previously. Vice-versa for 10/100 connections. LAN port 1 is connected to a gigabit switch (which always indicated a gigabit connection). According to the original Linksys documentation, it should be green for 10/100 and orange for 1000 so I guess this has been corrected.
Again, if anyone can provide any further insight regarding my questions above, it would be most appreciated!
Although not the same router, I have a modded WRT350N recently brought back into service which has the same CPU, switch, and shares a similar 5Ghz radio (modified). Running my WRT350N as an AP, I am not currently having stability issues with V3.0 r27858 like I have had in the past, despite running it at 390Mhz overclock and pushing it to the max for data rates, I have not had reason to reboot the router yet.
In terms of your DHCP lease issue with the ISP, you have a few options.
Option 1: You may want to look for a CRON script to run on it to check for a dead link and then start the release/renew/reboot process - the one on my my PfSense box is posted below (it will need to be tested for DDWRT, can't test here without breaking my LAN). For CRON, I use */5 * * * * root /usr/local/bin/pingtest.sh. If you are pushing >=100Mbps through your WRT600N you may be pegging the CPU which can temporarily break connections (when I speed test mine my telnet connection to the router crashes). This might require a JFFS2 partition or a USB drive save the script to (change $LOGFILE from /tmp to your partition).
Option 2: Insert a cheap gigabit switch in between the router and modem (some modems don't play nice with the router's internal switch). I recently went through a similar issue with Eastlink, and it was resolved by NIC speed/duplex setting, and a head end reconfiguration on their end (was 2 issues compounding).
option 3: I also am running my router on a 12VDC 2.5A TP-Link Archer C7 power supply which does make a small stability difference over stock (I previously had it on a 1.25A one and it sometimes crashed on it - must be noisy or its voltage droop curve is excessive for the load put on it).
For the below script, place your ISP's DNS servers or another preferred server in the ALLDEST line. friendly urls such as www.google.com can also be placed in place of an IPv4 address. Your WAN interface needs to be placed in the BOUNCE= line (open telnet/SSH/serial shell on your WRT600N and run ifconfig to find the one associated with your WAN MAC).
Code:
#=====================================================================
# pingtest.sh, v1.0.1
# Created 2009 by Bennett Lee
# Released to public domain
#
# (1) Attempts to ping several hosts to test connectivity. After
# first successful ping, script exits.
# (2) If all pings fail, resets interface and retries all pings.
# (3) If all pings fail again after reset, then reboots pfSense.
#
# History
# 1.0.1a -modified by Donaldk for DDWRT operation, untested on DDWRT
# 1.0.1 Added delay to ensure interface resets (thx ktims).
# 1.0.0 Initial release.
#=====================================================================
#=====================================================================
# USER SETTINGS
#
# Set multiple ping targets separated by space. Include numeric IPs
# (e.g., remote office, ISP gateway, etc.) for DNS issues which
# reboot will not correct.
ALLDEST="8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4"
# Interface to reset, usually your WAN
BOUNCE=vlan2
# Log file
LOGFILE=/tmp/pingtest.log
#=====================================================================
COUNT=1
while [ $COUNT -le 2 ]
do
for DEST in $ALLDEST
do
#echo `date +%Y%m%d.%H%M%S` "Pinging $DEST" >> $LOGFILE
ping -c1 $DEST >/dev/null 2>/dev/null
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
#echo `date +%Y%m%d.%H%M%S` "Ping $DEST OK." >> $LOGFILE
exit 0
fi
done
if [ $COUNT -le 1 ]
echo `date +%Y%m%d.%H%M%S` "All pings failed. Resetting interfac
e $BOUNCE." >> $LOGFILE
/sbin/ifconfig $BOUNCE down
# Give interface time to reset before bringing back up
sleep 10
/sbin/ifconfig $BOUNCE up
# Give WAN time to establish connection
sleep 60
else
echo `date +%Y%m%d.%H%M%S` "All pings failed twice. Rebooting...
" >> $LOGFILE
/sbin/reboot >> $LOGFILE
exit 1
fi
the only uncertainty is whether or not it is better to use 600n or 610n builds at this point.
Once the router-specific trailed build is used, it no longer matters; you can use the generic builds (or variants like VPN, VOIP, etc.). So long as they fit your router's available flash size, of course. The initial flash should always be used with the correct trailed build though, or risk bricking.
Wiki:WRT600N wrote:
Download this WRT600N mega version, which contains the special header information required by the stock Linksys firmware. Then, reset your unit to factory defaults and flash it via the stock web interface. Reset your router to factory defaults after flashing. You can then flash what ever version of DD-WRT you want to the router.