(mostly) Good results with Cisco E2500 dual-band router, and Tomato 104.

[VirtualLarry]

I started another thread about E2500 dual-band router and DD-WRT, not support 5Ghz yet. Well, Tomato already does, so I flashed up three out of my four routers with Tomato last night, and they are (mostly) working well.

The only thing I am concerned with, is they keep switching between TX/RX rates of 300/300, to like 300/7, or 6/6 at times. Which seems like they are all or nothing on the signal.

My WNR2000v2 routers with DD-WRT on 2.4, would drop down, but on the whole seemed a bit more consistent with speeds. I might switch back to them.

Anyways, I first flashed with DD-WRT mini, and then flashed over to Tomato.

First I flashed DD-WRT mini (the trailed build listed in the wiki here)
https://secure.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Linksys_E2500
I logged in with admin/admin, or root/admin, or whatever, after flashing DD-WRT, and then reset to factory defaults. I then logged in again, which requires you to set a password, and then selected to upgrade to the E2500 Tomato firmware listed below
http://tomato.groov.pl/download/K26RT-N/build5x-104-EN/Linksys E-series/
After flashing tomato, and going to my router's IP address, I could not log in using the password I specified. I had to press the recessed RESET button until the power light went off, and then let it reset NVRAM, and then when it was done, I could log in to Tomato with root/admin.

You'll notice that when you go to your router's IP address, but before resetting the router, than it still says "DD-WRT" on the password prompt. After resetting NVRAM, it says "TomatoUSB".

I'm starting to like Tomato better than DD-WRT. It seems slicker to me.

Edit: My old thread:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2286028

 

[s44]

Dunno about the E2500 but I've been able to flash other E-series Linksys routers straight to Tomato.

The connection speed reporting is what's actually happening at the moment: did you check while running a big constant stream/download?

 

[Engineer]

Tomato >>> DD-WRT >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Most stock firmwares.

I will not (currently) purchase a router that I cannot flash Tomato on. Might change my mind on 802.11ac routers later on.

 

[NesuD]

I run Shibby Tomato on my Asus RT-N66U and ran TeddyBear Tomato on my old Asus WL-520GU. Used DD-wrt and various flavors of manufacturer customized versions of DD-wrt like Asus WRT and Buffalo's WRT based firmware and always come back to Tomato. Hands down my favorite third party firmware.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, an update. I'm running the three E2500 refurb routers in a 5Ghz WDS configuration, which was easy as pie to set up with Tomato. However, even though the link speeds seem to be around 130Mbit/sec, I'm only getting ~23Mbit/sec throughput over the WDS. Doesn't matter upload or download, both seem to be limited to that.

It's not my internet connection either (30/25), because in addition to speedtest.net testing, I also formed a Windows 7 homegroup, and transferred a DVD ISO between machines, and it was limited to around 30Mbit/sec.

Clearly something is not right here, the 5Ghz is uncongested. I don't know what the issue is.

Followups to this issue in this thread:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2293102