What is DD-WRT?
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DD-WRT is third party firmware released under the terms of the GPL for many Wi-Fi 4 and Wi-Fi 5 wireless routers based on a Broadcom or Atheros chip reference design.
The firmware is maintained by BrainSlayer and is hosted at dd-wrt.com. The first versions of DD-WRT were based on the Alchemy Firmware from Sveasoft Inc, which is in turn based on the original GPL'd Linksys firmware and a number of other open source projects. DD-WRT was created directly from Sveasoft's decision to start charging for their firmware, closing the door to open source.
DD-WRT is available for free, although a different business model was drafted in the past by BrainSlayer to pay his salary, as this is his full-time job.
Since version 2.4, DD-WRT deviates significantly from Alchemy. DD-WRT now offers many advanced features not found in the OEM firmware of these devices, or even the firmware available for purchase from Sveasoft. It is also free of the product activation or tracking found in the Sveasoft firmware.
Among other features not found in the original Linksys firmware, DD-WRT adds the Kai Daemon for the Kai Console Gaming network, WDS wireless bridging/repeating protocol, Radius Authentication for more secure wireless communication, advanced Quality of Service controls for bandwidth allocation, and software support for the SD-Card hardware modification.
The DD in DD-WRT is the German car numberplate code for Dresden.
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[edit] Requirements
- A computer (Windows, Linux, Mac, whatever)
- A broadband internet connection (DSL, Cable, or similar)
- A supported router.
- The DD-WRT firmware image from The DD-WRT Project
- Follow the instructions under Installation to install the new firmware on your router.
[edit] Features
For new features, code, and issue tickets, see the SCM and project management at https://svn.dd-wrt.com/.
[edit] Supported & Recommended Devices
There are pages for Supported Devices and Recommended Devices.
[edit] Firmware Versions
In the 2000's, DD-WRT was versioned with semantic versioning. Since the release of version 2.4 SP1 in 2008, only beta versions of version 3.0 have been released, labeled with SVN revision numbers. While the "stable" folder remains in the Downloads section of the main site, these releases have not been updated in over a decade. Due to inevitable security improvements in the Linux kernel over such a long time, the beta releases are now considered more stable than version 2.4. As DD-WRT has evolved, so has its feature set. The config files specify which features are included in each build for each chipset. For reference, the features included in the legacy versioned releases can be found in Version Features.