I wanted to bench configure as much as possible before finally replacing the WRT54GL.

Configure admin information and management.

My approach looks something like the following: Along the way I will create backup snapshots. The point to this exercise is to create documentation that helps me configure various DD-WRT options but in an efficient and methodical manner. I have a static public IP address assigned from the ISP. While the new router probably can handle the overhead, I prefer not to fix things that are not broken. I would need to move and test that script on the new router. On the LAN server I run a weekly cron job to update the block list. While the RT-AC66U has more memory than the WRT54GL, I am not going to move the dnsmasq URL blocking scheme to the new router. The LAN server is scheduled to power down at night when no client systems are running. That means if the LAN server is unavailable then most devices connected to the router will stall. I configure DD-WRT to use the LAN server for DNS. I use dnsmasq for blocking undesirable URLs. I use dnsmasq on my LAN server to provide DNS lookups and name caching. My network laser printer is assigned an IP address within the approved subnet range and is therefore unavailable to house guests. This design prevents curious house guests from trying to snoop the server and private files. When testing and enabling DHCP, DD-WRT assigns addresses outside the preconfigured range. I configure DD-WRT not to provide DHCP addresses. I have both NFS and Samba configured on my LAN server to allow connections only from within a specific range of the subnet. DD-WRT on the RT-AC66U supports OpenVPN, which I want to use. On the WRT54GL I have DD-WRT configured with the following:Ī feature I did not use on the WRT54GL is a VPN because only PPTP is available.

Time to update my documentation by rewriting them as a “DD-WRT From Scratch” exercise. Finding correct information is a frustrating effort. The web interface built-in help leaves much to be desired. Even finding the correct firmware version for a router is an uphill exercise. The DD-WRT wiki and forum is filled with old and obsolete information. Enabling and configuring various features often requires modifying options in more than one location in the web interface. I was rusty with configuring some of the features. I hadn’t configured DD-WRT from scratch in many years. DD-WRT for the RT-AC66U contains additional features I have seen never before with the WRT54GL. When I started configuring my Asus RT-AC66U from scratch I realized my documentation was insufficient. I have decent notes and backups of my Linksys WRT54GL DD-WRT configuration.

Setup dd wrt guest private network