{"id":1133,"date":"2012-03-28T21:28:20","date_gmt":"2012-03-29T01:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/?p=1133"},"modified":"2013-03-08T21:54:18","modified_gmt":"2013-03-09T01:54:18","slug":"how-to-dd-wrt-on-the-netgear-wnr3500l","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/2012\/how-to-dd-wrt-on-the-netgear-wnr3500l\/","title":{"rendered":"How To: DD-WRT on the Netgear WNR3500L"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I’ve been a fan of DD-WRT<\/a> for some time, a Linksys WRT54GL<\/a> is the heart of my home network. While I don’t have an immediate need for a new router, I’ve been thinking for some time that I should pick up a reasonable backup in case the WRT54GL fails. There are also some really interesting projects you can do with a modified router, and having a spare will let me tinker with some of those.<\/p>\n

I came across a good deal on a refurbished Netgear WNR3500L<\/a>, it was about half the price of a new unit<\/a>. This was too tempting: N networking<\/a> (I don’t really need it, but why not stay current?), gigabit<\/a> wired networking (a must have), USB port (I wanted this for expansion options), but the feature that really sold me was 64MB RAM<\/a> and 8MB ROM<\/a> – more than enough for DD-WRT with all the features.<\/p>\n

This particular router is also supported by Tomato<\/a>\u00a0another very popular firmware. There is also a somewhat suspect Netgear sponsored open firmware<\/a>, the site seems to have instructions for installing an older version of Tomato – personally I’d steer clear of this. Unfortunately the other popular router firmware OpenWRT<\/a> doesn’t currently support this router. Of course, I prefer DD-WRT which does support this router<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the reasons that I blog is to have a record of what I did, far too often I end up needing to do something again, or refer back when I’m doing an upgrade. Another reason is to help me get organized to do some of these things – finding the instructions is usually easy, understanding them and what you’re about to do takes some time. I probably spent 2hrs reading through forums and searching various things before I leapt in to flash the router, I strongly recommend you do the same. Also this write-up skips over some of the frustrating head scratching I do when things don’t work, that’s part of the learning process.<\/p>\n

There is a v2 of this router<\/a>, and v2 is NOT supported by DD-WRT. Apparently the boxes they come in are identical, but the router itself has a v2 marking. I did find a wiki that documents the v1<\/a> and the v2<\/a>, I was able to match the FCC<\/a> numbers listed to confirm I had a v1. For what it’s worth, my stock firmware was\u00a0V1.0.2.50_31.1.25NA.<\/p>\n

The DD-WRT site has some excellent instructions on doing the installation<\/a>, I’ll avoid repeating those but will document the steps I took. I will repeat some of the cautions from the site:<\/p>\n