Unlock your router and get additional features and up-to-date security. Read more about it here.
A router that you buy off-the-shelf comes with "stock" firmware provided by the router's manufacturer. The firmware controls the router's hardware and provides the user interface where you set up your configuration.
In many cases, manufacturers limit the potential of their routers in the original firmware to make the user interface easier and less error prone or to make more advanced features only available in high end routers.
For some routers, alternative firmware is available that overwrites the stock firmware (this is known under "to flash"), takes over the control of the hardware and provides its own user interface. With this, the alternative router firmware unlocks additional features a router can technically support.
The most popular alternative router firmware is OpenWrt and DD-WRT. Both have been around for years and are available for free. DD-WRT started off strong as alternative router firmware, offering a router-like interface and vast features. OpenWrt followed with a more flexible component based approach.
Both are based on Linux, support a number of specific routers, and come with advantages and disadvantages. Read the article DD-WRT or OpenWrt - Which alternative router firmware should you pick? for more background information.
In case you are having a fairly old router where the stock firmware is outdated and does not get security updates anymore, a move to OpenWrt or DD-WRT, if still supported, can improve the security and make it less vulnerable to attack. Hence, you can extend a router's lifespan with running an up-to-date alternative firmware.
In either case, a hard prerequisite is that the router is compatible with the respective alternative firmware. So, check this first.
All other aspects for your firmware decision are secondary, we are covering them below and you can make your choice which firmware suits you best.
What additional features does the alternative router firmware provide?
The additional features that can be unlocked depends on the technical capabilities your router hardware provides. Typical topics supported by router hardware but with no or limited support from the stock firmware are topics such as:
- Multiple SSID support (provide several wireless networks with separate SSID)
- VPN Client Support
- VPN Server Support
- VLAN (A VLAN is, in basic terms, a group of physical interfaces on a switch that behave as if they are a separate standalone switch)
- Client Isolation Mode (a mode that can be used for Hotspots to limits clients to communicate only with the Access Point and not with other wireless clients)
- Bandwidth Management / QoS / Quality of Service (manage bandwidth relationship between individual applications or protocols)
- Dynamic DNS support
- Ad-Blocking
- Access Restrictions (restrict access on the basis of time, protocol, or destination)
- Mesh Network support
- WDS Repeater Mode
- Hotspot Portal Support
- Samba support (provide files and printers over the network)
- DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) support
- Cron support (a type of scheduler for Unix/Linux that runs given commands at designated times)
There is a drawback: You will loose any warranty and risk to "destroy" your router
To run a router either with DD-WRT or OpenWrt you need to "flash" the router with the new firmware. This means the original manufacturer's firmware will be overwritten by the alternative router firmware. By doing this, you will highly likely loose any warranty and there is some risk to "destroy", the community names it to "brick", the router in case something goes wrong.
The term "brick" means that the router does not support its initial use case anymore and is just an object such as a "brick".
This sounds dramatic, but many modern routers nowadays provide some recovery method for "bricked" routers. We from the AIRIX.NET team have flashed many routers but never made a bad experience (yet).
