A complete Guide for Using Custom Firmware on Your Router

Routers are meant to route the network traffic to and from a computer, apart from running on a router specific operating system (OS). By default, it runs on the OS provided by the manufacturer. This router operating system is known as firmware.

Router’s manufacturer provides a way to upgrade the router’s performance by upgrading the router’s firmware. However, using that way many people prefer installing a custom third party firmware rather than the manufacturer’s original one. This is being done because third-party software is more effective at serving the purpose.

However, you can’t just install any firmware on any router because only specifically designed firmware particularly for your router will get installed. Otherwise, the installation process will get rejected by the manufacturer. Installing the third-party router firmware is not smoothly supported by the router’s manufacturer. The process is more like replacing your PC OS with Linux or installing a custom ROM on Android.

Yet, in the market you can easily get custom firmware for your router, which you can use to upgrade your device’s performance and also to make it more stable in terms of security.

Read below to learn why custom Firmware are preferred upon any other firmware or program.

Why Custom Firmware Is Preferred Upon?

Although router’s manufacturers don’t support the installation of third- party software and also doesn’t offer any troubleshooting, yet many people prefer using custom firmware on their router. This is because custom software is more appropriate, result-oriented, and effective. Custom router firmwares also have many additional features that are mentioned below:    

Additional Features: It comes with additional features such as a package manager, lightweight web, VPN, quality of service (QoS) that supports prioritizing of network traffic.

More Stability: Custom router firmware is found to be more stable as compared to manufacturer-provided firmware. Hence, if your router is facing problems like regular reboots, then you can try changing its original firmware with a third-party one.

Security: With routers, security is always a big concern. For instance, in some routers with D-Link, there is a backdoor that allows administrator access without username and password, if a special user agent string is being used. Having backdoors in routers make it opens for attackers. Using third party custom firmware neutralizes the backdoors of routers to a large extent and makes the device more stable.

Things to consider while flashing a Custom firmware

If you want to flash a third-party firmware in your router, then there are certain things that you need to take care of.

·         First you need to choose a firmware for yourself. However, as mentioned above not all firmwares are compatible with all routers. So you need to find out the right firmware that is designed for your specific router. You can check the compatibility from the official websites of the firmware where it is clearly mentioned.

·         If you are using WRT54G routers, then OpenWrt is a powerful Linux-based router firmware. There is a long list of router firmware that you can easily find in Wikipedia. You need to select one for your router.

·         If you don’t have a router and thinking of buying a new one, then you must first get some research done, which will let you find a solid modern router that is compatible with third-party routers custom firmware.

·         Once, you have your router and also, you have selected a firmware for it, you can easily get the firmware installed by following the installation process instructed in the website of firmware.

·         However, the process is generally common for all and it is very simple as well. You simply need to download the appropriate firmware file for your router. For this, you need to visit the ‘Upgrade Firmware’ page in your router’s web interface. This interface is usually meant to upgrade the router for installing the advance version of the manufacturer’s firmware. But, you can use the interface to upload the third-party firmware as well. The router will replace the original one with the third-party firmware.

If the installation happens smoothly then you are lucky but if something goes wrong and you confront some error, then you can’t contact the router’s manufacturer for troubleshooting. You cannot ask them to troubleshoot your problem as no manufacturer will entertain the third-party software installation.

About the Author:  Hi! I am Brook M. Perry, a prolific blog writer and keen author of articles related to computer security and solution for issues related to computers and mobile devices. Being associated with the reputed best pc tuneup service provider Qresolve, I have resolved thousands of tech issues for our customers from worldwide. computer virus removal My areas of interest are PC security, endpoint security system, router support etc. You can follow me for my useful remote computer support articles on Ezine and other article-oriented websites.

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Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.

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