Firmware updates from the manufacturer vs. third-party patches for old routers

I had a Linksys WRT1900ACS that was stuck on a 2019 firmware. Tried running DD-WRT on it instead. Night and day difference. The official firmware was slow and kept dropping connections. DD-WRT gave me VLAN support and actual QoS that works. Has anyone else had better luck with third-party firmware than sticking with stock?

2 comments

2 Comments

johnson.jason10d ago

Hold on, you ran DD-WRT on a WRT1900ACS and it worked?

casey_harris9d ago

Buddy of mine tried it on his WRT1900ACS last year and it was a mess at first lol. He flashed the wrong build from the DD-WRT forums and the thing kept rebooting every 10 minutes. Spent a whole weekend pulling his hair out trying different firmware versions until he found one from like 2021 that finally worked. After that it ran pretty solid for about 6 months but then the wifi started dropping randomly during game nights. He ended up going back to stock firmware because he said it just wasn't worth the headache for daily use. The whole experience made him swear off DD-WRT on that specific router forever haha.