Ask HN: Have you tried FreshTomato on your home router? Would you recommend it?

5 points·gmzi··7 comments

I haven't. I have run Tomato and TomatoUSB (for vpn) and coincidentally run a site named freshtomatoes for a while.

Lately, stock modem/router + mesh wifi + uBlock Origin does the basics well enough.

What interests you in FreshTomato specifically?

Thanks karmakaze!! I have a netgear nighthawk r7000 that has the annoying habit of freezing for a couple of minutes one or twice a day, I've researched online and they say it's a firmware thing, so I thought I might replace it with FreshTomato because they say it's good and open source, I just need stable and reliable home wifi for around 15 devices

I had (technically still have) an ASUS 66U router that wasn't stable. I switched it out for Netgear Mk62 Nighthawk mesh and it's been great.

If Netgear isn't supporting your router well, there's not much to lose in trying different firmware before replacing the hardware. Might be handy to have any kind of backup router around in case things get temporarily borked. In some cases (like power grid failure), I temp used my phone's hotspot with a laptop.

with some ham and cheese, it's delightful, though it does have crunchy bits

Thanks I'll hold my laughs for when the wi fi is back :) :) :)

OpenWRT here... it's much better EXCEPT for Broadcom devices.

Thanks mobilio, unfortunately I have a broadcom device :(

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