List of router firmware projects explained

List of software created and maintained by people other than the manufacturer of the product. The extent of support for (and testing on) particular hardware varies from project to project.

Embedded

Notable custom-firmware projects for wireless routers.Many of these will run on various brands such as Linksys, Asus, Netgear, etc.

• OpenWrt – Customizable FOSS firmware written from scratch; features a combined SquashFS/JFFS2 file system and the package manager opkg^[1] with over 3000 available packages (Linux/GPL); now merged with LEDE.
  • LEDE – A fork of the OpenWrt project that shared many of the same goals; merged back into OpenWrt as of v. 18.06 (2018).
  • Commotion Wireless – FOSS mesh networking.
  • DD-WRT – Based on OpenWrt kernel since v. 23 (Dec. 2005), paid and free versions available.^[2]
  • Gargoyle – A free OpenWrt-based Linux distribution for a range of Broadcom and Atheros chipset based wireless routers.
  • LibreCMC – An FSF-endorsed derivation of OpenWRT with the proprietary blobs removed^[3]
  • Roofnet – A now defunct experimental 802.11 based mesh network project developed at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The technology developed by the Roofnet project formed the basis for the company Meraki, now owned by Cisco.
  • DebWRT – A discontinued project that combines the Linux kernel from OpenWrt and the package management system from Debian (Linux/GPL).^[4]
• HyperWRT – Early power-boosting firmware project to stay close to the official WRT54G and WRT54GS firmware but add features such as transmit power, port triggers, scripts, telnet, etc.
  • Tomato – The successor to HyperWRT, features advanced QoS as well as Ajax and SVG graphs.^[5]
    • Asuswrt
      • Asuswrt-Merlin^[6]

Other

Software distributions for routers with >5 GB Storage and >1 GB RAM

FreeBSD

• m0n0wall - m0n0wall is abandoned, but it was built on FreeBSD and boots off of flash storage or CD ROM media in under 12 megabytes.
  • pfsense - a fork of m0n0wall.
    • OPNsense - a fork of pfSense.

Linux

• Zeroshell – Routers and bridges with VPN, QoS, load balancing and other functions
• IPFire - Advanced firmware written from scratch with customizable firewall and optional packages in the form of add ons.
• TNSR - Router software from Netgate (originally based on CentOS Linux, however recent versions are based on Ubuntu Linux) that incorporates Vector Packet Processing, Data Plane Development Kit, FRRouting, and Clixon technologies.
• VyOS - Open source network operating system based on Debian Linux.

See also

• Comparison of router software projects
• Debian
• FreeBSD
• Kali Linux
• Linux kernel
• List of router and firewall distributions
• OpenBSD
• Outline of software
• Outline of free software
• NetBSD
• Tails

Further reading

• Web site: How to Choose the Best Firmware to Supercharge Your Wi-Fi Router. Lifehacker. Gawker Media. Alan. Henry. 2015-04-01. 2016-06-16.

Notes and References

1. Web site: OpenWrt – Wireless Freedom. OpenWrt.org. 2008-02-22.
2. Web site: DD-WRT project site. DD-WRT.com. 2008-02-22.
3. Web site: Free GNU/Linux distributions. GNU.org. 2015-05-20.
4. Web site: DebWRT project site. DebWRT.net. 2010-07-28. 2011-07-19. https://web.archive.org/web/20110719154853/http://www.debwrt.net/. dead.
5. Web site: Fresh Tomato project site. freshtomato.org. 2019-04-22.
6. Web site: Home Asuswrt-Merlin . 2023-01-21 . www.asuswrt-merlin.net.