Here’s how to unleash some of those features with an open source firmware.
What is Tomato?
Its a delicious fruit you eat that can help prevent cancer due to its high levels of Lycopene.
Some people enjoy tomatoes on hamburgers and in salads.
You wanted to know about Tomato as in the powerful, user friendly, full-of-features, alternative router firmware?
Well, why didnt you say so?
Prerequisites
1.
This guide assumes you have a basic understanding of networking and using a Windows-based computer.
Another detail, although minor, is well be using Windows 7 throughout the guide.
Tomato only works with certain routers.
By default, most routers will have an internal IP address of 192.168.1.1.
Open up your internet tool and enter in your routers IP address.
Youll be prompted for a username and password.
The defaults for a Linksys WRT54GL are admin and admin.
Keep this window up because well be coming back to it shortly.
Head over to Polarcloudshomepageto download the latest version of Tomato.
Youll want to look for the file called Tomato_1_28.zip.
Open up your web app session from earlier and tap the Administration tab at the top.
Next, click Firmware Upgrade as seen below.
tap the Browse button and navigate to the extracted Tomato files.
Youll want to select your routers appropriate Tomato firmware file.
Since were installing Tomato on a Linksys WRT54GL, well choose the WRT54G_WRT54GL.bin file.
After youve selected the appropriate .bin file, hit the Upgrade button in the web interface.
Your router will start installing Tomato, and should take less than a minute to complete.
Fire up your internet tool again and behold!
Its your first sighting of Tomato.
Now the first thing youll want to do is secure your wireless connection.
Click Basic in the left column.
Scroll down to the Wireless segment and change the Security drop down menu to WPA2 Personal.
Feel free to choose a different encryption method that you prefer.
WPA2 Personal is what we use because its the most secure.
Dont forget to change your SSID to something creative like Pretty Fly For A WiFi or FBI Surveillance Van.
You might also want to configure the DHCP server IP address lease range and the WiFi channel.
Youll see a list of your neighbors WiFi networks and which channels theyre using.
Choose a channel that is not being used by your neighbors to avoid channel frequency interference.
That pretty much wraps it up.
It wasnt that bad, huh?
Youll begin to love Tomato for its clean user interface and robust features.
