I have been running dd-wrt firmware on my Linksys wrt600n for awhile now however I have always had some issues. I had finally had the configuration to where the issues were minimal however it has never been perfect. I decided since it had been a couple months it was time to try a newer build from the site. I upgraded and things got a lot worse in terms of wireless on the 2.4 GHz channel so I did a ton of troubleshooting and read a lot of posts semi related to my problems with the 600N on the dd-wrt forum. During the reading I learned a lot about the proper way to flash the firmware and I wanted to share my findings here.

First off when you upgrade the firmware you are supposed to do a hard reset before the firmware upgrade and after the firmware upgrade. A hard reset should be done following the below directions.

**NOTE** Hold the reset button in during this entire process

1. First 30 Seconds: While the router is plugged in wait 30 seconds.
2. Second 30 Seconds: Unplug the router but again make sure to continue holding the reset button in.
3. Third 30 Seconds: Plug the router back in and wait the entire 30 seconds.

The entire process takes 90 seconds and the entire time you have had the reset button pressed.

So now moving on to the actual firmware update. You can find the latest and greatest builds on the dd-wrt site for the Linksys WRT600N here. I would suggest reading on the forums for versions that others have been successful with. Currently I am running the firmware that is from 03/03/09 and so far it seems to be running better than ever.

Move forward with upgrading the firmware via the routers GUI interface. I would have the router set to factory defaults during the upgrade process even though there will be another hard reset performed after the upgrade. Once the router is done with the upgrade it is suggested to wait at least a couple minutes before performing the second hard reset because the router could still be in the process of writing to the NVRAM. Once you have waited 5 to 10 minutes perform another hard reset.

Now configure the router the way that you want it to be set up. One thing I did not find on the forums or in any documentation that I overlooked the first couple time was the fact that some settings after the hard reset seem to not be on the recommended settings. The major one that I located that seems to have caused major issues with the 2.4 GHz channel was After Burner being turned on. I was seeing serious delay over the 2.4 GHz wireless channel and once I turned this off things started working a lot better. The After Burner setting is under “Wireless >> WLO-Advanced Sett.” configuration page. It is located near the bottom right below “TX Power”. I never had any problems with the 5.6GHz channel though the After Burner setting was set to Disabled after the hard reset.

Currently the 600N router is performing better than it ever has before so hopefully the above tips help someone else out.

Cisco-Linksys WRT600N Linksys Ultra RangePlus Dual-Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link

Linksys, Electronics, $469.99

This entry was posted on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 2:41 AM and is filed under Insights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.