Asus RT-N16 Shibby Tomato Firmware DLNA Server
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I have been using Tomato for a few months and it is pretty stable. I had issues at the beginning and began doubting the installation media I was using. I set the router up all in a few minutes including DLNA and FTP and never really clued into why the wifi bitrate was so low (a few MB/s). Then I found a post by toastman about interference caused by USB3 devices. Apparently a large amount of USB3 peripherals put off a large field that will almost cripple a router. Especially when you are plugging in an external USB3 drive to make use of Tomato’s DLNA/FTP server.
Tomato has helped keep track of my roommates’ bandwidth. Keeping the internet billing fair for everyone in a split household with several young professionals. It reads out a pretty basic list of traffic by IP. You can reserve IP addresses by MAC address really easily to make the whole thing a bit tidier. It’s just a few clicks in the GUI. This allows you to sort the computers by name to help you add their usage up. I only wish you could instate a traffic quota capping users when they reach a threshold. You can throttle IPs just not automatically, in any way I know.
The DLNA server works wonders and is always accessible. It’s a great way to stream TV and movies and music to a dumb television or any client for DLNA on another computer. VLC had a few issues streaming via SMB: protocol. Which if you were on a mac, would be how you would view the files in finder. Alternatively you could connect via FTP if you enable the built in FTP server to move files around. That said I now use my XBMC/Plex based Linux server to stream DLNA content around the house. It is just more reliable and Plex can transcode files on the fly easier with a big GPU in it. It also handles almost any codec. You can read more about my Ubuntu home server here.
On another note I think I’m going to get Netflix as I think I have proven that Teksavvy is not billing for overages on a 300GB plan. I have yet to receive a bill for the overages. It probably has something to do with how Rogers sells bandwidth to third parties. This is kind of awesome. If I get a bill I will update this. 😉
UPDATE: still no overage charges
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