Router Firmware Recommendations: DD-WRT, Tomato, Other?

Yesterday morning, my Sirius Internet Radio stream started randomly stuttering and dropping out, and I also noticed that website accesses and email downloads were taking longer and progressing much less smoothly than before. Many ping attempts to Yahoo.com and other URLs completed much slowly than they should, too; that is, if they completed at all.

My first suspect was my recently upgraded DSL connection. But after several resets of the DSL modem didn’t improve the situation, I started looking upstream in the LAN, specifically fingering my Linksys WRT54GC router as a likely culprit. Indeed, ping and web server access attempts to the router over both Wi-Fi and CAT5 were erratic in result, even when I disconnected other LAN clients from the router prior to the test. LAN clients were also randomly failing to receive DHCP renewals, and when I looked at my laptop’s Events Viewer entries, I saw that the renewal attempts were going to 192.168.1.102.

But my router is at 192.168.1.1. Conversely, 192.168.1.102 is my Infrant/NETGEAR ReadyNAS. From past experience, I remembered that (for reasons unknown…Infrant never got back to me with an explanation) the ReadyNAS attempts, in the absence of a functioning DHCP server in the router or elsewhere, to itself act as the DHCP server for the LAN. After being powered off all night, the WRT54GC seems to be behaving itself, at least for the moment. For how long, though, I don’t know; it was acting weird again when I first booted it up this morning.

Once I get back from a Right Coast trip that begins tomorrow morning, I think it’s time to stop putting off the router upgrade I’ve long been contemplating. The WRT54GC is a decent little box, mind you; I especially love its small footprint, and its coverage is quite good, particularly when you supplement its internal antenna with an external unit. But it only allows a maximum of 10 static DHCP entries, along with 10 custom port range forwarding (i.e. firewall ‘hole’) entries, both of which I was beginning to find too limiting. It doesn’t natively support QoS. And its internal switch seems to be funky; I often notice that various LAN clients ‘disappear’ when I transition either their connection to the router or my connection to them via the router from one technology to another (Wi-Fi, CAT5, and/or HomePlug AV)…until I reset the router, at which point they reappear.

Since both my MacBook and Apple TV contain 802.11n transceivers (although the latter is currently HomePlug AV-tethered), I should just migrate to an 802.11n-inclusive router. After all, I have review units on-hand from Apple, Buffalo, D-Link, and Linksys. The idea of exploring open source intrigues me, however, specifically in conjunction with Linksys’ Linux-based WRT54GL. Therein my question to you; the most commonly mentioned open-source firmware images for this router that I hear of are DD-WRT and Tomato. I’m not sure which path I should choose, or if in fact there’s another distro that I should instead pursue. I welcome firmware feedback and suggestions, both absolute and relative if you’ve tested multiple open-source candidates. Thanks in advance!

Followup (3/26): By the way, the WRT54GL is currently on sale for $49.99 after rebate, with free shipping.