VMware Virtual Appliance of DD-WRT
DD-WRT is an opensource router commonly embedded into consumer routers by the end user and also used as the default firmware by companies such as Buffalo. This is a Virtual Appliance of the DD-WRT x86 binary.
This uses the default dd-wrt settings.
Linux: root / admin
DD-WRT: admin / admin
Network Adapter 1 is the LAN interface and it has a DHCP server associated. Be careful if you have it bridged onto your primary network since it will conflict with your primary DHCP server. Connect this to the network you want behind DD-WRT.
Network Adapter 2 is the WAN interface and should be bridged onto your existing network.
Downloads:
- Current
- DD-WRT 2019 03 06.ova — v25 (03/27/19) public
- Old
- Oontz DD-WRT 2015 12 06.ova (GitHub) — v24-sp2 (12/22/14) std
Instructions:
- Import the OVA into VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation or ESXi.
- Configuration
- Network Interfaces
- Network Adapter 1 – Connect this to the network you want behind DD-WRT. On my network, this is a new network called “Private”.
- Network Adapter 2 – Bridge this to your lan.
- Memory
- This will work with as little as 32MB ram. 128MB is more than it’ll ever use.
- Network Interfaces
- Once you have it booted and you’re on the admin page (http://192.168.1.1):
- go to Setup / Networking and set your WAN port assignment to eth0.
- To test this out, go back to the Setup / Basic Setup and set your Connection Type to ‘Automatic Configuration – DHCP’.
Credits:
Built with the instructions provided by https://www.apolonio.com/node/57.
I just got this working in XenServer as well. Only problem is network throughput is kind of slow. Any interest in working on that platform at all?
What throughput did you observe on XenServer? I’ll benchmark my installation and share the results. If they’re significantly different, I’ll work on tweaks on XenServer. You could try changing the network interfaces exposed to the VM by XenServer, that may improve the performance. Upgrading to the latest version of DD-WRT from the mainline is on my todo list. That may also improve throughput.
Does this support VMWare tools (open-vm-tools) for Linux?
I have not tried installing VMware tools on this ova. The dd-wrt forum suggests that the benefits would be limited and the distribution would need some refactoring to support this. I would agree.
Did any of you tried to configure VLAN on it?
How do you update the image
I have not yet tried updating it. It still works to this date.
So on the WAN side I use DHCP. However, the WAN interface does not appear to be getting an IP. Not being a network guy do I need to setup a static route or something? Operating mode is setup to router.
This is great because I can chuck that annoying Freesco router in my lab and use this for my routing
I have been waiting for someone to do this for the DD-WRT router. This is great, about to test this out now. Great Find !!!!
Thank you.
I kept having the problem that when I set
Setup -> Basic Setup -> Connection Type
to
Automatic Configuration – DHCP
I could no longer connect to the admin web interface on 192.168.1.1. Looking at the instructions page https://www.apolonio.com/node/57 you link to I realized I was having the “Network Gotcha” problem described there, where eth0 and eth1 were swapped on the DD-WRT. My solution was to set the WAN port assignment to *eth1* in your Step 3 above, instead of setting it to *eth0*. Note that you have to do this *before* enabling DHCP configuration of the WAN interface in Step 4.
can you use this for WAN failover
I have not tried personally, but this does support all out of the box dd-wrt features.
See: https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Dual_WAN_with_failover
Such a great contribution and my sincere thanks. I’m looking forward to testing this out. One use case that I plan to test is that I see the potential to use this as a super light weight dynamic DNS client. Also, a very light weight appliance for running scripts, DHCP, DNS etc.
The new version of ddwrt is a bit tricky with initial configuration, be patient with it.