Question dd-wrt firmware on a R7000 Netgear NightHawk router (AC1900)

Kinnyr90

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Hi Please bear with me I like to be thourough in my question.

Provide as much information as possible in the hopes that I get the best possible answer I have windows 10 Professional the latest version 1903.

I just bought a new netgear nighthawk router (R7000) I'm using a hard wired connection all cat 7 going from the Router to the 2 Ehernet ports on the back of my computer.

Now I only have 1 150 mbit connection that I pay for with Comcast/xfinity. And a Mtorola Cable Modem both store bought not rented.

Now I just watched a youtube video and I got dd-wrt firmware setup on this nighthawk router, because I heard that it was better than the stock firmware that comes with the router.

I hear that the stock firmware can be buggy. So I have it all set up and I also have Ipvanish my vpn setup in dd-wrt control panel. I also have my mac address spoofed in windows with a program called smac and I have it cloned using the cloning feature with dd-wrt.
I guess my question is:

How can I tell if Ipvanish is working with the Router? Because I alI did was copy and paste a New york server address from ipvanishes website and then I pasted it into the I think gateway box in dd-wrt.

So I assume it's on and working but I'm not positive. When I try to click on the icon in Windows There's an orange circle that spins trying to log me in but it never get's to that point in windows. I'm assuming because it's already running and you can't have it running in 2 sepearte place on one computer and on 1 connection to the internet.

It just says an error occure while sending this request and then it sends me back to the login screen showing me My username and password. So I'm pretty sure I did and it's okay but did I waste my money buying this router thinking it would make things a little faster on my end because it was dd-wrt compliant?

The only thing I use wireless for is my cell phone that's why I leave it on but I want only the wireless features that I need to have internet acsess with my router The dd-wrt firmware is version 3 if that helps actually here is some info

DD-WRT
Router Model
Netgear R7000
Firmware Version
DD-WRT v3.0-r37015M kongac (09/23/18)
Kernel Version
Linux 4.4.157 #603 SMP Sun Sep 23 01:10:11 CEST 2018 armv7l
MAC Address
00:50:29:96:DC:81
Hostname

WAN Domain Name
hsd1.ma.comcast.net.
LAN Domain Name

Current Time
Wed, 10 Jul 2019 20:49:06

Oh and I'm also using alternative dns servers of 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 And I'm using use dns over https in Mozilla firefox. both Nightly and regular firefox. And I know this is silly it probably doesn't do anything but I want to feel like I'm using both ethernet controllers so I have a mac bridge set up in network and sharing in windows 10 control panel. At least it does not seem to be making anything worse.

Sorry for the long email, but I figure the more info you give the better answer you might get.

[Moderator Note: Edited post to breakup "wall of text".]
 
DD-wrt is mostly used by people that need features that are not in the factory software. It actually is less stable because of the constant new builds on dd-wrt. Trying to find a good one is pure luck many times. dd-wrt also does not support some of the hardware assisted acceleration features that factory software does. You will not notice it on only a 100mbps connection but if you have 300mbps you would see the limit. So unless you have some particular feature you need it is not worth the trouble. When vpn support was rare in factory images that was a common reason to load dd-wrt. I don't remember if the nighthawk has vpn but I suspect it does.

Testing ipvanish is pretty simple go to the whatsmyip sites and see if the ip address is the same as the actual ip you see on your router wan port.

Note running vpn will slow your connection a lot. You likely will not get more than 30mbps. You need raw cpu power to run encryption and the cpu in routers just does not cut it. There are a small number of consumer routers that have a hardware vpn assist but if you run dd-wrt you loose that feature also.
 

Kinnyr90

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Aug 24, 2012
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DD-wrt is mostly used by people that need features that are not in the factory software. It actually is less stable because of the constant new builds on dd-wrt. Trying to find a good one is pure luck many times. dd-wrt also does not support some of the hardware assisted acceleration features that factory software does. You will not notice it on only a 100mbps connection but if you have 300mbps you would see the limit. So unless you have some particular feature you need it is not worth the trouble. When vpn support was rare in factory images that was a common reason to load dd-wrt. I don't remember if the nighthawk has vpn but I suspect it does.

Testing ipvanish is pretty simple go to the whatsmyip sites and see if the ip address is the same as the actual ip you see on your router wan port.

Note running vpn will slow your connection a lot. You likely will not get more than 30mbps. You need raw cpu power to run encryption and the cpu in routers just does not cut it. There are a small number of consumer routers that have a hardware vpn assist but if you run dd-wrt you loose that feature also.
 

Kinnyr90

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Aug 24, 2012
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Okay I got it all Great info. There are actually 2 sites whats myip.com and what ismyip.com. and Both are not telling me the state of the server that I have connected to with ipvanish. In other words I'm supossedly connected to a NewYork server and it's not showing that. I like using connecting to Ipvanish with the router using dd-wrt because it does seem faster and according to the support team at ipvanish they confirm this as well. whatis my ip does show my state which I like
and whatsmyip.com shows

Your Public IPv4: 216.151.180.151
Country:
Region:
City:
Zip:
Lati/Long: 0 / 0
Timezone:

So that's Interesting. Also I notice that it's reporting that My ipv4 address is being shown as public when I run both whatsmyip.com and whatismyip.com. I'm wondering how I can get it to show as private. bvecause when I go into the netwrok and sharing center in the control panel is shows my Netwrok as being private so it is. How do I get whatismyip.com to see it the same way? As private? Also under change advanced network sharing settings. should I have network discovery enabled or disabled. I want to stay private so I should turn that off right?. Kind of weird but when I higlight my 2 (onboard Ethernet controllers) Intel and Killer and I hit bridge the connections after a few minutes My internet copnnection is gone I can't connect again. I have done a full 30 30 30 Hard reset of my nighthawk router. and just a powercycle.. Still no internet the only thing that works is disabling the network Bridge or the mac bridge as they call it. I know I don't need it but things in my opinion anyways seemed a little faster maybe it was just my imagination not sure but I also want to feel as though my second ethernet controller is not wasted just sitting there doing nothing. And at least when it's a part of that Bridge I don't feel this way. The bridge has always worked for me. But recently I had a seperate issue with my computer and I got a blue screen on boot it was a stop code error. So I have a piece of software called (ROLLBACK RX) And what is does is. It creates snapshots of my operating system at different dates and times. and so when I boot up the computer on there will be a rollback rx console that will show up you hit the home key and it brings you to another sub menu where you can roll back the operating system to an earlier date and time. and so I did that and from there I have been having problems with the bridge. and this is before I bought the new router? so when I set the bridge after a couple of minutes or after a restart of the opearting system I have no internet access. I'm wondering if I can delete the bridge software meaning I believe it's called the Mutiplexor adapter and reinstall it maybe that would work if not it's no big deal like you said I don't need it.

thanks Steven
 
You need to do lots of reading I suspect on these topics.

Public and private have nothing to do with YOUR privacy. A public IP can be used on the internet a private IP can only be used internally say in your lan. Since private IP can not be used on the internet they are translated to public ip. In your care you are using a shared public IP owned by the vpn company.

If you could somehow remove the killer nic from your motherboard and toss it in a trash can that would be my recommendation. You do not want to use it and you need to be sure to uninstall all the stupid "gamer" software. If you do plan to use it you want to load the drivers from their site with all the killer features removed.

If you bridge the 2 ports together you make a broadcast loop. A broadcast packet say goes out port1, goes to router port 1. The router then sends it out all the other lan ports except port 1. So your other nic say plugged in port 2 gets a copy of this data. Since it is bridged to port 1 it again sends it out port 1. As you get more and more traffic it just constantly loops and crash most equipment.

You have pretty much done the worst thing you can to a lan. Professional grade equipment and some consumer routers can detect and stop this but all it does is in effect turn off one of your ports just as though you never plugged it in the first place.

To combine 2 ethernet ports both the pc and the router/switch must support port bonding. The problem is the algorithm for path selection will put all the traffic from a single session on the same cable so a single file transfer can never use more than 1. In addition it is really stupid it does not look at the load it just mathematically allocates the session so all the sessions could end up on a single port and the other unused.

Just use you intel port and be happy that it is stable. There is no realistic use in a home environment for port aggregation. Because of the limitation and the low cost of 10g and faster ports it is no longer used much in enterprise installs. Pretty much it is of no use anymore.