How to Flash a Router With Tomato Firmware R7000
The
Netgear Nighthawk r7000
is a router, switch and powerful Wi-fi access point in i unit of measurement and even in 2021, years on from when it was made information technology still offers your network a heave today. Irresolute the firmware, equally explained beneath, adds versatility to the ability. I would only sell the R7000 if a mesh system or Wifi six would aid me but neither of these are useful to me right now.
why alter your free Internet access provider router
for a bought 1?
Every Internet-connected habitation has a router that supplies connections to the devices we take. The router supplied with the broadband service is oft a modem, a router, a Wi-fi admission point and switch in one compact unit. When things go amiss, and they do, people like me become discover something meliorate.
And then I bought a Netgear Nighthawk R7000 which is a router, switch and Wi-fi access point. I gained features and control that the ISP router didn’t offer.
The R7000 is an advanced device just
isn’t an all-in-one modem plus router
– there’due south no phone or cable service socket and so I even so need to connect it to the internet provider’southward one-piece ‘router’. I have yet to find everything in a box.A downside is that I now demand to configure a few things inside 2 boxes. I might switch off the old router’s wifi; turn off its DHCP setting then configure my more powerful router to take on these roles. But while there is more than to practice in that location’s more that
y’all tin exercise
with an R7000. Adding
FreshTomato
software adds yet more features such as a proper VPN client. I’ve listed those extra beneath under ‘what tin I do now with FreshTomato‘.
get your fancy R7000 router working with your ISP modem
I will desire the
R7000
to gain the do good of its powerful WiFi admission betoken or use it every bit a switch to gain actress ethernet sockets or brand use of its software features. For this y’all employ an ethernet cable to connect a R7000 LAN port (non WAN) to a LAN (not WAN) port on your Internet service provider’southward modem. In this case neither Internet port on the modem or
R7000
router is used. Trust me.
At present with some other ethernet cable connect your laptop to the
R7000
router and browse to
routerlogin.net
and apply the
Setup sorcerer. Alternatively connect to the router’southward wifi. If you use a phone/tablet, run the
Netgear app
instead.
Withal you lot do that, you desire to set either the
R7000
or the Internet service provider modem-router to offer a DHCP service and not both. As the two devices are close to each other you might not demand two wifi transmitters and then you can turn off the WiFi on i of them. My choice would be to keep the R7000 wifi.
pause before changing the firmware on the NETGEAR R7000
I am happy to assume that
Netgear
knows plenty most networking to make actually practiced software. If you want to change the built-in
Netgear
software for something more flexible I recommend that you get your network working. So please break,
fix your network, and get the R7000 working as in a higher place,
then
upgrade the router.
how to change the Netgear router FIRMWARE to
FreshTomato
or Tomato USB FIRMWARE
Every bit of 2021,
FreshTomato
is an actively supported alternative firmware for the Netgear R7000. You could instead install
Avant-garde Tomato
or
Lycopersicon esculentum USB
following my notes, but every bit I look now, these have less active updating.
Yous’ll observe many other routers in the list of supported hardware at
FreshTomato
then do go there hoping to find yours.
You’ll need three firmware images for the
Netgear R7000. You must first flash the Netgear R7000 back to a Netgear factory prototype,
then
install an initial Tomato firmware image and and then finally install the latest version of the
FreshTomato
firmware. Earlier and after each of these steps you will login to the router and reset information technology. During this half-hour procedure y’all may lose the connexion or need to look up the correct countersign. Only worry not every bit the process volition piece of work fine if the power is not interrupted. I have no shortcuts and then my procedure is a fleck longer.
Go to
Downloads
at
FreshTomato
and notice the
arm
(not
mips) department. In the folder
Netgear R-series dorsum to OFW
download the original firmware file for the R7000 or your model. This will be the first file to flash, the 2d firmware is found in
Netgear R-series initial files.
The third or last firmware can exist identified by the number of your router, a version number and AIO (all-in-one) for example,
freshtomato-R7000-ARM_NG-2021.5-AIO-64K. The AIO firmware is larger, has more features than the other firmware which provides just a VPN. So use the AIO equally the R7000 has enough of retention to handle this larger firmware. You’ll need to unzip all the downloaded files.
- connect the router to your laptop (turn off its WiFi) with an ethernet cable. If you’re having trouble connecting to the router, restart the laptop with the wifi off. The laptop’southward ethernet connexion settings should exist bog-standard / default.
-
if your R7000 router uses the manufactory-supplied
Netgear
firmware, power it up and then use a paperclip in the reset hole for 7 seconds to reset the router’southward NVRAM. Login to your router (192.168.1.ane.) via an Internet browser. Employ the default login of user ‘admin’ and ‘password’. One guide suggested to use the admin console to ‘Reset to factory settings’ – there’s no harm in doing that too. Reboot and reconnect and login as before. -
if you’re already using some custom firmware such as
TomatoUSB
login with your own credentials and go to Administration > Configuration > Restore Default Configuration >
Erase all data in NVRAM. Reboot and reconnect/refresh. Login with the default login (on
Tomato plant
the username is “admin” or “root” and the password is “admin”). - become to the router Administration section and wait for
Upgrade. Upgrade using the offset downloaded
Netgear R7000
file named
R-serial dorsum to OFW. Reboot and reconnect/refresh. Use the default login of user ‘admin’ and ‘password’. If that fails, reset the router using a paperclip in the reset pigsty for seven seconds, let it reboot then reconnect/refresh. - go to the router Administration department and look for
Upgrade. Upgrade using the second downloaded Netgear R-serial initial file named e.g.
freshtomato-R7000-2021.v-initial-64K. Reboot and reconnect. Login with the default username “admin” or “root” and the countersign “admin”. - safe extra pace if you lot’re non confident: go to Administration > Configuration > Restore Default Configuration >
Erase all data in NVRAM. Reboot and reconnect/refresh. - go to the Administration section of the
FreshTomato
panel and look for Upgrade. Use the third and terminal downloaded Netgear R7000 file named
freshtomato-R7000-ARM_NG-2021.five-AIO-64K
Reboot and reconnect. - become to Administration > Configuration > Restore Default Configuration >
Erase all data in NVRAM. Reboot
and reconnect and login. - for the sake of completeness I’ll link to two, quite old, videos that visualises this process
How to render to Netgear Genie
and
How to install FreshTomato
Did y’all know your Gigabit ethernet is shared? If one Gigabit ethernet cablevision runs to a 4-port switch you lot get 1/iv Gigabit per socket – so do try to avert daisy-chaining your switches.
afterwards installing FreshTomato modify only these settings:
- set the name of the router –
Basic > Identification. Likewise ready the
Time
menu
- set login name and password –
Assistants > Admin access. - if yous’re
using the netgear router as an access bespeak and switch
you must disable DHCP and disable WAN port under
Basic > Network. And as beneath, y’all can fix a stock-still IP accost for the R7000; gear up the DNS to google’s viii.viii.8.viii or your router/gateway (eg 192.168.ane.1)
- Set the wireless bands, channels and password. Use
WPA2 Personal AES
as the security in
Basic > Network
- if like me you’re not using the WAN port (I’m not using the router to manage the WAN) you tin can recycle the WAN port equally an extra Ethernet socket. Go to
Advanced > VLAN. Beginning uncheck the WAN socket entry in the WAN0 bridge. And so click OK, salve and reboot. When the router comes back up check the WAN box, thus adding this ‘device’ to the LAN0 line. So click OK, save and reboot again. - the above two footstep process work for me and avoid the mistake:
Cannot proceed: one VID must be assigned to WAN. Early on versions of Tomato had a simple cheque box to reuse the WAN socket but this has gone.
The higher up settings make the R7000 work well.
what can I practise now that I’ve installed FreshTomato
For hardcore configuration and features digest the wiki at
FreshTomato wiki. The things you can at present do include:
- run the nginx webserver and shop some webpages on the router
- command access to files stored on a USB stick plugged in to the router
- take over the PPOE login to the Internet normally handled by your modem
- spoof or change the Mac addresses on the R7000 router (if your ISP or cable service is fussy)
- run a VPN so that all your Cyberspace traffic is tunnelled and encrypted and kept private from your ISP. Change your habitation’s credible location using the VPN.
- employ DDNS to let you to remotely access your habitation network fifty-fifty if your IP accost changes
- fault notice by setting a computer up as a DMZ where it’due south totally exposed to the Internet.
- set up UPnP so that devices such equally network cameras, speakers and Television set are more easily found by apps.
- prepare up a VLAN – this is a LAN inside your network which yous want to proceed separate or individual or limit access to guests in some way.
- ready Virtual wireless channels where you accept unlike SSIDs with different names and passwords even though they use the same radio channels
- fix a captive portal where business firm or hotel guests connect and read a web page or hold to terms and conditions
- alter the network charter time for some users preventing them from using resources at certain times
- cake adverts from all traffic coming in
- allocate fixed IP addresses to devices so that they are more hands found on your network
- get logs of Cyberspace bandwidth usage either as a whole or by individual device
- use WOL to wake upwards shutdown computers
- employ various tools – ping and trace for testing connections.
- use a Linux control line with system commands such as SSH
- use wireless survey to test channel and wifi performance
