Hello!
I couldn't find a manual or a full guide to all the features and settings. I am (more or less) still a newbie and so I went through the v1.28 firmware interface and have lots of questions. I have googled them all and found answers to many but many still remain unclear so I decided to post them here. I hope that you'll help me with the answers, for me and everyone else in the future. So here goes.
WAN / Internet:
- MTU - When should the MTU be changed? Can you benefit in a home environment by increasing (or decreasing) it? I what case should the MTU be modified?
- Route Modem IP - Does that simply mean that the router's WAN IP address will be modem's LAN IP (eg. 192.168.1.1) instead of the IP address that the ISP provided (meaning modem's WAN)? Or am I getting this wrong?
LAN:
- Bridge, br0, STP - What is this bride here? I only have 4 ports on my router's LAN switch, what is being bridged? What about STP, is that a function that prevents the whole network crumbling down in case someone connects an UTP cable in two switch ports and creates a loop? I don't think that's likely to happen at home, so should I disable it?
Ethernet Ports State - Configuration:
- Enable Ports State - What does that mean, if I disable this I loose (disable) the 4 switch ports of LAN? Or is it something else?
- Show Speed Info - What kind of speed, transmission speed (Mbps per each port)? Where is the speed info shown?
- Invert Ports Order - Meaning simply inverting from 1, 2, 3, 4 to 4, 3, 2, 1? Why would that come in handy, in case you don't want to manually cange/switch cables because your router is placed in a difficoult to reach location? Or did I get it all wrong?
Wireless (2.4 GHz / eth1):
- Wireless modes - I understand the AP and Wireless Client (Wireless WAN), but could you explain plain what WDS does and how AP+WDP would work? And how would a Wireless Ethernet Bridge work and what's the difference between them?
- Channel width (20 MHz vs 40 Mhz) - How do I know how to set this? The router is 2,4 GHz and I'm transmitting in the N mode. Some routers have an auto setting, Tomato doesn't so provide some info on the matter please.
Conntrack/Netfilter:
- Maximum connections - What does that mean? Not maximum clients connected I think. What then?
- Timeouts - TPC, UDP etc. timeotus, please explain a bit about the timeout functions.
- Tracking / NAT Helpers - What are those settings about?
- TTL Adjust - And what is this about?
DHCP/DNS:
- Internal DNS, received DNS etc. - I don't understand this, internal DNS would be the one provided manually and not by ISP? What is received DNS then? And all the other feautres?
- Dnsmasq - This is a 3rd party feature, I've read about it but don't exactly understand what it does.
Firewall:
- ICMP ping response - No check there means that the WAN port can not be pinged from outside, right? Or not?
- Enable SYN cookies - What is this?
- Enable DSCP Fix - What does that do?
- NAT loopback, NAT target - Please explain a bit.
- Multicast, IGMPproxy, Udpxy - That too, pretty please.
Misc.:
- Boot Wait Time - Meaning the firmware will wait 5 seconds after the router is turned on - why? Or is it something else?
Routing:
- Mode, Gateway vs Router - when should each function be used, in what case? When should it be set as router only?
- RIPv1 & v2 - What is this?
- Efficient Multicast Forwarding - What is this?
- DHCP Routes - What is this?
Tor project? Is that the "TOR/Onion thing" for browsing the deep web?
VLAN:
- VID Offset (First 802.1Q VLAN tag) - I know the basics of VLAN (to have separated LANs on the same physical swithc). What is VID though, what does the VID offset do?
- Wireless (Bridge eth1 to LAN-br0) - Does that simply mean that the Wireless clients will have IP addresses from the same subnet pool as the wired LAN clients?
LAN Access (src, dst)? What does this function do?
Virtual Wireless Interfaces? Is that like Wireless VLAN? VWLAN? Providing 2 or more separate WLAN subnets?
Wireless Settings (2.4 GHz / eth1) - I'm pretty lost here, except for a few thins, so if you could write a bit about each function/feature that'd be awesome!
- Afterburner
- AP Isolation
- Authentication Type
- Basic Rate
- Beacon Interval
- CTS Protection Mode
- Regulatory Mode
- Regulatory Mode
- Distance / ACK Timing
- DTIM Interval
- Fragmentation Threshold
- Frame Burst
- Multicast Rate
- Preamble
- 802.11n Preamble
- Overlapping BSS Coexistence
- RTS Threshold
- Transmission Rate
- Interference Mitigation
- WMM (ACK, APSD)
- Wireless Multicast Forwarding
Port Forwarding:
- Triggered Port Forwarding - Does that mean that a port can be opened by an application and then closed again after I'm done using it?
- UPnP, NAT-PMP - I know a bit about UPnP, it's kind of like automatic port forwarding. So what does these functions do?
Access Restriction? Is that simply not having access to the router at the certain date and time? Or to a segment/portio of it?
QoS - there is too much stuff to ask so just one simple question: would enabling and setting up the QoS improve Skype performance? Is it difficoult to do (for a beginner)?
Bandwidth Limiter? This is for limiting the bandwidth (DL and UL speed) for each separate client?
Captive Portal? I've read about it but don't really get it. What does that do, basically?
VPN Tunneling:
- OpenVPN Server - I want to learn fast about this because I will be setting OpenVPN server on Tomato, that's why I got the router in the first place. I've read about it and it seems complicated with all the certificate stuff but I'm determined to do it. Any help is much appreciated!
- OpenVPN Client - In what case could a router act as a VPN client?
Web Administration:
- Remote Access (HxxP vs HxxPS) - What shoud be used? I understand that HxxPS is more secure but will it work or block me out of the oruter?
- SSH Daemon - What is this and when to use it?
- Telnet Daemon - What is this and when to use it?
- Allowed Remote IP Address - I should enter the client's IP address from which I'll be accesint the Tomato interface through WAN?
- Allow web login as "root" - What does that mean exactly?
- Bandwidth Monitoring, IP Traffic Monitoring (Backup)? - Those are both enabled by default, what do they do? Could this degrade the performance of the router?
- CIFS Client - What is this, what does it do?
- Debugging - Please explain a bit the features there.
- JFFS - What is this, what does it do?
- NFS Server - What is this, what does it do?
- SNMP - What is this, what does it do?
- Syslog - Where can i see/find/read it?
- Web Monitor - Where can i see/find/read it?
- Scheduler - I have set the router to reboot once a week, is that a good idea? In what case sould the reconnect be used?
- Erase all data in NVRAM memory - This meanse loosing all the settings? When should it be done? I have about 66% free left.
- Shutdown - When should this be used, what for?
In general, should everything that I don't understand or need be left as set to default? I'd like to learn and set the router so that it will be performing as good as it possibly can and also be secure. And of course set the OpenVNP.
I thank you all who'll help in advance, it's much appreciated! :)