Step 3: Troubleshoot the firmware upgrade
In the ideal world, your firmware should now be upgraded. Most of us, though, don't live in the ideal world. And so you may run into problems when you upgrade your firmware. For example, when I upgraded my WRT54GL, a screen appeared telling me that the upgrade was successful. But I couldn't log into the router, even after resetting it.Following advice on the Recover From a Bad Flash page on the DD-WRT Wiki, I unplugged the router's power cord, held down the reset button, then while holding it down plugged the power cord back in and held the reset button for five seconds. I then released the button and waited a minute. Then I logged into the router, and the DD-WRT screen appeared. I was in!

Step 4: Give your router enterprise-level features
When you log into the router now using "root" as the username and "admin" as the password, you'll see a completely different screen, and you'll be using your new firmware, as shown in the nearby figure.

As you can see, you're not in the world of your old router firmware. For starters, there's a great deal more detail here about your router and network. Look toward the bottom of the screen. You'll see a list of all the wired and wireless PCs on your network, including their IP addresses.

For wireless PCs, you'll also see the signal strength of their wireless connections. There's far more information here as well, such as the number of wireless packets sent and received, and the number of errors.There are countless things you'll now be able to do with DD-WRT firmware, and this article only has the space to touch the surface. So I'll cover some of the high points, but there's plenty else you can do as well, so take the time to poke around the DD-WRT Wiki, as well as the DD-WRT documentation to see other things you can do.

Step 5: Juice up your wireless signal
The biggest problem that most people have with their wireless routers is that the signal is too weak in certain places at work or home. This is a particular problem if you live in a house. Your router might be downstairs, and the upstairs rooms may have weak signals. Not uncommonly, you'll find near dead spots in your house as well.The DD-WRT solves the problem easily; it lets you bump up the power of your wireless signal.