Q: Does FreshTomato support only old devices or also more recent ones?

FreshTomato supports both old devices and modern ones. See the Hardware Compatibility page for more details. Keep a close eye on CPU speed, Ethernet port speed and Wi-Fi speed (with 802.11ac currently supporting the fastest Wi-Fi speed).

Q: What are FreshTomato's default login credentials?

• Username: root
• Password: admin

Q: What is FreshTomato's default IP address?

• Default IPv4 address: 192.168.1.1
• Netmask 255.255.255.0

Q: What do those cryptic filenames mean? How do I choose the right build for my router?

A: The naming scheme for ARM-based models (with some exceptions) is roughly as follows:

• FreshTomato - The Tomato mod name or fork name. This will always be FreshTomato,
  as currently it's the only fork in development. FreshTomato is added to reduce confusion
  in case people also have firmware from other Tomato forks on their PCs.
• Hardware model - specifies the router or access point model number.
• ARM - the build is intended for devices with the ARM CPU architecture.
• Wireless Driver (optional) NG - indicates whether the New Generation Broadcom
  binary wireless driver is in the build. Since Broadcom never released
  the driver source code, the developers rely on binary drivers. Builds for newer hardware
  required the newer wireless driver and use of a newer software development kit (SDK).
  These were called “NG” (short for New Generation) drivers. RT indicates TBD. RT-N indicates
  the driver in the build supports 802.11n. RT-AC indicates the build's driver supports 802.11ac.
  In general, newer drivers/build also support all older 802.11 protocols.
• Release name (e.g. 2021.3)
• Edition (Mini / AIO / VPN) - indicates which features are included in the build.
  (See Features Matrix to understand more).
• NVRAM size (32K / 64K / 128K) - This is optional, for models where there are multiple
  hardware revisions and each revision may include more or less NVRAM.
• NOSMP (optional) - Specifies a build for SMP-capable hardware, but for which SMP is disabled.
• Custom (optional). This identifies a build which includes or excludes a certain feature (set).

For example, we can interpret that for the ARM build with filename:

freshtomato-RT-AC3200-ARM-2021.3-AIO-128K.zip_no_media_server

has the following firmware features:

Mod (fork) name: FreshTomato
Hardware Model: built for the Asus RT-AC3200 router.
ARM: (for models with an ARM CPU architecture)
Release name: 2021.3 (The third release of 2021.) This does NOT necessarily mean released in the third month.
Edition: AIO (All-in-one). This edition includes most all featuresNVRAM size: 128K (for routers with 128K of NVRAM space)
no_media_server: This build doesn't include the Media Server

MD5SUM files are available in each website folder containing firmware builds. It is strongly recommended that you run a hash program against the .zip file of the build you downloaded. Then, you should compare the value reported in that program with the hash value listed for that build in the MD5SUM file. If the two don't match, your firmware download may be corrupt, and you should avoid flashing your router with that file, or you could brick your router.

Q: How can I make temporary changes to FreshTomato's settings that aren't saved unless I want them to be?

A: In the Administration/Debugging menu, enable the “Avoid commiting to NVRAM” setting. If you don't want to keep the settings changes, just reboot FreshTomato and settings will return to what they were before you made them. If you later decide you want to save the changes, uncheck the Avoid performing an NVRAM commit button. This make experimentation fun and safe.

Q: What are the common device names used to represent router interfaces/components?

• vlan0: Wired (Ethernet) LAN ports
• eth1: Wireless LAN
• br0: Internal LAN bridge (configurable) for wired LAN and Wireless LAN
• eth0: internal interface between CPU and the 6-port switch

Q: Where is the Tomato log file?

• All logging is done via the syslog daemon
• By default, the log file can be found in /var/log/messages.