Dumaos the gaming operating system for netgear router

Routers with features for players are not new, we have been seeing new model after new model for two or three years, but an operating system designed by and for players and for very specific hardware is not so common and that is why DumaOS is surely the The only operating system for network devices designed only for gamers but which has been expanding to cover the modern home environment.

Don't miss our detailed review of this powerful operating system built into the Netgear Nighthawk XR500

Index of contents

DumaOS history

This DumaOS operating system has some beginnings with which many will be identified. Its founders, two Halo fans, understood that there were methods to improve the player experience, especially in reference to “lag”, back in 2008. Since then, their intention was to improve this important aspect of the game and make in a way that was definitive for the player and with a simple and accessible configuration.

From that idea, DumaOS was born, and after six years, they launched their first router with this operating system, a router that was initially sold through a really successful crowdfunding campaign. Netduma R1 is born.

Netduma R1

The Netduma R1 is actually a Mikrotik RB951G-2HnD router to which a major modification of the OpenWRT operating system was added, so important that practically nothing or almost nothing remains of the original operating system and where very specific features have also been added.

The Netduma R1 was powered by an Atheros AR9344 1 core 600MHz processor with 128MB of RAM and 128MB of storage. It continues to receive software updates, but its limited hardware no longer makes it an interesting product. Its price is also high, 179 Euros, and it only has 2.4GHz Wifi-N.

Times change and now Netduma is allied with Netgear to have much more modernized hardware. More adapted to the needs of modern gamers, but also greatly improved to work in more environments and not only for its more powerful hardware but also for the improvements that during these years, continuous improvements and every few months, that the brand has made.

Netgear Nighthawk XR500

This router, also based on DumaOS, is much more powerful than the original, in fact it has the fashionable hardware of any modern high-end router. Atheros IPQ8065 dual-core processor with a 1.5GHz frequency, 512MB of RAM and 256MB of storage memory. A portent that also has a high speed Gigabit ethernet switch, a NAT capable of giving life to 1 Gigabit Internet connections.

This router also has a powerful wireless system, MU-MIMO 4 × 4 QuadStream, capable of developing speeds of 1733Mbps at 5GHz and up to 800Mbps in the 2.4GHz band. It also has USB 3.0 connectivity, NAS functionality, and is undoubtedly a much more capable router than the Netduma R1.

Both, however, use the same operating system, with the same version and now we are going to detail how this powerful and intuitive operating system for routers is.

Easy to set up

One of the keys of DumaOS, that we can only find in the two routers that we have already shown you, is that, within all its potential, it is very easy to configure and will guide us from the beginning so that less trained users can configure it perfectly whatever your internet connection.

It works perfectly with fiber connections, where its other features will especially shine, and as I have already mentioned before it is capable of handling 1 gigabit connections without messing up.

It is able to auto detect our connection, if we use another router with DHCP in between, and we can also access networks through PPPoE connections. It also supports configuration of tagged virtual networks, assigning them to different interfaces, to support VoIP and IPTV connections compatible with the main operators in our country.

Once connected to the Internet, one of the first tasks the router performs is to measure our Internet access speed. This is important because some of the tuning and optimization features that DumaOS has will depend on it.

DumaOS also has the ability to detect firmware updates and download them in an automated way, also managing their update. There are usually updates every 3-4 months, some with significant improvements in terms of functionality and not just fixing potential problems or vulnerabilities.

The initial configuration also invites us to configure the two wireless network bands that it supports, we can use the same SSID for both and that the router and the different devices manage their access speed. Supports MU-MIMO to maximize wireless network performance, although this also requires compatible devices.

This operating system also has two quite special abilities, rare in the world of routers, and very player-oriented, although the brand is now trying to make this not a player-only operating system, and certainly for features that we will see later, it has ceased to be a system exclusively for players to have a more combined capacity.

Geofiltering

This feature is one of the most exclusive of this operating system and its compatible routers. Geofiltering consists of establishing a geographical limit to the servers to which we allow our games to connect. That is, if I play CS: GO and I only want servers in Spain to appear, I will establish a filter, if I live in Madrid, of about 500km around and the game will only see those servers unless those servers use some type of proxy, content manager or VPN with a Spanish IP.

As you all already know, ping is a latency in the communication of the TCP / IP protocol. It is the time in which our system takes to communicate with the server and this in returning the communication that our information package has arrived correctly. The quality of the communications, the saturation of the client or server, the use of the data line of both points, the infrastructure and, above all, the distance between our computer or device connected to the server influence.

This is a fast and effective way to ensure a quality ping to the servers we connect and we will not have to do the filtering by ourselves. Unfortunately for PCs it doesn't work, it only works well with consoles, which is a bit strange. On PC it goes into spectator mode, reports on connections but there is no limitation.

It is enough to select the machine, the game profile and the distance in kilometers or miles at which we will give access to the game. The router will do all the work for us, clean the server lists of trash and in games where there is not even an option to choose a server, it will force the game systems to offer us the servers with the average ping that suits us best. With this measure, this router does not need tricks to improve the ping because it simply will not give us the option to use a server that is very far from us and therefore with more ping.

Advanced QoS

DumaOS makes using QoS (Quality of Service) easy and intuitive, and it does so using a dual method of priority control and bandwidth limitation. DumaOS QoS seeks to reduce possible line saturation, which I personally think is quite difficult to achieve on broadband lines like the ones we are enjoying now, symmetrical and with an average of 100 or more megabit per second. Still, we can establish an effective method at the device level.

It has the Anti-Bufferbloat system that when it detects priority traffic, such as playing or transferring video in real time, reduces the bandwidth for the rest of the applications up to the upload and download capacity that we have previously configured. The configurable data is based on the bandwidth measurement made by the router in your installation.

If we have a 300mbps line, as it is the line where we have tested it, you can leave 66% of the line available, 200mbps, for those applications and leave 100mbps, which is usually more than enough for any game, to prioritize your games. The system can automatically detect the situation or we can set the limitation permanently.

The other QoS method available at DumaOS allows us to discriminate bandwidth for each device connected to the network. This includes the previous limitation, that is, if we have left 200mbps we can further limit a certain device on the network, for example, 50% of those 100mbps. The configuration is for both downstream and upflow.

Another configurable point is manual prioritization by device and application. We can configure that our computer, when it runs a certain graphics engine or game, has priority over any other traffic. This would be a more detailed step to the Anti-bufferbloat system where we indicate which device and what game it is running to give it access priority.

Device manager

The DumaOS device manager allows us to generate a connectivity map of our network, with all the devices connected and described. It also has the ability to assign profiles to different devices, such as computers, consoles, televisions, etc. It is also capable of setting manual locks on these devices, so that they do not have access to the Internet or to other connected devices on the network.

Network monitor

The network monitor is nothing more than that, a real-time sample of our network usage, by device and general, with graphics dedicated to both down and up traffic. It is nothing that we do not already have in the "dashboard" of the system, to which we will later dedicate a few words.

System information

Here we will have more data on the use of hardware. In the graphs we can see the use of the two CPU cores, the RAM consumption, the use of sectorized storage, network operation, version and status of the system firmware and, most interestingly, a complete log of router operation.

Configurations

This is where we will really find the classic functionality of any home or professional router, at least the base of operation and parameterization of any of them.

It is also where we can make detailed configuration of many of the main elements of the router. I can think of, for example, the advanced options of the router's wireless network system. We can choose the network channel, the maximum access speed, the name of the network SSID (name of wireless network identifier), the type of encryption and authentication, etc.

We can also configure a wireless network for guests, well worked since it allows different configurations per band (2.4 or 5GHz) and also isolates each user that enters this network from the rest and, of course, from our local network.

In the WAN options, Internet access, we can establish important parameters such as a DMZ device, which receives all the input of requests that arrive at the router, configure something very important such as "IGMP Proxying" that will be essential to reduce useless traffic NAT filtering on our network or our router responding to pings from the Internet.

In LAN we can change the network name of our router, set its IP and configure the DHCP server to automatically assign IPs to other connected devices. It also has a very fast method of adding IP reservations to the devices that we want, so that they work with fixed IP, but without having to do any configuration on the device in question.

DumaOS also allows us to establish a WPS configuration with two options, or through a PIN, which is usually somewhat dangerous, or only through the use of the router's access button. My advice is to never use this method for security.

DumaOS also supports that the router works as an access point system, without routing capacity, where it loses almost all the features and functionality that make it so special.

Other important options of this system are found in its content filtering, which needs a lot of improvements, at least in terms of the level of configuration and options that they offer in other aspects, but which undoubtedly already has very interesting options and parameters.

Filtering allows content control by keywords, filtering to which we can put an activation calendar, as well as a white list of IPs to which we want to give permanent access.

It also has application access control, which we can also establish for periods, where we can block protocols and common applications such as FTP access, etc. We can set the filter by IP, by range of IPs or to all IPs.

Another basic block is being able to establish a period of Internet access that allows us to control the time that certain connected network users spend. The pity is that this filtering is for all IPs, it does not allow customizing like the previous options. It is certainly something that should be improved in future editions of the system.

All these locks can be communicated to the user by email, so that they are aware of the situation and do not think that the system or connection is failing.

Another configuration option within the system is the storage usage options. It has a DLNA and Samba server, to be able to record and read information through shared folders.

ReadyShare will allow us to use the Netgear cloud to access our stored data through http and FTP with configurations dedicated to access from the local network or from the internet with the ability to configure secure ports, also changing the standard ports for something more discreet and being able password protect access.

Advanced settings

The advanced configuration of the router opens up more options for parameters, some more delicate, but also some fundamental. In this menu we will find advanced settings for wireless networks, with activation by time or periods. It also allows you to configure the threshold and preamble mode in addition to the emission power of each wireless network band.

NAT, which allows us to map ports from the Internet to certain devices on our network, is also configured here. It is typical, what application or port do I want to open and what machine or device do I want to send it to. As in any router.

It also has dynamic DNS configuration capabilities through No-IP, Dyn.com or Netgear's own service, which is one of the most widespread. This will give us a domain that we can easily remember every time our network operator changes the IP of our router. In this way we will always have easy to configure and access our services.

It also allows us to configure static routes, as well as having a uPnP system for automatic configuration of entry ports. It is the easiest way for the router to manage our services, those whose applications or systems are configured for it.

DumaOS also has the ability to access VPN services, although at the moment it seems that only through "HideMyAss", which is a recognized provider of this type of service, and even more interesting is its VPN server using the OpenVPN standard that will allow us to connect to our local network, as if we were in it, in a very easy way to configure on any device and almost any operating system.

The virtual network configuration panel (VLAN) is also very important, because it will be where we can maintain access to certain services from our Internet provider such as VoIP, voice over IP, or IP television services.

Finally, we can also configure the access or remote configuration, being able to choose the IPs that have access and we can also configure the behavior of the different LEDs on the router, being able to choose how they work, for example, without blinking when they have traffic or by turning them off directly.

Dashboard or main panel

I have left for the last time the cover letter of this operating system. A quick display screen of the main elements of the router, such as network activity, CPU activity, Internet connection, etc. The good thing is that it is completely modular, we can customize it as we like, and configure it in the way that seems most suitable for our interests.

From the Dashboard we can also choose the language of our router among several dozen different languages, personally I prefer to leave it in English so as not to err in the usual concepts of control and management of a router, but we can also find Spanish in the list, although we will surely take of less other habitual languages ​​in our borders like Catalan or Euskera.

The system is undoubtedly very complete, although it has some deficiencies in content control to consider it a great router for the home environment. Its inclination towards game users is still important and surely that is what many customers of an operating system will look for that we can only find in full power in a router that costs about 270 Euros.