Creating A Super-Router (For Free)

Aaron writes "Kind of an interesting discussion and story over at Broadband Reports about the flurry of vendors releasing modified Linux based firmware updates for the Linksys WRT54G router. The updates bring a whole new level of functionality Linksys couldn't be bothered to incorporate. Among a long list of free improvements is the incorporation of bandwidth management, allowing users to end the days of choppy VoIP conversations without swapping out hardware."

Comments

For the do it yourselfer

[yebb]

Want to hack your Linksys WRT54G Router yourself?

Here's a detailed guide on how to do just that.

Re:For the do it yourselfer

[epiphani]

And for the lazyass:

This guy has packaged firmware flashes that incorporate the most popular expansions. All I wanted was some basic SNMP, and it provided - along with some other handy features.

Wondershaper...

[garcia]

For those of you that don't know, and are interested, Wondershaper can be found HERE.

It is AMAZING.

Sample config:

DOWNLINK=6000
UPLINK=200
DEV=eth0

# low priority source ports
NOPRIOPORTSRC="6881 6882 6883 6884 6885 6886 6887 6888 6889 80"

Sets those ports to only use up 200k of my 256k upstream leaving me the rest for SSH etc. I never have any problems w/my remote connection speeds this way. It's fantastic.

I have only had a single problem, recently, with Debian unstable... It removed my libatm for some reason. I reinstalled that and all was well.

Highly recommended for everyone, not just users of this "hackable" router.

Re:Wondershaper...

[pacman on prozac]

Sets those ports to only use up 200k of my 256k upstream leaving me the rest for SSH etc.

Not quite, you're shaping your entire uplink to 200kb and not using the extra at all. To quote the wondershaper source:

# shape everything at $UPLINK speed - this prevents huge queues in your
# DSL modem which destroy latency:
# main class

tc class add dev $DEV parent 1: classid 1:1 cbq rate ${UPLINK}kbit \
allot 1500 prio 5 bounded isolated

Thats the class all uploads are shaped through. If you read the script all the other traffic classes are set with parent 1:1 which is the classid of the above. With tc you have to run all traffic through the available classes otherwise it gets 0kb rather than any remaining bandwidth, I accidently broke a netcafe once by forgetting to put DNS traffic into any class. Wondershaper does actually assign all traffic to 3 classes within the above, each with differing priority.

The ports you mention are given lower priority but within that class, so within that bandwidth set in $UPLINK.

hack for WAP54G - higher power output

[davids-world.com]

i'd like to recommend the Neo firmware hack, which boosts the Linksys WAP54G output. That solved some problems for me :)

Is that linux based system available for the WAP as well? (Dunno if it's got enough RAM & flash memory to run&store it...)

Re:hack for WAP54G - higher power output

[swfranklin]

Please, unless you live waaay out in the sticks.... the 2.4GHz band is getting crowded enough; cranking up your WAP output by 4 times just so you can use a laptop in the basement crapper can be a very un-neighborly thing to do. I'm having a hard time coming up with a channel that isn't being stomped on or stomping on someone else's nearby WLAN.

Thats pretty cool and all, but

[steak]

I like my ClarkConnect box better. All it cost me was a pile of old parts that were headed for the dumpster and a ~300 MB download.

OPENWRT!

[Anonymous Coward]

OPENWRT!

http://openwrt.sourceforge.net/

Source for netgear is here:

[threeturn]

Netgear's support web site contains the source for some of their routers (eg the DG834 series). Cool idea for people to be able to add their own features.

Works great

[prator]

I replaced my WET11 with a second WRT54G with modified firmware which allows me to set it to client mode like a WET device. I use this to connect to my TiVo and Xbox.

The newer revs of firmware will have WDS which allows the routers to bridge to each other and client devices to connect to them. However, I think it does half the throughput.

I just got Vonage, and I plan using Wondershaper once these firmwares mature a little bit more.

-prator

Re:Different routers?

[amias]

I use a Netgear DG834G which appears to run linux 2.4.17 on its MIPS malta processor.

You can download a bundle of the packages it uses from netgear but they are not configured so its
hard to patch or hack with it cos you'd have to
redo their work.

This seems at odds with the GPL , on the grounds
that if you use GPL'ed code you must publish not
just the original source but your modifications as well . or am i wrong ?

The firmware upgrade patch is easily dissasembled and i've managed to hack the file system (cramfs) out of the firmware . So there is a possiblilty
that modifying the filesystem might open up safer
modification by making telnet accessable. but i'm
too much of a chicken to try it and i expect the
checksum would fail.

Re:What about 6to4 tunneling?

[NotoriousQ]

6to4 is your friend. For linux please refer to the Linux IPv6 HOWTO

For windows, go to your network configuration. Find your lan, and enable their IPv6 driver. XP only.(SP1 only?) I believe it self configures to use anycast, so that should be it.

Mac....do not know. I assume something along the lines of what linux does will work.

Good luck.

Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow

[leerpm]

The difference between the Cisco routers and the low-end DLink/NetGear are that the former are much more stable, and a lot of the routing logic is hardware based so they are able to scale & perform much better than the latter.

I don't know why they would want to hold back Linksys development though, especially for things such as IPv6. They are a smart company, so I cannot figure out why they think holding back development of Linksys is going to advance their cause of spreading the use of IPv6.

There are lots of people who use Linksys, but are not willing to spend a lot of extra cash just to get a Cisco box so they can do IPv6. And the more people that demand IPv6, the more ISPs are going to have to buy new Cisco hardware to upgrade their higher-end routers.

WRT54G Mesh is on it's way!

[DamnYankee]

Sveasoft is working on a mesh firmware for the Linksys WRT54G. We hope to have a preliminary release sometime in late March.

Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow

[dagnabit]

I have a friend who used to work at Cisco. After the Linksys acquisition, they put management barriers in place so that people from the Cisco side of the house would be blocked from "infiltrating" and/or influencing Linksys with anything Cisco-related.

Cisco (at the time anyway) wanted to keep them "as is"... dunno if that's still the case or not.

Re:how about mesh routing?

[MbM]

I think somebody needs to organize a development community around this. Creating a good stable version of Linux that can be easily installed onto the router. Of course this would require some sort of installer program, that could fetch updates & upgrade the firmware more easily too.

We're trying to address some of these issues with openwrt. Openwrt provides a minimal firmware image with support for add-on packages via a writable filesystem; essentially a linux distro. The idea is two fold, it allows developers to focus on specific pieces rather than an entire firmware and end users to free up precious resources and customize the firmware by adding or removing features.

Mesh routing is on the list of things to do with some progress being made in that direction already.

no hardware based routing in a $2k cisco im afraid

[bani]

"a lot of the routing logic is hardware based"

No it isnt. Not in a $2000 cisco.

You need a (starting at)$15k cisco for that.

The $2k ciscos are all bottom-end ciscos which do everything in CPU and software.