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Creating A Super-Router (For Free)

Posted by timothy on from the if-you-own-the-hardware-that-is dept.

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."

5 of 329 comments (clear)

  1. For the do it yourselfer by yebb · · Score: 5, Informative
    Want to hack your Linksys WRT54G Router yourself?

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

  2. Wondershaper... by garcia · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. Thats pretty cool and all, but by steak · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    lose != loose
  4. Re:Different routers? by amias · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    [site]
  5. Re:hack for WAP54G - higher power output by swfranklin · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.