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Hacking the Linksys WRT54G
knightrdr writes "Robert X. Cringely has posted an interesting article on the PBS web site about modifying the Linksys WRT54G wireless G broadband router to build a wireless layer on top of the Internet. He argues that with as little as a $70 investment per node, the Sveasoft WRT54G Firmware could be the first in a line of many wireless devices to enable a giant leap forward for the Internet."
pretty cool mods...
pretty nifty device...
to bad linksys/cisco doesn't put out more creative firmware...
Read it - cool mabe this is the way I will end up getting broadband
It's a dupe, was posted on friday. Still one of the better cringely columns...
only a base system, which can be customized for your needs.
Please note that Sveasoft uses a very restrictive development model. The firmware is developed by a closed group and only released to paying customers who lose access to future releases the instant they redistribute the firmware.
The next article will be ready soon, but Slashdot editors can dupe it early!
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This may be a dumb question, but if I want to do VOIP (without using a VOIP service provider) how do I do it? We have several offices scattered in different countries, and we could use it internally to reduce costs. We have a mix of Windows, OSX and Linux on the desktop. What headsets would we use, and what software?
Of course being able to use wireless handsets would be even better, especially if we could use the same ones to make normal telephone calls. Is this possible?
EWRT, from Portless Networks (a fork of Sveasoft)
Wi-Fi Box
Ahh... the wonders of OSS and GPL. :-)
I feel like my intelligence is being insulted by the pervasive labeling of these devices by Linksys as "Wireless G" and "Wireless B" (as opposed to "802.11g" and "802.11b"). Why can't any technical term ever remain unadulterated by end-users and marketeers? Yeesh. What's next, they'll start referring to the "Linux Kernel 2.6" as "PenguinPopper 2004"?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I don't quite see why thirty bucks is such a great deal. If customers are going to use WiFI phones, they're going to want the service free or almost free with their DSL and DSL prices can only go down.
From the article, it seems that Cringely perceives this as being an idea which could put your local phone company out of business.
Would this be the same local phone company which provides the ADSL link this would require?
I would like to say that there is not only Linksys, but all Broadcom based routers (Trendnet TEW-411BRP, Belkin F5D7230, Motorola, Asustek wl300g et wl500g, Buffalo Airstation, Dell Truemobile2300).
u te rs
See:
http://seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/BroadcomRo
There is also the other APs based on Intersil:
http://isl3893.sf.net
I'm not alone here in being more interested in stuff like that than in WISPs, am i? A Cisco-like router (at least as far as the interface goes) for $70 or so would be awesome. :,)
Giant leaps have always been better that ordinary leaps, in my opinion.
Tux meets Goatse?
Personally, I run OpenWRT (http://openwrt.ksilebo.net/) on my WRT54G. In my opinion, it is better, and my contact with the developers so far on IRC has been wonderfull.
:-)
Check it out, and a WRT54G (or the WRT54GS) is a nice investment, even if it was just for its geekyness
This means a WISP in a box for everyone - and LinSpot handles the roaming between all linspots and fills your PayPal account while you sleep (and while others roam).
I guess it will take the LinSpot crew a couple of weeks to iron the bugs out and release this for your enjoyement.
I see a bubble forming, everyone and his dog will be running a VOIP/WiFi ISP company and "making money while they sleep" ...yeahh riight.
Spam - Make money fast with your router!
We just ordered two new NIC's for our Cisco load balancer. They cost $1000 (one thousand) each. We needed them, we had the budget, blah blah blah.
We got them, and we looked at them, and for the life of me, they looked like cheesy $15 PCI no-name-brand NICs.
We got the FCC approval number, and guess what... they were $15 PCI no-name-brand NICs. We just learned a $2K lesson.
Won't make that mistake again.
It's nothing really suprising at all. If you can do it on Linux you can do it on there. The only thing you got to be careful about is the space limitation. If there was a way to mod in a CF card or something, now that would be something!
I would like to know where he gets the dollar values from at the bottom of the article? He starts to toss out how much money an access point will start to make but no real values to back it up.. come one.. you need some sort of proper accounting..
:)
Almost sounds like a get rich scam, look at how much money you can make by buying this device. Just like the gold rush, very few made money on gold, everyone got rich selling shovel's and supplies to the masses..
Another cringley article that is partially based on facts, partially on fiction..
... if a single damned one of the web pages gave me a good couple of concrete examples of what the payoff is of installing one of these alternatives. That is, beyond whatever disease makes so many linux users desperate to install linux on their toaster, pda and remote control. OpenWRT touts being small with a focus on installable packages, EWRT says what they have up on the others is the captive portal but none of them have an entry in their FAQ that answers "Why would I replace this currently functioning, rarely crashing pre-installed firmware and features with something else? Does it DO anything other than bragging rights at the geek pub?" And yes you troll, I know some have bandwidth shaping and other features but any software that purports to be a solution to a problem might want to identify that problem right off the bat or it should just call itself devTitsOnaBull.
Bad management trumps ideology - Show the world you want better leadership. http://www.timefornewmanagement.com
A lot of ISP user agreements prohibit the provision of service to third parties. This violates that restriction, and doesn't attempt to cover it up.
Pun intended. There is a major catch to all of this disruptive technology that Cringley and everyone else seems to be forgetting. The catch, regulatory restrictions.
You see, in the phone business, there are countless regulations and restrictions at the federal, state and local government levels. These restrictions cover everything, 911 location requirements, reliability, coverage, who is authorized to offer service, taxes and a whole lot more.
At the moment, VoIP is excluded from much of this. But, with VoIP threatening the industry, the phone giants will be using their lobbying power to make the restrictions apply to VoIP as well.
An infrastructure such as Cringley describes is technically possible, theoretically. But, if it comes to pass, it will be controlled by today's phone giants.
Of course, for all this to happen and for us to have the reliability of landlines or even cellular service our cities would have to be so heavily blanketed by 802.11 devices that hot dogs would cook themselves once removed from their microwave shielded packaging. Eat it quickly Honey, before it gets too hot.
Is if somone ported airsnort to one of these.. Imagine throwing one under a desk for a week, while it cracked the wep key, then having it switch on its radio and broadcast the key as its SSID..
Official GOD FAQ.
Peace
All it takes is one quick Terms of Service update and a DSL price hike, and all economic incentive drains out of this idea.
His entire thesis seems to be that, a bunch of people could make a little bit of money each month on the margin between what the DSL providers charge and what their neighbors would be willing to pay for access. If the DSL provider eats that up with a rate hike, then the money is gone.
Information wants to be $1.98/lb.
With the VOIP tax, how do services like XBOX Live get away without paying? Is it because they are a closed system and not extending beyond their own network to land-lines? What constitutes VOIP? I can see a future where it's purely IP Phone to IP Phone ... a somewhat "closed system" like XBOX Live. How can the FCC institute a tax on something like that? (Aside from the usual 'we can do whatever we want argument')
Not mainstream in application. Geeks and propeller heads will make use of it, but it's a narrow avenue that few will bother to take. Disruptive or not, it's not going anywhere. Cheap routers, okay, but it hardware always gets cheaper, until you add more stuff.
With heavy enough saturation to provide blanket coverage, these mesh networks would negate the need for the xDSL connection completely. Basically, with enough hotspots in place, the entire internet would be wireless.
Highly, unlikely using 802.11 but, theoretically possible.
It's already Linux on there you nimwit.
Can any of these firmware replacements provide a solid DMZ yet? I looked at the SVEA site and it looks like it's problematic. The default is to bridge the wireless and wired segment and things don't necessarily work if you break that bridge.
In my opinion, this is critical. You never want to bridge your wired and wireless segments unless you're sure that no one else is in radio range.
In fact the relatively high cost of dsl right now is one of the main incentives for many users of these hacked linksys boxes.
Raising the rate would increase the value of the services offered by someone letting others tap into their line. Obviously it would bump up the break even point as well.
And, btw, dsl rate hikes would only increase the user base of cable modems. Gotta love competition.
One feature is the ability to boost the wireless signal strength up to 300%. Most users can find use in that.
I have to run a Cisco VPN client on my desktop to connect to work. Anybody know if the Linux version of this can be run on a WRT54G as I would surely love to off-load that task to my edge router.
"Raising the rate would increase the value of the services offered by someone letting others tap into their line. Obviously it would bump up the break even point as well."
True that lowering the price would take the steam out of the reselling idea, by reducing the incentive to go with your "hacked" idea, as opposed to the "real deal".
"And, btw, dsl rate hikes would only increase the user base of cable modems. Gotta love competition."
Not necessarily. There's the "gas station" effect. Were gas station's in a given area have similiar prices. DSL raises it's rates to make more money. The cable company sees this, and raises it's rates so it can make more money too. Remember you're basing corporate decisions on what's good for you, while they're basing their decisions on what's good for them.
I remember Snapgear Routers being called "The Poor Man's Cisco" with all of the capabilities their included Linux distribution had. With modifications to this router, this could become "The Poor Man's Snapgear."
A Snapgear LITE2, without wireless, is about C$350. This thing, for US$80 or so, plus an hour's work, could do all the work of a Snapgear plus have wireless routing.
Are there similar hacks for non-wireless Linksys products? I wanted to get Snapgears for a new installation but this would be even better!
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
I bet every coffee shop and hotel in town would be shut down if that was the case. If the coppers knock, say you run an ISP (which you essentially do since you sell bandwidth) and they would need to monitor from your site to get the perp. Yeah, you get the visit, but eventually, so would he. Hopefully you ARE allowed to run servers like this (e.g. using a service like Speakeasy and not using, say Comcast). If not, you could be terminated by your ISP for unacceptable use. He'd have to be downloading a boatload of the stuff, anyhow, as the cops wouldn't bother with a minor offender.
I'm running a hotspot out of my home, and there's no telling how much child pornography goes through the wire (hopefully none, but you never know). I don't do much logging on that network (it's a separate LAN) because it is rather pointless to log DHCP addresses unless you have a really long lease time (and even then it's of dubious merit). Tracking a user would be an invasion of privacy, as well, so if the cops or FBI did want to search off of that LAN, I'd want them to get a warrant to protect me from liability (can you say "illegal search and seizure?" - I knew you could!).
The core firmware of these routers runs linux, and as such Linksys was compelled to offer the source code back to the community. Sveasoft was kind enough to modify the firmware using the provided source and to then provide compiled binaries and source back to the community.
p hp?t=1259
Now they've changed their model somewhat. Currently you can only download the binaries and source for the older versions of the firmware. To access any of their newer works, you have to pay them a $20/year subscription fee. Once you've ponied up the $20, you can download the new sources and binaries.
While the GPL allows for this sort of action, it's their policing of it that makes me uncomfortable. You can download the code and binaries and post them on a website, but if they figure out which user did this they will cancel your subscription. If you post links in their forums to download sites for their new version your subscription is cancelled, your forum account suspended, and the post is deleted.
What they've done is to take a GPL-covered firmware, improve it, charge $20 for access to it, and then do anything they can to censor any action of sharing that code. While their actions still obey the letter of the GPL, I can't really see that it is in keeping with the spirit of the free software movement.
Sveasoft's FAQ about charging $20 for GPL software and canceling accounts that are caught distributing the software: http://www.sveasoft.com/modules/phpBB2/viewtopic.
I've had a WRT54g v2 since February, and have tried several third-party firmware offerings over the past few months. I have a Comcast 3000/256 cable modem connection, and have been 100% Linux at home for almost nine years. Here's my quick impressions of each:
...the owner and only employee of SveaSoft.
In short, I wouldn't trust him to buy a pack of bubblegum for me. Expect him to hype himself and his products beyond belief and then come down at you like a ton of bricks for questioning if he stands behind his claims. He can change his promises and word on a whim - at least, has done so in the past, repeatedly.
So you can safely ignore any "is this really the spirit of the community?" issues. Rather, turn off your surprise sensors or they'll blow.
Also, you should REALLY read his code closely if you have access to it before installing on any of your equipment - the code I've seen from this guy has had a ton of threading issues, memleaks, and security holes. (All the more important when using wireless.) Interestingly, he perceives himself as a top-class coder; I think he's rather mediocre. At least, he was in 1998-2000. Can't believe that has changed so much.
And at the same time you start boosting your signal strength in the US will be the same time the FCC starts knocking on your door.
Enjoy your cell mate Bubba, I know he'll find a use for you.
(yeah yeah, I doubt they'd jail you over it)
Anyone know of firmware replacement sets for the WRV56G (the VPN and cuter looking version of the WRT).
-psy
George Gilder is a techno-pundit who rode the Internet / "new economy" wave to espouse the coming of the so-called "telecosm" inherent in the unlimited bandwidth and explosiveness of DWDM-amped fiber optics. Often a brilliant writer, he got knocked down a few hundred pegs after all of his stock picks either disappeared or lost 99% of their value (along with almost every other telecom stock out there). He became quite wealthy off his newsletter but has since had to mortgage his home off I believe.
To re-iterate the drumbeat the more insightful posters have put up here--Cringely's "disruptive technology" scenario simply doesn't work because it depends on:
1) Ignoring or violating the DMCA and the DSL ISP's (usually the telco, of course) AUP. Non-ILEC DSL ISP's like Speakeasy are the exception, but they are a blip on the radar compared to the ILECs.
2) Intensive de-regulation of VoIP, which very likely will not persist forever. Vonage and other VoIP providers are already being pressured to support 911, just like the wireless telco providers.
The only way I see this scenario becoming truly feasible is the massive decentralization of bandwidth and telco ownership, which is unlikely to happen in my lifetime, if ever. The telcos own the vast majority of the infrastructure Cringely is proposing to use to build this "disruptive" network layered on top of the ILEC DSL networks.
Cringely is jumping on the yee-haw Wild West frontier wagon here, thinking automatically that such a cool geek toy must represent an obvious challenge to ILEC hegemony--and that such a Wild West scenario is even desirable.
Personally I believe post-Telecom Act of 1996 Redux II (or III or IV) will ultimately be far more disruptive--the telco networks copper hegemony can only be truly displaced by FTTH networks owned by small municipalities and regional corporations who build their own street-to-street networks. These entities should openly encourage use of their networks by ILECs, CLECs, ISPs, and "Joe-around-the-corner CLEC." These FTTH networks will be connected on the backend to ILEC tandems and still reach the outside world and be subject to regulatory constraints and tariffs, but the FCC and states' PUCs have stop being the ILEC's servile whores before any of this can be a reality.
Seems like someone would have put that domain name to use by now...
Another hack of the WRT54g includes a Linux Kernel, and some apps (like httpd) which reside in the RAM portion of the router, ie. power-cycle and you're back to normal.
http://www.batbox.org/wrt54g-linux.html
I want my idiot neighbor with the yappy little mop-dog and the ungreased pool pump suing me for outage time.
Cringely's schemes always miss one critical fact: people don't get along that well unless they're already separated by miles.
Uh-oh, here comes MicrosoftII!
Why haven't any of the other manufacturer's that run linux on this chipset done the same?
Aren't they violating their license?
Wow, hope that was a troll.
It'd be funnier if you said "FOR INFINITE JUSTICE". Because, you know, that was the name of our recent Crusade. (Didn't the Christians lose the Crusades? Why do they keep bringing them up?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca