Linux Hacked Onto Fry's Cheap Wireless G Router

nerdyH points to this smile-inducing story at LinuxDevices which begins "An inexpensive house-brand 802.11b/g wireless router from Fry's (Outpost.com) has been adopted by a group of Linux hackers that aims to make Fry's 'AirLink' devices 'as capable as name-brand gadgets.' The AirLink101 AR315W is based on a Marvell board that can run Linux or eCos, and has a six-port 10/100 Ethernet switch built in. It's listed for $45 online, but is reportedly on sale for $20 in some Fry's stores."

Comments

Re:"AirLink" products

[LDoggg_]

It will likely be used to extend functionality
The popular linksys G router has a linux firmware that people have done some really cool things with.

Re:"AirLink" products

[archangel85j]

They probably mean to incorporate SPI, WPA, TKP, AES, VPN, Mac filtering, and or content filtering. You know features that you typically don't see until you are over the $150 range.

Re:hacking the DI-524

[sshore]

Waitaminute - I don't see any mention on the site that they actually did get Linux running on this thing, just that they "adopted" it.

Blech.

Re:"AirLink" products

[LDoggg_]

Fine, here's just a few:
Bridged mode for point to point. Think about extending two buildings as though an ethernet cable was simply connecting the two physical networks
Plain access point, not router
Promicuous mode for war driving
Mount to lan share to dump data for WEP cracking
etc. etc.

I'm a software engineer not a network engineer but its easy enough to see the possibilities.

Re:"AirLink" products

[nolife]

Maybe parent assumed that everyone knew about this.

http://www.hyperspacehome.com/hyperwrt/index.php?p age=home-page
http://www.sveasoft.com/modules/phpBB2/
http://www.sveasoft.com/content/view/3/1/
http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/LinksysWr t54g
https://sourceforge.net/projects/wifi-box/

Not a complete list and some of the above may be a little dated but you can get an idea of the additional features that hackers have been able to squeeze into these devices.

SPAMMER INFO HERE

[Anonymous Coward]

Aberfoyle, TGIFF, Gestures, CarbonBasedSoda, and BorgGates are all sock puppet accounts of the same guy who is trying to use the Slashdot comment system as his/her own personal ad agency. Go away spammer!

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Re:SPAMMER INFO HERE

[fwitness]

I randomly clicked up all these accounts, then randomly selected one of their lasts posts. You are correct, every post had the link in there, usually snuck in as semi related (they are not). I wouldn't call the guy a "spammer", as that waters down the term. He's just some guy with a blog wanting attention.

Oh, and I've clicked his little link, don't waste your time, the site is tame.

Re:"AirLink" products

[wolrahnaes]

I'm not sure if this is a joke or not, but DO NOT upgrade the firmware on a WRT via the wireless connection. The risk of "bricking" the router is far greater (increasing from 1 in 1000 to about 50/50) over a wireless link than wired.

Re:"AirLink" products

[wolrahnaes]

A few very important ones you missed:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/
http://slashdot.org/~TheIndividual/journal

Re:Fry's

[Schrade]

He surely missed the returned product sticker. He also probably missed the shoddy heatshrinking job the Fry's reps will do.

Brand New = factory heatshrink packaging. Usually a very different type of heatshrinking than what Fry's uses to repackage returned items.

it is a generic D-Link DI-524 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Radio Shack has the D-Link DI-524 for $20 after rebate this week which suspeciously uses the same chipset as the Fry router.

The DI-524 has WPA encryption, transmit power control, mac filter list, time-of-day limiting. etc Not bad at all for $20.

Re:"AirLink" products

[The Spoonman]

There are instructions on the HyperWRT website for installing the software, but in a nutshell it's the same process as upgrading your firmware. That's because it IS a firmware upgrade. Click Administration -> Firware Upgrade. Don't do it wirelessly, though. You MUST plug in to an ethernet port to do it, or you'll end up with a pretty blue brick. This is not a possibility, it's an absolute certainty. Aside from that, there are no "gotchas". It's the same as the current Linksys firmware, but with a few more features.