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Linux Hackers Reclaim the WRT54G
An anonymous reader writes "The world's most ubiquitous wireless access point is free to run Linux again, thanks to a brilliant hack by db90h, aka Jeremy Collake. No soldering is required, as Collake's 'VxWorks Killer' nixes the WRT54G's VxWorks bootloader and installs a normal Broadcom one, allowing Linux to be installed easily. One distribution small enough for the series five WRT54G's 2MB of Flash and 8MB of RAM is the free DD-WRT project's "micro" edition. It lacks some of the fancier Linux router packages, such as nocat and IPv6, but does support PPPoE, and could be more stable than the VxWorks firmware, which seems to have generated mixed reviews." Update: 06/26 22:52 GMT by T : Note that the project's name is DD-WRT, not (as it was mistakenly rendered) WR-DDT. Check out the DD-WRT project's site.
It's the dd-wrt project, not WR-DDT. Great package though, I run it on my v4 WRT54G.
They aren't fighting them. In fact, they have released WRT54GL with linux, specifically for this purpose. They just didn't want people bricking their routers and returning them under warranty.
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So use a UPS during the install! There are also instructions on how to de-brick your router, although I haven't had to try any of them thankfully.
What problems did you have with DD-WRT? I'm about to upgrade my v2.1 router with it, so I'd like to know what gotchas to watch out for.
DD-WRT v23 SP1 lists:
AP, Client, Client Bridge, Adhoc
So I assume the answer to this is yes. I've never used this feature however so I can't say how well it works.
I'm using DD-WRT in client-bridge mode on my V2.2... and it works beautifully (you can even scan the local area for networks and then just click the "Join" button next to them to get connected... very slick).
Don't know if the micro version supports this though.
Friedmud
We over at the DD-WRT forum have been following this for a while.
As with any other fine F/OSS project, please donate if you find the project useful.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
From what I understand even the most "bricked" WRT54G(L) can still be telneted into at its lowest level and reflash the firmware.
I'm not sure about most bricked. I have a version 1.1 WRT54G that is completely and utterly bricked.
However, there are a few methods for debricking the router. The HairyDairyMaid method involves soldering an EJTAG connector onto the board and connecting to it via PC software. The other method that I'm aware of involves shorting the flash chip with a screwdriver (so the firmware doesn't load?) and then TFTP'ing the firmware.
Neither method worked for my router, but there seem to be plenty of success stories.
I work for a small WISP and I've dealt with more than my fair share of WRT54G routers. We began with the WRT54Gv4 router and they were spectacular. They were solid, stable, and only had problems when they were struck by lightning (don't ask...). We distributed many dozens of these routers. To my knowledge, every one of them is still in use today.
Then Linksys released their version 5 of the router. We deployed dozens more of these. We've had two main problems with them: the WAN port loses its ability to communicate with a static IP address (it thinks it's been assigned 0.0.0.0--very helpful); or the WLAN connection permanently ceases to work properly (it still puts out radiation at 2.4GHz but it's just noise). Out of the dozens of these v5 routers we've installed for customers, approximately 25% have been returned to Linksys.
We no longer use Linksys routers for our customers. We sell D-Link WBR-1310 routers instead. It took me a while to get over my initial snobbish elitism (I'd used D-Link's products in the past and they were less than stellar) but now I'm a believer. The WBR-1310 is fantastic. We've put a couple dozen of these in the field and so far there hasn't been one issue among them. D-Link has really cleaned up their act. It also helps that these basic routers are dirt cheap. Even Office Depot sells them for $40-60 so you can imagine what wholesale prices are like...
At home, I'd had different problems with my WRT54Gv5. Basically, any time I tried to use BitTorrent, the router would play hide-and-seek with my network. It didn't matter whether it was LAN or WLAN, the connection would cut out every two minutes. Only a power cycle would bring it back. I've since replaced it with the aforementioned D-Link WBR-1310 and I'm pleased as punch. BitTorrent works faster than ever and I've not yet had to power cycle the thing after two months of punishing use.
So... Mixed reviews? Hardly. The WRT54Gv5 is the least reliable router I've ever used, and I've used a LOT in that price range. It's a bloody shame, too, because Linksys really had something going with the v4 of the same router. If they sold them again, we'd buy a hundred in an instant, with orders for hundreds more down the road. But somehow, I doubt Linksys will ever go back to the v4.
Here's hoping that this new DD-WRT release will ease the pain of so many unfortunate buyers of the WRT54Gv5.
The last time I looked, the best info seemed to be the seattlewireless.net page. Are there any pages with more info? I haven't had the time or need (so far) to alter it, but eventually...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
59.99 for the WRT-54G at Fry's on sale a few months ago and 20.00 that i donated to the funky haired guy who coded the firmware... the syslog and vpn endpoint components are great and the thing has been up for weeks now without a hiccup...
sig goes here!
I suppose I ran into just the opposite problem from you. I had a pre-existing linux router on a desktop system and found that while it worked great and required minimal maintanance, it used up far too much power for what I was using it for. (K6/166, around 80 watts.)
I found myself tweaking the default firmware of these routers far too much, opening ports, trying to get different things working, etc. I put the OpenWRT firmware on, then dropped my old ipmasq scripts from debian over to it. A little bit of tweaking and it worked just as well as my old desktop system. I haven't really touched the thing since and it's up to around 429 days uptime now. It also uses up far less power and desktop space than my old K6 ever did.
Mostly you just need to push the reset button in while connecting the power - the power light will flash slowly on and off - tftp mode, simply upload a new firmware and away they go again. I've not (yet) had one that was impossible to unbrick.
I've been using DD-WRT v23 for several months now and I love it, it's very stable from what I've seen. And bittorrent doesn't kill my connection like the official firmware used to do. QoS is nice and easy to configure, etc.
My router's only been up for 13 days, but thats due to a power failure.
Firmware: DD-WRT v23 (12/25/05)
Time: 00:27:13 up 13 days, 27 min, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
hmm lets see
1 some firmware can do a pin swap on the ports
2 you can use a crossover cable to do the swap
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
For those of us who don't want to drop cash just to install some turbo-charged firmware, check out HyperWRT Thibor. It's a branch of the original GPL source released by LinkSys that has had many features added to it by a long line of developers. It doesn't quite have all the bling that dd-wrt has, but it runs great on my v1.1 with no CPU overload.
BTW, the symptoms of this problem are the wrt54g web interface not responding (or taking forever), DNS timeouts, and all internet access either slowing to a crawl or timing out completely. When the web interface finally responds, the system load average shows as *way* over 1.0.
Kudos to the developers of both projects!
I flashed my WRT54GL with DD-WRT (v23, I believe) in late May, but ran into some problems. The firmware was stable, but I could not get it to succesfully forward ports in a consistent manner through the NAT and firewall (for the Asterisk PBX that I run from home). I found this out after several hours of wasted time spent analyzing ethereal traces. Sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn't forward some higher UDP ports between 10,000 and 20,000 ...a complete crapshoot. Plus DD-WRT has a full cone firewall, unlike the stock firmware and Hyper-WRT - this leads to some unexpected situations when you are hosting services behind the firewall. I rolled back to the stock firmware and then upgraded to Hyper-WRT (the Thibor flavor), and everything seemed to work alright once again. FYI, Hyper-WRT keeps most of the Linksys stock firmware intact, and adds on a few extras on top of the Linksys firmware. DD-WRT otoh, is completely redesigned and has everything but the kitchen sink. I believe one of its versions can even act as a VOIP server. Other versions can run Samba, Chilli hotspots, ...the works!
:)
One more thing to note: DD-WRT has a more intelligent DDNS registration client. It won't re-register your IP address with a DDNS service such as DynDNS on rebooting the router, if the WAN side IP address hasn't changed. The stock firmware and Hyper-WRT, however, will re-register with the DDNS service on every reboot, even if your WAN side IP hasn't changed. If you do this several times in the space of a few days, you will find your account locked out by DynDNS according to their "abusive use" clause.
Ultimately, here are my thoughts, neatly summarized. DD-WRT is cooler and can do a lot more than the stock firmware or even Hyper-WRT. But I need firmware that is reliable 24x7, has QoS and TX power adjustment which the stock firmware lacks, and can route from the WAN to the LAN side really fast, with minimum bloat. Hyper-WRT (Thibor) seemed like a good compromise. Btw, the TX power adjustment is a really neat feature. You can boost the power of the transmitter by quite a bit, and completely torpedo the interference from your neighbor's 2.4GHz cordless phone!
the connection problems that the v5 has with the linksys firmware? It has been reported on tomshardware.com that the v5 (both linux and non-linux versions) has issues with evenly sharing bandwidth when more than 16 or so connections exist. It usually happens when you run p2p apps. I wondered what the hell was going on because I was running eMule and when I read the article I happened to have eMule shutdown and as soon as I started it up while downloading from my ISP's news server my bandwidth went from a steady 9% (on a 54mbps link) down to a fluctuating 2%-4%. It would be great if this was able to fix that problem. (Newest firmware from linksys was shown not to help as that was what tomshardware.com tested with).
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