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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.
Other manufacturers (nvidia, are you reading this) - this applies for you too. If you support the software I use most (Linux) I will support your hardware.
What's the real point. Sure, the VXWorks version of the WRT54G is a little bit cheaper but, it has less memory, which limits its capabilities. The old Linux capable WRT54G is still available in the form of the WRT54GL so, why would anyone choose this route?
As I think about it, this development may actually hurt the WRT54G Linux crowd. If price is the motivating factor and everyone opts for the slightly cheaper VXWorks version, Cisco will likely discontinue the WRT54GL due to lack of sales leaving the LInux crowd with a less featureful option.
Others have said it, but the reason is that VXWorks has a smaller footprint. The VXWorks versions have half the ram and half the flash space of the other versions.
Linksys/cisco embrace the whole "DIY" crowd and have produced a "WRT54GL" with the full amount of ram and flash so that linux hackers can do their thing. They made it difficult to flash the VXWorks one because too many idiots would try and flash a 4mb image on it and brick it, causing support headaches.
Difference between WRT54G and WAP54G = $20 and a little work. I wanted to set up MythTv for my home. My internet access is in the back room but I watch myth in the front room. Naturally I went with wireless since the wife didn't want the ugly cables. I went to my local electronics store and bought a 54G not thinking it couldn't be a client. I set it up and home and found out I bought the wrong product rather quickly. Knowing that hacks like this exist for anything with a chip I did a little research and found the SVEASoft firmware. Downloaded it from another site (it's open source, thank you Linksys). I upgraded my firmware and on reboot got a blinking red light. That's when I found out about the term brick. After my heart started beating again, I did another search and found a quick tutorial on how to un-brick your system and first step is to try the Linksys exe (worked like a charm, again thanks Linksys). I then found DD-WRT, installed and worked like a charm. I was a little confused that I had to set my clients name as the same as the wireless server to enable the bridge, but after getting that straight everything worked like a charm. Overall, the potential heart attack was not worth $20, but the satisfaction of buying something, finding out it doesn't work and turning to the open source community for the answer, Priceless.
Amazed, am I, at Linksys's continuing to miss the opportunity to sell a fully featured WRT54G themselves. They could have a knockout product out of the box in that price range that would leave the competition scrambling, but persist in sticking to a basic, no frills configuration.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It's $20 extra and it has more ram. $20. Why should they bother giving everyone more expensive hardware when only 0.0001% of the consumers will even use the extra ram?
When I read this story on Slashdot, it occured to me how funny the news post was. Print it out and let your parents read it. See how much they get. It's rare to see this many shortcuts and technical terms even on Slashdot, don't you think?
Full Tilt
If your only problem with the old router was a fried "WAN" port, you dont need to get a new one. The only special thing about the "WAN" port is the way the device is configured. Any other port can be a WAN port (assuming you have spare ports).
Here is why you are seeing the bittorrent drops: http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2006/06/08/linksys_w rt54g_v5_really_is_a_lousy_router/
Maybe you could check this:
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_conntrack_max
~ # cat
4096
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
The only complaint I have about dd-wrt is that it doesn't have a comprehensive firewall rules GUI. You can do port mapping all day long, but something simple like denying all LAN traffic outbound except for a select proxy box is simply not possible. UNLESS of course you use FWBuilder and send your script to iptables. But then you're blind and can't administer it through the dd-wrt GUI. Even the most basic firewall box has this ability. Is there something I'm missing besides the command-line grandeur of iptables?
I got a V5 and returned it within a few days, simply because it outright sucked. Slow connections to everything, unstable connections (IRC died several times randomly), running servers on it was simply out of the question due to insanely laggy incoming connections, and when I discovered I couldn't reflash it with a better firmware, there was no way I could live with it. Compared to my BEFW11S4 (may it rest in peace), Linksys has apparently gone waaaay downhill in my experience.
I'm now running on a D-Link DI-624, which has its own problems (yes, I've read that Slashdot article), but at least works.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
They also use a heck of a lot less power than a full PC. Its power supply is 12 volts at half an amp, which works out at about six Watts, worst-case.
Linksys did it the way they did as a backhanded way to cash in on the Free Software crowd. You can tell because the GL is basically the same hardware as the V4, but they increased the price
You need to learn about economies of scale. The v5 is cheaper hardware, thus it is better for the people who don't want to flash it - this is the vast majority of the customer base. They have continued to sell the v4 for the very tiny fraction of the customer base who want to flash them. They will be manufacturing the v4 in (relatively) small factory runs and this increases the manufacturing cost for each unit. Not to mention the costs associated with stocking an extra low-volume product line. Whilest this probably doesn't account for the entire price increase, it will certainly be significant.
If Linksys actually cared about the community they'd have just continued with one version
I'm not sure how becoming uncompetetive in the market place benefits anyone. The vast majority of customers *do not know or care* about hacking these devices, so why should they pay for more expensive hardware just so that a few people can hack them?
or at least continued to use Linux on the crippled "normal" V5.
The v5 has much less resources (RAM/Flash) and VxWorks is much smaller than Linux. They used the best tool for the job. Remember the job _they_ are trying to do is different to what you ware trying to do - they just want to sell an access point, they don't want to include the extra features that you can get by running WhiteRussian or similar.
Cisco is a business who's job is to make money. The fact that they obviously believe that they can make money (or at least not lose money) by selling the GL version to the small number of us who want to be able to flash it is a Good Thing, even if that means we get charged slightly more.
Remember that a proportion of the sales of their more expensive hardware may well be undercut by people running hacked 54GL's - I bought mine so I could flash it with WhiteRussian and turn on 802.1q support, if this hadn't been possible I probably ended up buying something more expensive in order to get the functionality.
The more businesses that realise they can make money by selling what we want instead of ignoring us as a minority the better.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Read the parent post, you fucktard.