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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.
The v5 I bought was returned to BestBuy for explicitly the reason that it didn't support Linux. However, if I bricked it by trying something unsupported like this, I would not have expected free warranty work to get it back into shape. If this was the plan, then at least in my case, it backfired somewhat.
This is fabulous news. I own an early WRT54G which I use as a bridged PPPoE connection, and also as a router (both wireless and wired), and with custom firmware it performs a blindingly good job. As of right now, it has an uptime of just over a month, and I believe that was because of a powerout.
The original firmware was by no means pitiful, but it lacked a huge number of features that coders have 'rereleased', such as QoS, more advanced scripting abilities, better performance with BT and so on.
When I heard that they had moved to VxWorks, with no backwards compatibility with the custom firmware, I thought it was a stupid move. The firmware has improved immensely from the countless iterations created by outside coders, why not let that process continue?
I had lightening somehow take out my cable modem (which I rent) last weekend... it also fried the WAN port on my V2.2 WRT54G that was completely stock.
Needing a WAN port I went and bought another WRT54G (a new one at Best Buy that happens to be a V5)...
I knew that the WRT54G was hackable though, so I figured I would try to make some use out of the one with the dead WAN port. I nabbed the DD-WRT firmware and loaded it up... and on the first try it worked beautifully (well... I mean the firmware worked... I still didn't have a purpose for it yet).
I started looking at what the firmware could do and noticed the "client-bridge" wireless mode... meaning it could bridge two wired networks with a wireless link. I tried it out and sure enough it connected to my new V5 WRT54G without problem. Looking around my apartment I noticed a long ethernet cable running around the baseboards from where my cable modem and router sit (in my TV nook... where my ReplayTV is plugged into them) to where my server and desktop are.... and the thought came to me that I could use the "broken" WRT54G to bridge that gap instead (and make my wife happier... with less cords).
I hooked it up... and it's been working beautifully for a week... a very nice solution.
With how satisfied I was I thought it would be great to be able to hack my new one at some point in the future too... and when I found out that the V5 was difficult/impossible (at that time) to hack... and instead Linksys made a WRT54GL model that still ran linux and was hackable... I ordered one of those up (for about $10 more) and am planning on taking the V5 back to Best Buy as soon as the new one arrives from Amazon (later this week).
This news doesn't really change my mind about this... the WRT54GL is inherently a more hackable system (more memory and such) and should remain a good workhorse into the future.
The moral of all of these ramblings is that Linux is great! How did I come to that conclusion? Well... it's nothing except the open-sourceness of my old router's firmware that allowed me to still get utility out of it after part of it had failed. If it was some proprietary BS (like VxWorks) then it would have just been a plastic brick....
Friedmud
Even with this hack, the WRT54G v5 doesn't have the resources. We should be telling users to buy one of the equivelent routers from another vendor, such as the Asus or the Buffalo.
For starters, we need a new name to identify this platform (vs. calling it the WRT54G). The WRT54G/S is just one product utilizing the Broadcom platform.
Also, what about similar platforms from other wireless vendors? Their is a similar Linux platform from Conexant (Prism), but that's hard to get now. How about a Linux Atheros platform? After all, isn't Broadcom supposed to be the least open source friendly of the wireless chipset companies?
All that is a thing of the past. In fact, here's what my router says now:
-SuperTux
Cisco/Linksys lobotimized the WRT54G by halving the flash and ram from the previous version, not to mention locking down access by puting a locked up vxworks on it. It's also quite retarded by having only two real ethernet ports, one attached to a built in six port switch with vlans. Makes some kind of routing impossible, and is less secure as firewall routing rules don't apply to packets that never get seen by the kernel.
The WRTSL54GS on the other hand has 32MB ram and 8MB flash, perfect for installing lots more software, and all the ports are true ports, making it fully routable/usable and more secure.
Cisco/Linksys:
When are you going to release a Linux Wireless Router that handles 802.11a/5.4GHz?
Why doesn't Compusa and Best Buy carry the units that can be Linuxatized/made useful?
How about a Linux router without wireless?
I know that if this last product existed, tens of thousands of these could be sold, and that's just to the company I work for.
No, 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 -- anyone buying a GL is paying more for the same functionality!
If Linksys actually cared about the community they'd have just continued with one version, or at least continued to use Linux on the crippled "normal" V5.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Not quite: Linksys reduced the memory from 16MB to 8MB and flash from 4MB to 2MB when they changed from v4 to v5 version. They then introduced a new model, the GL one which didn't exist before which has basically the old hardware, memory, flash and all at a higher cost. So yes it's a cash in. Simple greed to exploit the brand they created by cutting their costs and the capabilities of the hardware and pocketing the profits.
Have you thought that they were previously subsidising the lower cost of the WRT54Gv4 by the sheer volume of sales?
Moving it to a specialty product with a narrower audience is going to blow their economies of scale out of the water. They shrunk their consumer product down to save money by dropping the memory, then reintroduced a specialty product to fill a niche demand. Specialty products always cost more than general audience products. Besides, some retailers have already discounted them to the point where they're under $60.
In a way, it is greed. They want to be able to compete with all those cheaper routers with less memory using vxworks. If they don't, then their profits go away. Too bad it looks like their gambit won't succeed. Their vxworks product has been getting horrendous reviews.
Why can't someone hack something useful like a cheap gigabit 16 port router? The wrt54g is certainly promising for hacking some private vpn wireless connections but other than that it only has 4 ports.
I dream of a powerful 16/24 port gigabit swiich I could load linux on. I could then get IPv6, broadcast, anycast, multicast, and all the other new IPv6 protocols I'd love to play with and customize it to my hearts content. No more proprietary BS.
I'd settle for an 8 port gigabit switch and a 16 10/100 for appliences.
I need all those ports because eventually everything will be hooked into it, routers, phones, stereo, if it's possible I'm going to do it. It's disgusting how all the home user venders are ignoring a feature they could hype.
but if your going to replace the firmware anyway why would you care about the original sucking?
the reason for the wrt54gs fame is it was/is cheap small low power and customisable. For example i know someone doing a major wireless scanning project using one as the head end (you wan't the antenna leads as short as possible and its a lot easier to set up a wrt54g on the roof in a box than a full PC as its small and can be powered withoug having to worry about the problems of safely doing mains outside.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
DD-WRT ? Sorry. I use openwrt. Very modified, actually.
About additional capabilities. Double RAM (32), double flash (16), and USB ports.
These days, I use these MIPS based routers for lots of things. Including WiFi access point, but that is actually 10% of the use (at most). Firewalls, VPN servers, Asterisk servers, QoS bridges, security gateways, remote admin boxes (using USB-Serial adapters), backup servers etc etc.
They are cheap, reliable and have VERY low power consumption.
There are, of course, a few things I can't do with them (mail servers due to antispam and av, and a few other things that require too much memory). But the number of different things you can do with one of these babies is impressive.
morcego