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Beef Up Your Wireless Router
Doctor High writes "Josh Kuo's article Beef Up Your Wireless Router talks about the OpenWRT embedded Linux distro for the the Linksys WRT series wireless routers (and more). The article lays out some of the amazing things you can do with your Linux-enabled wireless router such as using it as a VoIP gateway, a wireless hotspot, or even an encrypted layer 2 tunnel endpoint for remote troubleshooting."
... but my Linksys router has enough trouble keeping up with the normal jobs it is supposed to be doing. When I saw the title, I was hoping that it was about over-clocking or adding memory.
Yeah he mentioned a lot of cool stuff that can be done with Linux installed on the router, but my wireless router already does a good portion of that stuff - DHCP, it can be a wireless hotspot if it wants to be (not with any special features; for those I'd just need to use a computer)... and a number of other things that he mentioned are already part of 99% of the wireless routers that I've seen.
Aside from the things he mentioned that are already part of wireless routers, the rest of it seems cool.
I did it with a Linksys router I jus bought for that purpose, it work flawlessly, the interesting part of it is the huge config possibilities offered over the trad. factory default microprogram installed on it. That is not so new hack but it will make your admin life easier
Another example of how free software is better than proprietary software.
An image of a cat-5 cable for a story about a wireless device?
You might also check out dd-wrt. Offers a lot of the same features. I'm not saying it's better, but it's an alternative...and works with many linksys, buffalo, asus, belkin, etc. And their wiki is a wealth of information on configuration and use of the dd-wrt firmware.
My wireless router completely failed to download the webpage.
I suppose it could stand to be beefed up a little.
Linksys routers (v4.0 and earlier) were great before they started reducing RAM and ROM size (w/o reducing the price of course).
Today you get only Linksys routers with about 8MB RAM and 2MB ROM.
You can't do anything with them. They're completely worthless.
With a 2MB ROM you're forced to use the micro size image of OpenWRT which doesn't even include pppoe(!).
(But DD-WRT which is by far better than OpenWRT (IMO) does have pppoe in their micro size image.)
I returned all Linksys routers I had and switched to the Asus WL-500g which has plenty of RAM and ROM and USB.
Linksys completely failed it. The Linux version of their router is no replacement and I really hope they will be sold or crapped by Cisco soon because they deserve it (for being stupid).
Yeah, I got one of that WRT54G from linksys, but it happens to be a v5 router preloaded with vxWorks proprietary operational system. Linksys' WRT54G and WRT54GS v5, v5.1 and v6 versions got less flash (2 mb flash memory and 8 mb of ram instead of 4 mb flash and 16 mb ram from other versions), It's possible to load a very minimal OpenWRT firmware into it, but it wont give you all advantages that you got with more storage.
o w&redirect=toh
The best model for using OpwnWRT are the "L" series (WRT54GL) that according to Linksys, are built specially for the Linux modding comunity.
Don't buy v5 or v6 if you want to use OpenWRT.Consult this page before acquiring a router: http://wiki.openwrt.org/TableOfHardware?action=sh
This isn't like the time they told me to solder the ends of a light cord to my modem to make my internet faster is it ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I haven't gotten around to flashing my old Fon router with it yet, but a friend gave me a demo of his Linksys/Tomato setup... and it is very, very nice indeed. Almost any data you could think of wanting, any control you might want to exercise, presented in a clean, fast AJAX UI: http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato
DD-WRT is the most feature rich of the WRT firmwares, and the v24 promises of multiple, virtual APs with different encryptions will make me upgrade, but I like Thibor's Hyperwrt better if you don't need all the bells and whistles.
Thibor's HyperWRT is closer to the stock firmware than DD-WRT. It offers telnet and configured startup scripts. It offers static IP assignment, QoS, WDS, and client bridge mode. It switches between client and AP mode with much shorter reboots then DD-WRT and has a smaller footprint.
So I recommend Thibor's for most users, and DD-WRT for those running hotspots or VOIP.
A few weeks ago, installed Tomato firmware 1.04 for my Buffalo WHR-G54S wireless router. (But I see now they have 1.05 available.)
So far, I've been blown away by the fantastic web interface and the rock-solid performance. It just freakin works without having to reboot the router every few weeks.
The web interface is simply amazing compared to what I've seen in other firmware. The QOS settings are a breeze to setup, too.
If you don't like Tomato, checkout other firmware projects like:
DD-WRT
FreeWRT
HyperWRT (official)
HyperWRT Thibor
OpenWRT
Tarifa
X-Wrt
I always wanted to run a custom Linux firmware on a Linksys WRT54G, but when I went to several stores, all I saw on the box was the model number, not the version number. Some versions are compatible, others have different hardware and are not, but all the boxes look the same. This is rather strange considering most versions (presumably the free software compatible ones) already run Linux by default! Why don't companies proudly advertise the fact that they run Linux and that it is hackable? Those are useful features! The same goes for zipit wireless messengers. All run Linux, but the manufacture released a new version that cryptographically locks out the ability to load the device with a custom firmware, so you need to modify the hardware if you want to use these neat and inexpensive little computers as pocket web browsers, ssh clients, ogg players, or other cool things like that. By default they are only useful as an IM device. Why do companies go out of their way to stop their users from improving their own hardware and in the long run, doing free development work for the company? Why don't corporations want essentially unpaid dedicated employees?
I also would love to have a media player that runs Rockbox, but various hardware is in different stages of rockbox support. It seams like there would be a significant market for products that advertise the fact that they work with free software firmwares right on the box. It's a shame that many industries view "proprietary" as a feature, as something developed uniquely and innovatively by one company. Anything proprietary should instead be suspect of being buggy because there is no way for the public to verify it's security, it probably has poor support for open standards, and it's probably feature limited and uncustomizable.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Here's a working link to the article: http://weblog.infoworld.com/geeks/archives/2007/02 /beef_up_your_wi.html
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I just bought a Linksys WRT54GL on Friday (it hasn't been delivered yet, though). Part of the decision was that this line of routers enjoys such wide use, seems to be very well supported on the Internet both with the regular and alternative firmwares. I plan on using either DD-WRT or Tomato (OpenWRT seems a little more complicated with less features, but the difference is probably not big). Apart from what the article says (obvious and few things), does anyone have any advice for me, things I need to look out for or just really cool applications?
Axe me while I slumber
OpenWRT wasn't very practical. It only worked on really old hardware that wasn't in stores anymore. Even then, you needed exactly the right serial number revision. The serial numbers that worked were made in small quantities and virtually impossible to find. Flashed a Linksys access point and bricked it. There was no JTAG or bootloader on the router to recover it.
What's really needed is wireless router for desktop computers instead of attempts to reverse engineer Linksys routers just for the sake of being embedded.
"8MB RAM and 2MB ROM ought to be enough for anybody."
*ducks*
Does it run linux? hehehe
Wait ... so, you've been on the Mac platform since the days when it consisted of drastically overpriced hardware, a proprietary, marginally stable cooperative-multitasking OS and a very expensive developer's toolkit? I'm guessing you weren't a geek at the time -- if you were, you'd've thrown up your hands in disgust, as I did, and moved to platform that at least offered a command line interface.
... do you want a cookie or a prize?
Congratulations on not being a geek, I guess
Having used both, OpenWRT is great for acting as a server for various things, while DD-WRT is great for using it primarily as an advanced router.
I think it had an article a year or so back, but those who have an old P2 or something collecting dust in their closet may want to consider m0n0wall, a FreeBSD based LiveCD that can turn your old PC into a commercial-grade router complete with firewall, traffic shaping, PPTP/IPSec, wake on LAN, and more. You don't need any experience with BSD to set it up, as pretty much everything can be done from the WebGUI it uses, no HDD is needed, you only use the LiveCD, and a floppy disk to store configuration data in xml, and using thumb drives instead of a floppy is planned for the next release (finally a use for that old 32 meg one in my junk drawer).
I'm extremely happy with it, I can game while my server is seeding a torrent, and my pings never suffer.
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction." - Blaise Pascal
I'm currently running HoTTProxy on my main PC behind my Linksys WRT54GS (which currently has the latest HyperWRT firmware), so that I can get "free" Internet access for my Verizon phones. It works just fine, but I'd love to offload that task to the router, because it seems like a logical thing for it to be doing, rather than the PC. I haven't successfully found any way of doing that. I've checked both the HyperWRT and DD-WRT forums. I see lots of references to Squid transparent proxy, but it doesn't sound like that's the solution to my problem. I also see TONS of stuff about VOIP, which I wish I had known before I sold my soul to Vonage, but that isn't what I'm looking for either.
Anyone have any knowledge if this is possible or not? I did see one post that said something about HTTP proxy servers being fairly memory intensive (at least for a router with a measly 16 MB RAM), and that it isn't worth doing it on a router, but I find it hard to believe that with all the crazy things they're doing with these Linux-based firmwares, that someone hasn't figured out how to do exactly that, for specifically that purpose.
The article doesn't mention QoS, for me this was the main reason I got the wrt54g and openwrt. You can put traffic control on there and shape/limit the traffic going through. Together with the marking of packets from iptables this is a very powerful function only usually available on much more expensive kit.
I used it so I could play FPS without latency problems when other users were on the LAN. It would also really help out for VoIP.
I guess Linksys won't advertise this fact, which is a shame as it could make this a huge seller, partly because their supplied firmware doesn't support it and partly because they want to push people towards Cisco kit for this kind of functionality. Plus the average user probably isn't able to flash openwrt/dd-wrt onto the box and then write their own firewall/tc rulesets. Maybe someone should write a nice web frontend to TC and start reselling wrts with it installed....
Well, because it isn't free I will probably get modded down for this, but I have messed around with stuff like OpenWRT on a Linksys and although it was kind of neat, what I would do is ditch the Linksys and run Mikrotik's RouterOS on a RouterBoard or similar hardware. I'm not saying it is perfect, but the RouterOS platform, which based on Linux, along with a custom-built CLI, is the most advanced of any software I have ever looked at for a wireless AP.
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
For those comparing DD-WRT to OpenWRT regarding ease of use - you should check out the webif^2 package for OpenWRT which brings ease of use to the nice OpenWRT backend.
Everything is controlled from a nicely organized GUI, from basic network setup to OpenVPN and chillispot .
Check it out : http://x-wrt.org/
Kharma whoring - here's the text.
Also known as the "Instant +5, just add water" technique.
Worked pretty well too, I see.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I'm always wondering why Linksys, or their OEMs, or anybody, don't sell a 'naked' router, or 'micro PC' that runs linux, and by default doesn't do much more. Developing and maintaining the firmware must cost them money, and they don't earn any money by including nagware (like Dell does), so these naked, no-firmware micro PCs should actually be cheaper than the real ones. But all i can find online which comes close to "a Linksys router without an OS, so go ahead and hack the hell out of it" would be stuff like the Gumstix or Soekris devices, which all seem way more expensive than e.g. a basic, re-flashable Linksys router.
Does anybody know of someone selling a Linksys-router-class micro-PC, that easily exposes stuff like the internal serial port, has at least one USB port, and a Wifi-module plugged in? Imagine what a standard hackable platform like that could end up doing, if it were even cheaper than the "branded" devices, and and a guarantee that alternative firmwares like like OpenWRT ran on it!
I especially don't understand why Linksys for example has header-pins for a fullblown serial port on their boards, but don't include an external DB9 connector, at least on their 'hackable' -L model.
Wire it.
There are routers that do not allow flashing a custom firmware: However, most devices do have bugs in the webinterface that allows the owner to execute arbitrary shell code to circumvent this protection. Often, there a different approaches: The routers given away by FON (La Fonera) did have some web interface vulnerabilities, however FON fixed this in the latest firmware (0.7.1-2). They did not pay attention to their chillispot system: There is an attack vector that involves spoofing the FON radius server, in the tradition of the earlier hacks Grammofon and Fondue, this new hack (which works on all FON firmware versions) is called Kolofonium. It enables SSH access to the devices and by that allows further customization.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
A question before I go out and buy one tomorrow.
0 /55/1/4/
The article has such worthless gems as "Peer-to-Peer may be the domain of bootleggers, slackers and cheapskates today, but it probably will play an important part in the legal distribution of video in the not too distant future." "The jury is still out as to whether the problem is in the router itself, or due to ISP bandwidth throttling." Then concludes with the statement, all of the routers can handle your tiny pipes, and anyways, your just going to get sued if your router works too well.
My current router has regular problems after a few hours of chatting it up with fellow bittorrent users, it shuts down.
The only review I have found that seems to even touch on this subject was absolutely worthless, testing 100 connections from one PC to another for 1 minute. Which is absolutely not the conditions of P2P, for his test he didn't even run a p2p application! let alone run it for a couple days.
http://news.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/2584
Would the additional IP connections cure this problem? This is reason number one why I am buying a new router, I am sick of having to cycle the power on mine every couple of days. is this router/linux combo up to the task of lots of bittorent for days at a time?
Also, on an unrelated note, Does anyone know if its possible to run two security modes, One that is setup for insecure WEP and only allow my Nintendo DS and Wii on the network, and the other running a more secure network authentication.
Or would it be possible to run a Open access point, with throttled speeds, for my neighbors in my apartment building, and a closed access point with authentication that runs at full speed?
Or would the dual security modes be something I should setup with the two routers I will soon have?
Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
I can recommend the X-Wrt add-on suite for OpenWrt. It replaces the OpenWrt webif (web interface) with webif^2, which is much-improved. It adds a lot more control, many more options, real-time performance graphs, and all sorts of neat things. Installation was a single command, or you can do it via a web page.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
The GUI will take care of everything on DDWRT. The wiki at www.dd-wrt.com is very helpful. If you have trouble following it, you probably should rethink messing with your router.
If Bush wants to kill the terrorists, he should jump off a cliff.
This paper
http://eprint.iacr.org/2006/086.pdf
includes a section on openwrt and basically claims that you shouldn't trust it to provide good random numbers (and hence good network crypto security) because it doesn't have any of the standard sources of entropy (keyboard, mouse, harddrive) that linux servers have. Of course, it will likely be no worse than the standard firmware but that isn't really the point here.
I read a blog recently that questions the integrity of one of dd-wrt's developers. Apparently, the guy who calls himself brainslayer and who seems to have done most of the integration work (IINM), is now selling the work of others as his own. ... and other accusations. Read for yourself :
- to-exploit-free-open.html
http://xwrt.blogspot.com/2007/02/dd-wrt-continues
I'm not sure if there's anything wrong with it myself, but you might want to consider your options, if such things are important to you.
I'm using dd-wrt myself, and I'm looking at replacing it with Tomato, since dd-wrt's web server (the GUI) keeps locking up (logging into it wish ssh reveals httpd is using 100% CPU and killing it causes it to be relaunched). Also, I really don't need all the crap that's in the regular version of dd-wrt, so I'd move to the micro version of dd-wrt anyway, but since that will likely have the same httpd problem, I figure I might as well give Tomato a try.
Yeah, you might care more about the httpd lockup than the developer's integrity. Just a couple of things to consider. YMMV
Max.
It's also a bit easier to recover a Buffalo WHR-G54S from an accidental "bricking". The emergency TFTP bootloader is nearly impossible to damage.
Very useful info, thank you. I'll think I'll pick one up next time I need a router. Got a linksys monoculture springing up around me anyway...
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato
AJAX based, real time traffic charts, more options, much more robust QOS configuration, ability to run your own scripts, auto mounting of external network volumes, and the options go on and on.
I have nothing bad to say about this firmware, at all.
I use DD-Wrt, and am very impressed with how solid, stable, flexible, and easy-to-use it is.
Some examples of its versatility:
When I first moved into my new house, I had no internet, so I shared my neighbors; in this case, I configured it as a repeated for the same wireless network. It invisibly acted as another node/booster for this network for my house, working beautifully and seamleslsy.
When I finally did get internet, the telco's router had built-in wireless, so I didn't need my Linksys/DD-Wrt box for the local gateway. I started using it in "client mode", as a handy "wireless card" for ethernet enabled items. I hook it up to my gamecube's Broadband Adapter to get it wirelessy on the network. Most of the time, I use it as a wireless gateway for my network printer. I'm finding it incredibly useful as a wireless enabler for anything with ethernet.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
??????????
Someone forgot to take their meds?
I`ve not gone thru the list yet of kit that works - but when i looked at this before it was for wireless routers that you use with cable connections.
I`m moving house soon to a non-cabled street and so i`m gonna need a new ADSL wireless router...
Anyone know of any that you can flash?
Acid House saves Souls
Firefox IS a decent Mac application. Actually, it's an excellent Mac application.
Command-Control-Shift-4-Space is way better than either one of those.
No one uses Clarus when we have the opportunity to use the NeoOffice beta, which is awesome.
If any of those kids have been using Macs for more than 4 years I will EAT MY FUCKING MACBOOK PRO.
And anything OS X 10.2 sucked nads. Welcome to the real world, asshole.
+++ATH0
Yeah, except DD-WRT isn't based on OpenWRT at all.
I thought you were misspelling "Claris."
No, instead you were referring to the dogcow. FUCK MOOF.
What does "OS X integration" MEAN? It's a BROWSER, you silly little freak. How much "integration" do you want? Camino is buggy and shitty and none of Firefox's plugins for for it.
I've already achieved complete and total victory over you for knowing Cmd-Ctrl-Shift-4-Space when you didn't. You've lost. Just slit your wrists and die, emo kid. And remember, it's down the street, not across the block!
Learn to use your Mac like a real nerd or go home. If you don't always have a Terminal window open, you've already failed.
GNAA 4 LYFE
+++ATH0