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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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
I just got one a few weeks ago and replaced my WRT54G v6 with it. The same day I flashed to DD-WRT micro (they say you're supposed to start with that before upgrading the version you really want), and panicked because the web interface never game back. I did a reset on the router, and it's been running ever since. I was really impressed the other day when I upgraded to the VPN version of DD-WRT, and during the reboot I never even noticed an internet connection loss. Even MSN and AOL messengers stayed connected.
I haven't used a lot of the features, but I do like the control I have. I boosted my power to 35mW from 28, and that seems to have made my room mates upstairs connections a bit more stable. I can't see how a significant boost would help without external high gain antennas, because the wi-fi client cards are still limited to a very low power output. I can also view neighboring access points with it to find free channels, which is much easier than having to boot up my laptop to check. It's easy to view how the hardware is utilized, and it seems the wireless connection to my media box has less dropped frames and freezes when streaming a full DVD quality 8Mbps MPEG2 file than it did with the stock firmware.
I haven't regretted it at all.
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
Wire it.
This page talks about that specific problem, at least with Linksys routers, and describes a simple solution using the DD-WRT firmware. Just changing a couple of network settings should fix it.
If you're getting a Linksys router you'll want the WRT54gL because that's the model that still runs Linux and has enough RAM and flash to use the full feature set of the alternative firmwares. As for running multiple security setups, I don't think even open firmwares can do that on a single router, so you'd need two. There are features that let you run as a hotspot. I'm not an expert on that so I'm not sure if you can run a single router as both a regular router and a public hotspot. It could certainly be done with two separate routers. Just make sure you run the two routers on widely spaced channels if they are in close proximity, like channel 1 and 11.
Having them on two separate networks is easy. Just leave the LAN IP of one router at the default of 192.168.1.1 and set the other one to use 192.168.2.1 with DHCP on and a gateway address of 192.168.1.1 (subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 on both routers). Any clients that connect to the "insecure router" will get an address on a different subnet.
Oh, and make sure you've turned on the connection encryption features of your BitTorrent client, that can help get around ISP bandwidth throttling, if that's a problem with your ISP.
I would personally reccommend the Buffalo WHR-G54S instead. (Not the HP version, that still has some issues with DD-WRT and OpenWRT, or at least DD...)
It's cheaper, easier to obtain (the "L" variants of the Linksys routers are mailorder-only, while Circuit City sells the Buffalos), and as well supported as the Linksys routers by DD-WRT. I'm running DD on mine and love it.
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.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
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.
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.
Re: multiple vlans
yes, the dd-wrt's internet switch is programmable so you can have each port as a different subnet, and have the dd-wrt *not* route between them.
can't be done using the GUI though, so you'll have to get your hands dirty. in fact, the GUI gets in the way (changing something will mess everything up), and IMO you'd do better looking at firmware that either does not have a GUI or has a GUI that allows this. I was using DD-WRT but have been finding it unreliable (httpd locks up) and so I would recommend looking at different simpler firmware.
There was a thread on dd-wrt's forums on how to set up the dd-wrt to have a different vlan on each port, but it's not there any more (I think the forum s/w was switched and they didn't keep the old stuff).
Max.
The internet archive has the discussion for how to make each port a different network :
f orum.bsr-clan.de/ftopic5179.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20070318234029/http://
HTH
Max.
Actually, they do have a tutorial to setup separate VLAN on each port in their wiki: http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/VLAN_Detached _Networks_(Separate_Networks_With_Internet)
_ and_WLAN
And closer to the GP's request, there's a tuturial to separate the WLAN from LAN: http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Separate_LAN