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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
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).
Maybe because that's the ultimate way to fix all wireless problems?
I don't respond to AC's.
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.
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.
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
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.