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."

Maybe it is just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

... 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.

Personal experience with "OpenWRT"

[heroine]

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.

Re:Stay the hell away from Linksys!!!

[m0i]

After buying a Linksys 54Gv6 and realizing its shortcomings (small flash/memory), I found the Buffalo WHR-G54S. Same memory as the 54GL, but with the 125mbps chipset. All this for a good price (38USD [newegg.com]!).

Re:ATTN: SWITCHEURS!

[Xeger]

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.

Congratulations on not being a geek, I guess ... do you want a cookie or a prize?

Re:Personal experience with "OpenWRT"

[rossifer]

OpenWRT wasn't very practical. It only worked on really old hardware that wasn't in stores anymore.

I've only flashed two Linksys routers with DD-WRT, but my experience couldn't be more different from yours... One is three years old, but the other is a six month old WRT54GL, and both still work like a charm.

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.

On this point, you're simply misinformed. Almost all Version 2-4 Linksys WRT54G and all WRT54GL routers work with DD-WRT just fine. And even then, DD-WRT can be run on an enormous number of broadcom-based broadband routers. Linksys just happened to be the first to sell them really cheap.

Flashed a Linksys access point and bricked it. There was no JTAG or bootloader on the router to recover it.

This is a real risk, though if you follow the flashing procedures exactly the risk is pretty low (in fact, you're the first non DD-WRT developer I've heard of who has bricked one). Luckily, the best router [newegg.com] for DD-WRT is only $45 shipped, so even if things do go wrong, you're not out a whole lot of money.

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.

Have you compared the power consumption of a small desktop running linux vs a broadband router? 150W vs. 10W is what my "kill-a-watt" says. 140W running 24/7 costs me about $15/month (southern California), so the Buffalo router pays for itself in reduced power bills in three months. Another perspective: over the course of a year I would save almost $180 in power bills. I don't know about you, but I can do a lot with $180 and I'd rather keep that money instead of handing it over to the power company.

Regards,
Ross

Re:Maybe it is just me...

[samkass]

It is possible though just to use an old PC as the router, and a lot more flexible.

As long as you don't mind consuming vastly more electricity than you need to, it is a little more flexible.

Re:Bittorent (IP Connections)

[RedBear]

This page [dd-wrt.com] 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.

Re:Linux newbie friendly?

[lavid]

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.

Re:Maybe it is just me...

[Doctor_Jest]

That's why you stay within the tool's recommended settings (the tool should say so, iirc in the help screen of the web interface). I boosted my output (with bigger antennas) a few milliwatts and got connectivity in my backyard... it's well below the "threshold" set by the FCC and it helps with connectivity around the house and yard. (Go 80 feet to the fence, and you're out of range...)

But you're right... people pumping up their output power has the potential to piss off some people, and piss enough of them off, and they'll come visit you.. ;)

Besides, if I want to use WiFi outside my yard, I can just use the 7 unencrypted spots near me. :)