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.

DD-WRT

[the_maddman]

It's the dd-wrt [dd-wrt.com] project, not WR-DDT. Great package though, I run it on my v4 WRT54G.

They aren't fighting them.

[Poromenos1]

They aren't fighting them. In fact, they have released WRT54GL with linux, specifically for this purpose. They just didn't want people bricking their routers and returning them under warranty.

Re:Windows Installs

[Anonymous Coward]

So use a UPS during the install! There are also instructions on how to de-brick your router, although I haven't had to try any of them thankfully.

Re:DD-WRT

[FuturePastNow]

I'm running it on my v2, and it's been great. This is good news for people who don't want to spend an extra $20 on the WRT54GL.

Re:Watch out for 3rd party firmwares for these

[Tumbleweed]

What problems did you have with DD-WRT? I'm about to upgrade my v2.1 router with it, so I'd like to know what gotchas to watch out for.

Re:Does it have a client mode?

[Anonymous Coward]

DD-WRT v23 SP1 lists:

AP, Client, Client Bridge, Adhoc

So I assume the answer to this is yes. I've never used this feature however so I can't say how well it works.

Re:Does it have a client mode?

[friedmud]

I'm using DD-WRT in client-bridge mode on my V2.2... and it works beautifully (you can even scan the local area for networks and then just click the "Join" button next to them to get connected... very slick).

Don't know if the micro version supports this though.

Friedmud

Forum

[Rinisari]

We over at the DD-WRT [dd-wrt.com] forum have been following this for a while [dd-wrt.com].

As with any other fine F/OSS project, please donate [dd-wrt.com] if you find the project useful.

Re:They aren't fighting them.

[jleq]

I believe the Linux edition contains more memory.

Re:DD-WRT

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using DD-WRT on my WRT54G(L) for the past 3 weeks, its excellent firmware, very streight-forward install, rock solid, and fast, I really liked this solution vs some of the other firmware available (openwrt for example)....anyway, for those who want a router with more power to it, check out the WRT54GL, its only about $10 more, and you can load the full DDWRT image on it (sp1) and it's great tons of fun features! :)

Re:DD-WRT

[yorugua]

... not spend an extra $20 while knowing that a WRT54G v5 flashed with dd-wrt will also have less functionality than a WRT54G-v1-v4 or the new WRT54GL. If that functionality (call it SIP, QoS, OpenVPN, NoCatAuth, larger number of connections) which require the larger memory of the previous wrt54g or the newer wrt54gl is needed for you, you'll be out of luck with the wrt54g v5 and it smaller foot print of memory resources. I guess that if all you need is some extra power out the antenna or things like that, maybe you can do with a wrt54g, but dont be misleaded by the $20 difference: we are talking about whether you want to turn your $80 router into a $400 one or not... as usual, your choice.

Re:They aren't fighting them.

[cafucu]

I read on Linksys' site that their primary motive was (surprise) saving money. Vxworks requires half the RAM as Linux and with the volume of units they sell that translated into big savings. Of course, they did screw the Linux fans over, but I was able to buy a few of them off Dell's site for less that $70 shipped. That's still a sweet deal for what the units are capable of. For the record, the GL is the exact same hardware as the V4--no more, no less.

Re:Un-bricking equipment

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I understand even the most "bricked" WRT54G(L) can still be telneted into at its lowest level and reflash the firmware.

I'm not sure about most bricked. I have a version 1.1 WRT54G that is completely and utterly bricked.

However, there are a few methods for debricking the router. The HairyDairyMaid method involves soldering an EJTAG connector onto the board and connecting to it via PC software. The other method that I'm aware of involves shorting the flash chip with a screwdriver (so the firmware doesn't load?) and then TFTP'ing the firmware.

Neither method worked for my router, but there seem to be plenty of success stories.

Re:DD-WRT

[yorugua]

I guess you just have to see if the difference in features is worth the $10-20. About the ton of fun features you might count (from http://dd-wrt.gruftie.com/wiki/index.php/DD-WRT_Do cu_(EN) [gruftie.com] ):

* 13 languages

* 802.1x (EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) encapsulation over LANs)

* Access Restrictions

* Adhoc Mode

* Afterburner

* Client Isolation Mode

* Client Mode (supports multiple connected clients)

* Client Mode WPA

* DHCP Forwarder (udhcp (http://udhcp.busybox.net/))

* DHCP Server (udhcp (http://udhcp.busybox.net/) or Dnsmasq (http://thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html))

* DNS forwarder (Dnsmasq (http://thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html))

* DMZ

* Dynamic DNS (DynDNS (http://www.DynDNS.org/), TZO (http://www.TZO.com/), ZoneEdit (http://www.ZoneEdit.com/))

* Hotspot Portal (Sputnik Agent (http://www.sputnik.com) ,Chillispot (http://www.chillispot.org/))

* IPv6 Support

* JFFS2 (http://sourceware.org/jffs2/)

* MMC/SD Card Support (hardware modification required)

* NTP client in a client-server basis

* Ntop Remote Statistic

* OpenVPN Client & Server (only in -vpn build of the firmware)

* Port Triggering

* Port Forwarding (max. 30 entries)

* PPTP VPN Server & Client

* QoS Bandwidth Management (Optimize for Gaming and Services / Netmask / MAC / Ethernet Port Priority)

* QoS L7 Packet Classifier l7-filter (http://l7-filter.sourceforge.net/))

* RFlow/MACupd

* Routing: Static entries and Gateway, BGP, OSPF & RIP2 via (BIRD (http://bird.network.cz/))

* Samba FS Automount

* Syslog to remote server

* Rx/Tx Antenna (Select or Auto)

* Show Status of Wireless Clients and WDS with System Uptime/Processor Utilization

* Site Survey

* SNMP

* SSH server & client (dropbear (http://matt.ucc.asn.au/dropbear/dropbear.html))

* Startup, Firewall, and Shutdown scripts (startup script (http://wrt-wiki.bsr-clan.de/index.php?title=Start up_Scripts))

* Static DHCP Assignment

* Style (Changeable GUI; v.23)

* Supports New Devices (WRT54G V3, V3.1, V4, V5 and WRT54GS V2.1, V3, V4)

* Telnet server & client

* Transmit Power Adjustment (0-251mW, default is 28mW, 100mW is safe)

* UPnP

* VLAN

* Wake On Lan client (WOL (http://ahh.sourceforge.net/wol/))

* WDS Connection Watchdog

* WDS Repeater Mode

* Wireless MAC Addresses Cloning

* Wireless MAC filter

* WMM (Wi-Fi MultiMedia QoS)

* WPA over WDS

* WPA/TKIP with AES

* WPA2

* Xbox Kaid (Kai Engine (http://www.teamxlink.co.uk/))

About the "fun that you might leave out" if you go for the WRT54V5, with the smaller linux image loaded: The DD-WRT micro build does not contain: chillispot, nocat, rflow, kaid, samba client, SNMP, IPv6, MMC/SD Card Support, SSH, PPTP/PPTP Client, UPnP. This file is under 2MB in size. While it is aimed at routers with less than 2MB of flash space (e.g., Linksys WRT54G version 5), any router should be able to run this version, including Linksys WRT54G versions before 5. Note that the Micro version is considered in beta, so it has a chance of instability. For flashing a version 5 of the WRT54G, look at Flash_Your_Version_5_WRT54G.

Mixed reviews nothing. The WRT54Gv5 is crap.

[MalusCaelestis]

I work for a small WISP and I've dealt with more than my fair share of WRT54G routers. We began with the WRT54Gv4 router and they were spectacular. They were solid, stable, and only had problems when they were struck by lightning (don't ask...). We distributed many dozens of these routers. To my knowledge, every one of them is still in use today.

Then Linksys released their version 5 of the router. We deployed dozens more of these. We've had two main problems with them: the WAN port loses its ability to communicate with a static IP address (it thinks it's been assigned 0.0.0.0--very helpful); or the WLAN connection permanently ceases to work properly (it still puts out radiation at 2.4GHz but it's just noise). Out of the dozens of these v5 routers we've installed for customers, approximately 25% have been returned to Linksys.

We no longer use Linksys routers for our customers. We sell D-Link WBR-1310 routers instead. It took me a while to get over my initial snobbish elitism (I'd used D-Link's products in the past and they were less than stellar) but now I'm a believer. The WBR-1310 is fantastic. We've put a couple dozen of these in the field and so far there hasn't been one issue among them. D-Link has really cleaned up their act. It also helps that these basic routers are dirt cheap. Even Office Depot sells them for $40-60 so you can imagine what wholesale prices are like...

At home, I'd had different problems with my WRT54Gv5. Basically, any time I tried to use BitTorrent, the router would play hide-and-seek with my network. It didn't matter whether it was LAN or WLAN, the connection would cut out every two minutes. Only a power cycle would bring it back. I've since replaced it with the aforementioned D-Link WBR-1310 and I'm pleased as punch. BitTorrent works faster than ever and I've not yet had to power cycle the thing after two months of punishing use.

So... Mixed reviews? Hardly. The WRT54Gv5 is the least reliable router I've ever used, and I've used a LOT in that price range. It's a bloody shame, too, because Linksys really had something going with the v4 of the same router. If they sold them again, we'd buy a hundred in an instant, with orders for hundreds more down the road. But somehow, I doubt Linksys will ever go back to the v4.

Here's hoping that this new DD-WRT release will ease the pain of so many unfortunate buyers of the WRT54Gv5.

Re:They aren't fighting them.

[spoop]

Nope, the GL and G v4 both have 16mb of memory and 4mb flash.

Re:They aren't fighting them.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is pretty obvious that Linksys, as a business, cares about the bottom dollar. If you want people to care for the community, look for individuals, not businesses. But you are extrapolating intentions by looking at a very small subset of the facts.

In order to prevent Joe Sixpack from bricking his router and returning it under warranty, Linksys needed to offer a VXWorks router. Go buy a WRT54G at a Best Buy or Circuit City and you will find they don't offer the WRT54GL. That is not an accident.

Linksys dumbed down the hardware because it wasn't needed and could save money. It also allows Linksys to sell the router for less, resulting in more sales.

Linksys knows that the popularity of the WRT54G(L) is its hackability, so it is also offers the WRT54GL. Linksys is betting that those folks smart enough to find and select that model are smart enough not to brick their router or at least less likely to try to return it under warranty.

There are costs associated with offering two different models (especially since the hardware is also different). Hence, the price of the WRT54GL might be higher than the price of a WRT54G v. 4 (although I doubt this, and it is certainly less than I paid for a version 1).

You are arguing that Linksys should have subsidized the extra cost of having the Linksys router (both in terms of production costs from more expensive hardware and lost sales due to the higher price) in order to prove they "care" about the community.

Blah. Businesses only "care" about the open source community when it gets them positive press. You're basically telling Linksys "don't bother". I might as well argue that if you really cared about the open source community, you'd buy the WRT54GL at the price given and shut up about it in order that Linksys might keep making it and offer similar products in the future.

Hacking other makes: Netgear WGR614v5

[AndroidCat]

The last time I looked, the best info seemed to be the seattlewireless.net [seattlewireless.net] page. Are there any pages with more info? I haven't had the time or need (so far) to alter it, but eventually...

Re:They aren't fighting them.

[PatMan74]

Actually, at one of the shops where I bought some Linksys routers, the WRT54GL is cheaper than the WRT54G (64 euros vs. 67 euros)...

flat out the best $$$ spent for network hardware

[rmallico]

59.99 for the WRT-54G at Fry's on sale a few months ago and 20.00 that i donated to the funky haired guy who coded the firmware... the syslog and vpn endpoint components are great and the thing has been up for weeks now without a hiccup...

Re:They aren't fighting them.

[earnest murderer]

Margins on volume have no effect either I'm sure...

Simple greed to exploit the brand they created by cutting their costs and the capabilities of the hardware and pocketing the profits.

That's business, anyone whom has ever sold you anything has done that. Don't like it, don't buy it. Linksys didn't come out with the v5 to piss Linux nerds off, they did it because they save a shit ton of money with the new design.

Two roughly equivalent products, the v5 costs x to make the v4 costs x+y. The sensible thing if you must produce both (which they don't) is to bump the price of the v4 so the margins are the same. Which actually is a lot when you have to build, track, support, and promote a product.

That the price difference is less than 10 bucks is pretty suprising.

Re:Watch out for 3rd party firmwares for these

[Kazriko]

I suppose I ran into just the opposite problem from you. I had a pre-existing linux router on a desktop system and found that while it worked great and required minimal maintanance, it used up far too much power for what I was using it for. (K6/166, around 80 watts.)

I found myself tweaking the default firmware of these routers far too much, opening ports, trying to get different things working, etc. I put the OpenWRT firmware on, then dropped my old ipmasq scripts from debian over to it. A little bit of tweaking and it worked just as well as my old desktop system. I haven't really touched the thing since and it's up to around 429 days uptime now. It also uses up far less power and desktop space than my old K6 ever did.

Re:DD-WRT

[Emetophobe]

I am using DD-WRT on my WRT54G v1.1 and I love it. I used to have alot of problems with bittorrent and having to reset my modem all the time (with the official firmware from linksys). I got sick of linksys never posting an updated firmware with bugfixes, so I tried out the DD-WRT firmware and I haven't looked back since. There are so many more features, it's just an amazing package. Setting up QoS with dd-wrt couldn't be easier. It's feature packed, and it runs linux, what more could you ask for :)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:WRT54G well worth it

[Emetophobe]

I've been using DD-WRT v23 for several months now and I love it, it's very stable from what I've seen. And bittorrent doesn't kill my connection like the official firmware used to do. QoS is nice and easy to configure, etc.

My router's only been up for 13 days, but thats due to a power failure.

Firmware: DD-WRT v23 (12/25/05)
Time: 00:27:13 up 13 days, 27 min, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

Re:I'm in the middle of this right now....

[RobertLTux]

hmm lets see
1 some firmware can do a pin swap on the ports
2 you can use a crossover cable to do the swap

Re:DD-WRT

[jelle]

"If you think you can turn any WRT54g into a $400 router, you are dead wrong. Those things are unstable as hell, even with Linux on them."

I have to call bull. You must be a $400 router seller.

I've been use a WRT54G-v2 with DD-WRT for years and it's rock-solid stable (has _never_ even had a hickup), also under loads such as bittorrent and voip with a 7Mbit/512kbit link. Oh, and I also use the four ports as a switch with no problems whatsoever.

Re:Mixed reviews nothing. The WRT54Gv5 is crap.

[TexasDex]

The WRT54Gv4 is still alive and available. It's just called the WRT54GL (apparently the L stands for Linux). Linksys wanted to cut RAM costs so they switched to the VXworks firmware, which fits in half the space. Since they knew there was such a large homebrew market out there they kept the bigger version available, for a slightly higher price.

Re:They aren't fighting them.

[QuesarVII]

Well, I for one did the same as he, returning the v5 router to Best Buy because it didn't run Linux. I then luckily found a v4 at Walmart (boo.. evil.. waaaah.... I know, get over it, they're cheap) covered in dust way in the back of the shelf behind the v5's.

Re:Mixed reviews nothing. The WRT54Gv5 is crap.

[Krizdo4]

You chould get the WRT54GL since that is the v4 renamed.
But it sounds like the WBR-1310 does all you need for less. Sounds like a pretty good deal. I might have to add one of those to my collection if you can load a custom firmware like openwrt on it.

Stay away from dd-wrt if you've got a v1.x

[iamnotaclown]

The CPU in the v1.x just isn't fast enough to run the dd-wrt firmware. It's hard to find any mention of this on the dd-wrt site, other than people complaining and getting replies to the effect of "buy a v4, it works great!".

For those of us who don't want to drop cash just to install some turbo-charged firmware, check out HyperWRT Thibor [thibor.co.uk]. It's a branch of the original GPL source released by LinkSys that has had many features added to it by a long line of developers. It doesn't quite have all the bling that dd-wrt has, but it runs great on my v1.1 with no CPU overload.

BTW, the symptoms of this problem are the wrt54g web interface not responding (or taking forever), DNS timeouts, and all internet access either slowing to a crawl or timing out completely. When the web interface finally responds, the system load average shows as *way* over 1.0.

Kudos to the developers of both projects!

Re:Watch out for 3rd party firmwares for these

[Anonymous Coward]

I flashed my WRT54GL with DD-WRT (v23, I believe) in late May, but ran into some problems. The firmware was stable, but I could not get it to succesfully forward ports in a consistent manner through the NAT and firewall (for the Asterisk PBX that I run from home). I found this out after several hours of wasted time spent analyzing ethereal traces. Sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn't forward some higher UDP ports between 10,000 and 20,000 ...a complete crapshoot. Plus DD-WRT has a full cone firewall, unlike the stock firmware and Hyper-WRT - this leads to some unexpected situations when you are hosting services behind the firewall. I rolled back to the stock firmware and then upgraded to Hyper-WRT (the Thibor flavor), and everything seemed to work alright once again. FYI, Hyper-WRT keeps most of the Linksys stock firmware intact, and adds on a few extras on top of the Linksys firmware. DD-WRT otoh, is completely redesigned and has everything but the kitchen sink. I believe one of its versions can even act as a VOIP server. Other versions can run Samba, Chilli hotspots, ...the works!

One more thing to note: DD-WRT has a more intelligent DDNS registration client. It won't re-register your IP address with a DDNS service such as DynDNS on rebooting the router, if the WAN side IP address hasn't changed. The stock firmware and Hyper-WRT, however, will re-register with the DDNS service on every reboot, even if your WAN side IP hasn't changed. If you do this several times in the space of a few days, you will find your account locked out by DynDNS according to their "abusive use" clause.

Ultimately, here are my thoughts, neatly summarized. DD-WRT is cooler and can do a lot more than the stock firmware or even Hyper-WRT. But I need firmware that is reliable 24x7, has QoS and TX power adjustment which the stock firmware lacks, and can route from the WAN to the LAN side really fast, with minimum bloat. Hyper-WRT (Thibor) seemed like a good compromise. Btw, the TX power adjustment is a really neat feature. You can boost the power of the transmitter by quite a bit, and completely torpedo the interference from your neighbor's 2.4GHz cordless phone! :)

does this fix...

[glitch23]

the connection problems that the v5 has with the linksys firmware? It has been reported on tomshardware.com that the v5 (both linux and non-linux versions) has issues with evenly sharing bandwidth when more than 16 or so connections exist. It usually happens when you run p2p apps. I wondered what the hell was going on because I was running eMule and when I read the article I happened to have eMule shutdown and as soon as I started it up while downloading from my ISP's news server my bandwidth went from a steady 9% (on a 54mbps link) down to a fluctuating 2%-4%. It would be great if this was able to fix that problem. (Newest firmware from linksys was shown not to help as that was what tomshardware.com tested with).

Re:DD-WRT

[simscitizen]

There are some alternatives to the WRT54G that run the same chipset and might be more available. My Motorola WR850G is running the latest standard build of DD-WRT, and I have 4 of them. Cost me $28 apiece a year ago. Just follow the directions at the broadbandreports moto forum.

Re:DD-WRT

[jelle]

"because it cuts off all other traffic but torrent traffic"

Sounds like you're running out of the ip_conntrack_max. Try raising it.

"but a $400 router, it most certainly ain't."

The main reason being that you didn't pay $400 for it, and it's not configured as a $400 router out of the box, but when setup right, it will do the same things equally well as most $400 routers.