Creating A Super-Router (For Free) 329
Aaron writes "Kind of an interesting discussion and story over at Broadband Reports about the flurry of vendors releasing modified Linux based firmware updates for the Linksys WRT54G router. The updates bring a whole new level of functionality Linksys couldn't be bothered to incorporate. Among a long list of free improvements is the incorporation of bandwidth management, allowing users to end the days of choppy VoIP conversations without swapping out hardware."
For the do it yourselfer (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a detailed guide [seattlewireless.net] on how to do just that.
Wondershaper... (Score:5, Informative)
It is AMAZING.
Sample config:
DOWNLINK=6000
UPLINK=200
DEV=eth0
# low priority source ports
NOPRIOPORTSRC="6881 6882 6883 6884 6885 6886 6887 6888 6889 80"
Sets those ports to only use up 200k of my 256k upstream leaving me the rest for SSH etc. I never have any problems w/my remote connection speeds this way. It's fantastic.
I have only had a single problem, recently, with Debian unstable... It removed my libatm for some reason. I reinstalled that and all was well.
Highly recommended for everyone, not just users of this "hackable" router.
Linksys isn't bad (Score:2, Informative)
hack for WAP54G - higher power output (Score:5, Informative)
Is that linux based system available for the WAP as well? (Dunno if it's got enough RAM & flash memory to run&store it...)
Re:Wondershaper... (Score:3, Informative)
This runs as a simple shell script on the "router". If you want less bandwith for those ports just change the UPLINK and rerun the shell script. Changes are reflected immediately.
Honestly, when the libatm wasn't working with Debian unstable, I looked at other options but wondershaper was still the fastest and easiest!
Re:i'd like to know (Score:2, Informative)
Cisco products are expensive but pretty damn stable.
Your "open source" comment is stupid, Cisco uses ASICs and other hardware level goop for much of their routing. Unless you're going to open a chip fab plant and start open sourcing your chips... need I say more? (There are some exeptions, ala the Cisco PIX 525 firewall, basically a PC motherboard with some custom stuff for failover etc.)
"Open Source cures cancer!" blah blah blah Use the right tool for the job, you won't paint yourself into a corner and you leave your options open, lad.
Thats pretty cool and all, but (Score:5, Informative)
OPENWRT! (Score:4, Informative)
http://openwrt.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Source for netgear is here: (Score:3, Informative)
Works great (Score:4, Informative)
The newer revs of firmware will have WDS [domino.mms.de] which allows the routers to bridge to each other and client devices to connect to them. However, I think it does half the throughput.
I just got Vonage, and I plan using Wondershaper once these firmwares mature a little bit more.
-prator
Re:Different routers? (Score:5, Informative)
You can download a bundle of the packages it uses from netgear but they are not configured so its
hard to patch or hack with it cos you'd have to
redo their work.
This seems at odds with the GPL , on the grounds
that if you use GPL'ed code you must publish not
just the original source but your modifications as well . or am i wrong ?
The firmware upgrade patch is easily dissasembled and i've managed to hack the file system (cramfs) out of the firmware . So there is a possiblilty
that modifying the filesystem might open up safer
modification by making telnet accessable. but i'm
too much of a chicken to try it and i expect the
checksum would fail.
Re:What about 6to4 tunneling? (Score:5, Informative)
For windows, go to your network configuration. Find your lan, and enable their IPv6 driver. XP only.(SP1 only?) I believe it self configures to use anycast, so that should be it.
Mac....do not know. I assume something along the lines of what linux does will work.
Good luck.
Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know why they would want to hold back Linksys development though, especially for things such as IPv6. They are a smart company, so I cannot figure out why they think holding back development of Linksys is going to advance their cause of spreading the use of IPv6.
There are lots of people who use Linksys, but are not willing to spend a lot of extra cash just to get a Cisco box so they can do IPv6. And the more people that demand IPv6, the more ISPs are going to have to buy new Cisco hardware to upgrade their higher-end routers.
Re:hack for WAP54G - higher power output (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Linksys (Score:2, Informative)
If that number is X, it's now X+1 - I just ordered one to replace my Belkin wireless router, which replaced the Netgear router that started giving off "the Brown Smell" before dying completely.
Why? The Belkin is a nice piece of kit, but it doesn't have the features I need. The Netgear had most of the features, and was actually pretty okay. The Linksys doesn't have the features I need, but looking at the hacked firmware versions available it'll be soup and nuts to give it those features, and the price is right.
Someone said that they may be hurting sales of their more expensive products which have the advanced features these hacks are adding. I don't believe that's true. People who need those features badly (from a business sense) will still buy the expensive kit; they need the support. Cheap-ass hobbyists like myself will buy the cheaper kit and hack it. So all they're doing is persuading me to buy their cheap kit over someone else's cheap kit, and sales are sales...
WRT54G Mesh is on it's way! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:For the do it yourselfer (Score:5, Informative)
This guy [wifi-box.net] has packaged firmware flashes that incorporate the most popular expansions. All I wanted was some basic SNMP, and it provided - along with some other handy features.
Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow (Score:5, Informative)
Cisco (at the time anyway) wanted to keep them "as is"... dunno if that's still the case or not.
Re:Wondershaper... (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite, you're shaping your entire uplink to 200kb and not using the extra at all. To quote the wondershaper source:
Thats the class all uploads are shaped through. If you read the script all the other traffic classes are set with parent 1:1 which is the classid of the above. With tc you have to run all traffic through the available classes otherwise it gets 0kb rather than any remaining bandwidth, I accidently broke a netcafe once by forgetting to put DNS traffic into any class. Wondershaper does actually assign all traffic to 3 classes within the above, each with differing priority.
The ports you mention are given lower priority but within that class, so within that bandwidth set in $UPLINK.
Re:how about mesh routing? (Score:4, Informative)
Mesh routing is on the list of things to do with some progress being made in that direction already.
Re:Wondershaper... (Score:3, Informative)
You can mark packets from iptables rules and tc can read those marks and use them to classify traffic by using the mangle rules and --set-mark.
Sounds simple but that gives you incredible power to setup QoS on linux routers. You can provide QoS on any of the filters iptables uses, so for instance you could use the layer 7 protocol filters (experimental) and limit traffic by protocol even if it's running over non-standard ports.
Afaik no Cisco/Juniper/Foundary/Anything else can do this. Most seem only able to deal with classifying based on port or IP addresses, and sometimes with diffserv, which is also possible with iptables/tc (reading the TOS field).
Since VoIP and similar are getting more and more popular, QoS is going to become more of an issue, nice to see linux could be well out in front on that one.
Re:hack for WAP54G - higher power output (Score:3, Informative)
So your useful choices are fairly limited. You might have to coordinate with your neighbors to determine who picks what channel, but it should definitely be possible to get one that doesn't overlap.
Re:What about the Belkin 54G ? (Score:1, Informative)
(Should be even more cheaper than the Belkin-Router, but seems to have the same ingredients.)
But therefore you have to recreate a firmware, or just a kernel-module, I didn't got the Linksys FW run until now, but that could be done by rewriting the header.
Take a look on the seattlewireless.com homepage, they have some posts about the belkin router.
antimac
no hardware based routing in a $2k cisco im afraid (Score:4, Informative)
No it isnt. Not in a $2000 cisco.
You need a (starting at)$15k cisco for that.
The $2k ciscos are all bottom-end ciscos which do everything in CPU and software.
Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow (Score:2, Informative)
Identical in every way, but it let them sell a budget box without dropping the price on anything that runs IOS, since this one ran a dumbed-down version called CBOS. Oh, and it let them eliminate a competitor before they could expand into a bigger threat.
Re:NoCat.Net nocatauth/splash support (Score:1, Informative)
WRT54G hacking group (Score:3, Informative)
DaveC
Re:WRV54G - Any for this model? (Score:2, Informative)