U.S. Cities  

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Science and Technology > Computers
Register Blogs Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Welcome to City-Data.com forum! Make sure to register - it's free and very quick! You have to register before you can post and participate in our discussions with 700,000 other registered members. User profiles and some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your free account you will be able to customize many options, you will have the full access to over 15,000 posts/day about local topics and you will see fewer ads.

Get a detailed profile
Search Forums  (Advanced)
Business Search - 14 Million verified businesses
Search for:  near: 
Reply


 
Old 12-26-2008, 06:23 PM
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: SouthEastern NH
1,962 posts, read 960,635 times
Reputation: 846
NHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to behold
Default For techies thast use a Linksys WRT54G

Do you know that you have an open source firmware router? Found this info a few months ago and flashed mine, it went from a fairly unstable piece of crap to a great working wireless router with tons of features, figured I'd post the info in case anyone wanted it.

"The story of the Linksys Wireless-G Router (model WRT54G) and how you can turn a $60 router into a $600 router is a little bit CSI and a little bit Freaks & Geeks. It’s also the story of how the open source movement can produce a win-win scenario for both consumers and commercial vendors. What’s especially exciting is that tricking out this router doesn’t require any eBay sleuthing or other hunt for some off-the-wall piece of hardware. Instead, grab it off-the-shelf. The WRT54G is stacked high in every Best Buy and Circuit City across the country and, of course, most online retailers — Amazon.com sells it for $55. It’s ubiquitous and, some would say, a diamond in the rough. Or a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
While routers used to be the domain of networking specialists, they’ve gone mainstream along with residential broadband. Commodity routers can be had for as little as – well, "free after rebate” in some cases, and often not much more. To keep them cheap, consumer-grade vendors like Linksys repackage designs from OEM vendors rather than design the hardware and software in-house.
The tradeoff for these sub-$100 routers can be reliability, particularly in the coding of the firmware – the software “brain” that controls the router’s functions. Consumer-grade firmware may be buggy, and may be limited in functionality compared to commercial-grade routers designed for business such as those made by Cisco and SonicWall.
The WRT54G was released in 2003 in anticipation of the 802.11g standard, with its theoretical maximum bandwidth of 54Mbps compared to 802.11b’s 11Mbps. In many respects the WRT54G is a typical wireless router – it accepts an incoming broadband link such as cable or DSL and shares it between its built-in four-port Ethernet switch and antennae for broadcasting the signal to wireless clients.
In June 2003 some folks on the Linux Kernel Mailing List sniffed around the WRT54G and found that its firmware was based on Linux components. Because Linux is released under the GNU General Public License, or GPL, the terms of the license obliged Linksys to make available the source code to the WRT54G firmware. As most router firmware is proprietary code, vendors have no such obligation. It remains unclear whether Linksys was aware of the WRT54G’s Linux lineage, and its associated source requirements, at the time they released the router. But ultimately, under outside pressure to deliver on their legal obligation under the GPL, Linksys open sourced the WRT54G firmware in July 2003.
With the code in hand, developers learned exactly how to talk to the hardware inside and how to code any features the hardware could support. It has spawning a handful of open source firmware projects for the WRT54G that extend its capabilities, and reliability, far beyond what is expected from a cheap consumer-grade router."

The Open Source WRT54G Story

The wiki
Main Page - DD-WRT Wiki
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 12-26-2008, 10:50 PM
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Las Vegas
3,873 posts, read 1,606,153 times
Reputation: 1417
swagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud ofswagger has much to be proud of
I have two WRT54g's in use. One is running stock firmware and is used only as an access point. The other is running OpenWRT and connects to the first as a client, allowing me to have my entertainment center and a couple of telephones downstairs & hooked into the network/Internet without having to pull cable.

I use an actual PC as my interface to the 'net. It has a bit more processing power than the Linksys. It's doing a bit more than routing packets, though...
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-27-2008, 06:17 AM
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Arden, NC
514 posts, read 350,991 times
Reputation: 176
castufari has a spectacular aura aboutcastufari has a spectacular aura aboutcastufari has a spectacular aura aboutcastufari has a spectacular aura about
I've used DD-WRT for a while now, I love it. Good stuff.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-30-2008, 10:56 AM
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Beaverland, OR
396 posts, read 263,487 times
Reputation: 198
juggler has a spectacular aura aboutjuggler has a spectacular aura aboutjuggler has a spectacular aura aboutjuggler has a spectacular aura about
Yup, I've been using DD-WRT for a while now. The main reason I "upgraded" was to be able to boost the power output. My WRT54G is now cranking out 140mW. The bandwidth monitoring features are also nice.

If anyone else decides to upgrade, be sure to get the correct version for your router - there are different releases depending on which version of the WRT54G you have.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-30-2008, 05:01 PM
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: SouthEastern NH
1,962 posts, read 960,635 times
Reputation: 846
NHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to beholdNHDave is a splendid one to behold
I haven't done any signal boosting, have it overclocked to 216Mhz. I did try to set up DDNS on it with openDNS but it kept dropping the WAN IP every hour or so for some reason.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.



Reply


Quick Reply
Message:

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Similar Threads


Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Science and Technology > Computers

All times are GMT -6. The time now is 04:39 AM.

Copyright © 2005-2010, Advameg, Inc.

City-Data.com - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 - Top