WRT54G – Absoblogginlutely!

dd-wrt upgraded

By Andy on Saturday, July 25, 2009

I updated my Linksys wrt54g router to the latest version of the firmware this morning due to the recent announcement of a pretty big vulnerability where the software does not parse html correctly. I run on a different ip address range than the factory default so it would be harder to trip the effect but I think would still be pretty easy to do.
As usual the upgrade process, although fairly complicated, went smoothly. The system has the facility to backup and restore the config but unfortunately it is highly recommended that you hard reset the router before and after the upgrade which means a fairly tedious amount of data re-entry into the router.
To help document the router configuration I use the screengrab extension for firefox, visit each configuration tab and save the output to a file ready for review when reconfiguring the router.
The whole process takes about 30-40 minutes – I’m glad I don’t have to do this very often.
Having said all that – if you’ve not patched your dd-wrt router in the past two weeks – DO SO NOW!
I use the following pages for assistance (and save them for offline reference in case the router gets bricked.)

The peacock thread on upgrading the router.
How to recover from a bad flash
DD-WRT FAQ
DD-WRT supported hardware

Linksys WRT54G upgrade and WPA2

By Andy on Tuesday, October 7, 2008

I upgraded my wrt54g to the latest dd-wrt firmware over the weekend from v23 to v24sp1. The annoying thing is that they highly recommend the unit is set to factory defaults which means re-entering the config in by hand after the upgrade. This is not a quick and easy task, especially whn you have to get the config off the there doesn’t seem to be a “print config” page. However, by using the screengrab firefox extension it didn’t take long to open up each dialog page, right click and choose screengrab, save, complete page. Saving all the screenshots into a unique folder means I have a nice copy of the config that I was then able to refer to when rebuilding the unit.

The new firmware also supports wpa2 so I enabled that on the router and then found that my xpsp2 box couldn’t see the router. I was pretty sure I had all the updates for xp on the laptop but I guess not. A quick download of the hotfix 893357, one reboot later and I was connected with wpa2. I’m sure we’re going to see more of this sort of thing on client laptops so this will also be a good placeholder for work.

I haven’t got the openvpn configuration sorted out, I think I have to set this up from scratch as I forgot to save one of the keys – but openvpn seems to be more integrated in this version – at least there are dialog boxes for openvpn – there didn’t use to be.

Telephones WRT54G

Roadrunner and linksys

By Andy on Friday, April 7, 2006

I logged a complaint with the better business bureau yesterday and the complaint has been forwarded to Roadrunner for their comments. Today I get a phone call saying that they are going to credit my account with the amount that I had paid them (how jolly nice of them!) and that they are going to write an official letter of apology to me. Not sure if the letter and the BBB is co-incidental or not…..
Then to top it all off, yesterday my roadrunner went down when the cablemodem lost its connectivity to the cable network. It took about 45 mins of fiddling with combinations of cable network, router and telephone adapter to get everything working – initially nothing was working but then I got the cable modem talking to roadrunner (and the pc attached directly to the modem also talking to the internet) but the netgear router would not get an ip from the cable modem and allow outside connectivity.
Therefore I decided to finally get the linksys wrt54g that I’ve been wanting to get for a while now (it’s a late birthday present) and thankfully I was able to find a version4 router on a display rack- all the ones in the normal shelf were version5 which aren’t hackable (apart from late breaking limited hacks). The other good thing was that they were reduced to $50 from $70.
With this new router I’ll be able to play with the different firmware versions and setup a vpn server. I’d also like to see if I can bridge a test and production lan using the wifi on the two routers – but thats a project for later on……