History of the WRT54G Open Source Firmware

At some point in early 2003, Andrew Miklas posted several times to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/6/7/164) about his discovery that Linksys was using General Public License (GPL) code in the firmware for the Linksys WRT54G. As part of the GPL, anyone who modifies the open code is required to release her modification back to the community, and Andrew was unable to locate the source for the modifications. Andrew opened communication with Linksys in order to get the modified software released back to the community, and he gathered some significant support in this endeavor.

Linux enthusiasts were made aware of Linksys’ use of open source software by several postings to Slashdot in June 2003.The Slashdot and Linux communities rallied to support the GPL, and made their opinions known that Linksys should comply with the GPL. Given the enormous pressure from the community, and a group of executives that understood the GPL at Linksys, Linksys released its modified code to the public under the GPL. In June 2003, Rob Flickenger posted to his O’Reilly blog about work that he had been performing during Hack Night sessions with Seattle Wireless. During these postings, Rob linked to the start of the tools for building your own custom firmware. Additionally, Andrew made some additional postings to the Linux Kernel Mailing List on methods and issues with cross-compiling code for the Linksys WRT54G.

From this point forward, we were able to create our own firmware, and many individuals did just that.This resulted in a number of different firmware versions, all with different add-ons.We will discuss a number of these firmware versions throughout this blog.

History of the Linksys WRT54G

Linksys began selling version 1.0 of the WRT54G in late 2002 as a home router, firewall, and wireless networking product. In the beginning, it was primarily intended to support wireless networks, and inclusion of additional features merely complemented the wireless capabilities. At that time, the device was relatively commonplace; it featured a wide area network (WAN) port, a four-port 10/100 switch, and 802.11b support.The device also shipped with a Web interface for configuration—a practice that had become popular with consumer devices in earlier years. Since the initial launch in 2002, Linksys has revised the hardware of the WRT54G several times to provide upgrades to the base unit.The device has proven popular enough that Linksys has spawned several similar models in the WRT54G series to deliver various features, speed enhancements, and form factors.

We will discuss a number of the models later in this chapter, and we will begin to see the natural progression that developments in technology have afforded the product line. This particular product line has been a very good seller for Linksys. Although sales figures for the device are typically not broken out from sales figures for Linksys as a whole, company executives have been quoted as saying,“We sell literally hundreds of thousands per month.”This popularity may be due, in part, to the ease with which you can modify the device, and as such a community of open source advocates and hardware hackers alike has embraced it readily.

With the recent official support from Linksys of third-party firmware through the release of the WRT54GL, Linksys is poised to sell even more units. We are currently seeing additional hardware revisions of the WRT54GL which, from an initial observation, seems to be following the trend of the original WRT54G series of hardware.With this continued development of the WRT54GL, and further adoption of open source methodologies, it appears clear that Linksys is committed to keeping the product line alive and well.This is good news for all of us who are tearing them open, and making them submit to our will!

dd-wrt restoring from backup configuration

One day my WRT54GL is running slow and afterward it become strange, strange and hang!!! great, and I couldn't even access it. After awhile play with it, I use everybody's formula that is RESET it then become default configuration. fortunately, I keep the backup configuration 3 months ago on my laptop.
How to restore it?. See the followings show:

1. Go to Administration>Backup to see this page
2. Click Browse on Restore settings to take the backup file from your local laptop
3. Point the file, in my case the file name is 13-decWRT54GL.bin, and click open button from the dialog window. Once you're back on dd-wrt control panel, click save button next to backup button at the bottom.
4. Wait for the restoration process because it takes sometimes to finish Then you will get the last known working configuration.

Easy..

dd-wrt configuration backup

Some people say this is not necessary. However, saving backup router configuration is very useful when you manage lot of WRT54GL. The idea of backup is quick restoration and heal the network. So that's it! IT IS NECESSARY DUDE!!.

Here we go,

Backup

1. Go to Administration>Backup
2. Don't hesitate to press backup button at the bottom to start the dialog, then you'll be asking to save file nvrambak.bin (<--- this is the important file) to your local machine.
3. And wherever you like, just save it to any folder you think is safe (I mean easy to remember for future search)

Dude,, that's it

Create Linksys WDS using dd-wrt tutorial

Believe or not that you can create and efficient wifi network for your small office and home office (SOHO). For doing this you only need several Linksys WRT54GL to cover every spot to get maximum signal strength without meshed up by your network cable. Suppose that you have a client or group of client that >50m away from main accesspoint (WRT54GL) with several obstacle that you believe reduce your main accespoint signal strength reach that clients spot. Having this case, the conventional idea is laying network cable from main accespoint to the spot and activate another wireless accespoint. don't be mistaken, this proposal is nothing wrong with it. The only is, we just want to simplify the work, other word of lazy, to avoid get sweat and perform an act as wireless hacker guy. To achieve the same result as conventional way without cable, we will use dd-wrt linksys firmware facility called WDS.

to perform WDS way, we need the following ingredients:

1. at least 2 WRT54GL Linksys machine
2. dd-wrt firmware
3. your willingness

get bored with my english? let's go through screenshot series below:

1. Please read my previous post to get your Linksys WRT54GL flashed with our cool dd-wrt firmware. Without doubt, just flashed both of WRt4GL. Just to remember below is final result of flashed WRT54GL
2. on the #1 WRT54GL (main accespoint), go to menu: Wireless>WDS. Once you get there, please attention to WDS settings and you will see Ten empty slot. Choose the first empty slot and change the 'Disable' to 'LAN' then fill the six MAC field that initially contain with '00' to your #2 WRT54GL wireless MAC address (to obtain the #2 wireless MAC, see #1 picture with red rectangle). Leave the rest of settings and to finish the setting for #1 WRT54GL press apply settings button at the botom.
3. Now go to #2 Wrt54GL Setup>Basic Setup, that already flashed with dd-wrt firmware for sure, then disable DHCP server to avoid 2 DHCP server running on your network and change the routerIP to the different IP than the #1 WRT54GL (in my case I choose 192.168.1.2).
4. Now you safe to connecting #2 WRT54GL to the Main Accespoint! to set WDS for this #2WRT54GL, please do the same way as the step No. 2 to fill #1 WRT54GL Wireless MAC address to WDS settings at #2 WRT54GL.
   
5. Finally we're on the final step to complete the setting at #2 WRT54GL by clone the basic wireless settings as #1 WRT54GL. The easiest way is to just go to Wireless>Basic Settings and change the SSID and the channel then leave the rest.
6. To see the result, just go to your main router (in my case I browse to http://192.168.1.1) and see the system info. You'll get the WDS Node has active.
7. At this point, you already done the WDS setup and running. So you can test the achievement, on the spot where previously has weak signal, by monitor the wireless on your laptop wifi manager.

Additionally, since WRT54GL has built-in 4 port switch, you can expand your SOHO network using network cable via the built-in switch.

Happy WDS,

Basic WRT54GL 3rd Party Firmware Upgrade

first step is login to your WRT54GL using your favourite browser, I'm using Mozilla Firefox, to http://192.168.1.1. Then you'll be prompted with the default Linksys authentication (username: and password: admin)

then you will get the following page, which is Linksys WRT54GL default administration page,


to upload and upgrade using third part firmware, in this case we gonna use dd-wrt firmware, please navigate your mouse to menu: Administration>Firmware upgradethen click browse button and point to the firmware file, in my case i'm using dd-wrt.v24_generic_nokaid.binand then hit open to submit the file, youl'll be directed to the last page that point to the file. To perform the upgrade process, click upgrade button and you'll see the progress bar.Just wait untill the process is done, then you'll be prompted by the newWRT54GL administration control panel.

Congratulation!

Introduction

Halo rekan-rekan,,, IndoWRT hadir di sekian banyak dokumen internet untuk turut serta berbagi informasi mengenai kegiatan ngoprek wireless router atau WRT di kenal secara umum. IndoWRT juga berencana berkontribusi mengenai kegiatan moding WRT dari kondisi default menjadi mesin yang lebih wah untuk router internet sekelas SOHO.

melalui IndoWRT, penulis juga berupaya berkontribusi dalam dunia opensource secara umum dan Linux embeded secara khusus. Pembahasan mengenai firmware-firmware terkini mungkin pada awalnya akan dititik beratkan pada firmware dd-wrt dan openwrt/x-wrt.

Sekian saja brief intronya.

salam,

IndoWRT