Wireless

What chain/company tends to buy huge lots of electronics/etc but isn't necessarily known for computer stuff? Walmart. If you go to Best Buy, of course you are going to only see the latest models just because Best Bi tends to move product.

Case in point, the Walmart I went to today on Alpine had a ton of v2 and v3 GS models, whereas the Best Buy had all the newest revisions of both models.

So, if you want the "good" versions, check out Walmart.

I think it is actually kind of scummy how the newest version of the GS is just the previous version of the G, except for the GS price. Sure, with the default firmware, it has the same functionality. SpeedBooster is just a codec gimmick anyway that you can load onto a G if you want.

It's just too bad they are going the VxWorks route. I rather like having a lot of custom software at my disposal because these little boxes make great Snort collectors/etc.

I almost found out the hard way. Long story on that one.

For the longest time, I had been running the Sveasoft firmware on a Buffalo WBR-G54 although it was an older version specially hacked to support it.

Essentially, the wireless portion IDs itself slightly different than the original Linksys WRT in the source code so long ago you had to add the Buffalo specific tags to find the wireless portion.

Anyway, I attempted to put Alchemy 1.1 on the Buffalo the other day since it natively supports it. For some reason, it looks like I might have bricked it. I can't even get it to respond doing the ARP/TFTP trick that you could use previously. I'll most likely have to pop it open and short the pins to invalidate the flash code.

In the meantime, I picked up a v2.0 WRT54GS and put Alchemy 1.1 on it. It was the lone v2.0 in a batch of v4.0s. Word to the wise, avoid the WRT54G V5 because it is running VXWorks now. You will want to grab the WRT54GS V4 if you want to put custom Linux on it. It seems that some V4s have 16MB of flash and some have 32MB. Right now it seems rather random, so I took the 'known good' v2.0 home with me.

Here is the cheatsheet for versions and serials, taken from linksysinfo.org:

CDF0 = WRT54G v1.0
CDF1 = WRT54G v1.0
CDF2 = WRT54G v1.1
CDF3 = WRT54G v1.1
CDF5 = WRT54G v2.0
CDF7 = WRT54G v2.2
CDF8 = WRT54G v3.0
CDF9 = WRT54G v3.1
CDFA = WRT54G v4.0

CGN0 = WRT54GS v1.0
CGN1 = WRT54GS v1.0
CGN2 = WRT54GS v1.1
CGN3 = WRT54GS v2.0
CGN4 = WRT54GS v2.1
CGN5 = WRT54GS v3.0
CGN6 = WRT54GS v4.0

The store had a ton of the CDFA models and CGN6 models. I think this one was left only because it came as a kit with a USB adapter. I have 30 days to return it so if I bump into one without the USB adapter, I might do so.

WRT54G v3.1 is the last "good" WRT54G and WRT54GS V4 is actually a WRT54G v3.1 rebadged. Confused yet? You should be. It is hard to keep track of.

The one good thing of these newer models is that it is one chip instead of 3 chips and they are rumoured to have stronger WLAN but call me old fashion, sometimes all-in-one solutions aren't as good as individual components.

Anyway, I'm rambling, but it is only a matter of time until I have Snort / Kismet / OpenVPN on this "old school" GS model. I'd still like USB onboard but those seem to only come on the ASUS models. I could run my cell phone off it then, so I still might go that route.

I love the smell of fresh firmware in the morning.

[snip]

SVEASOFT TALISMAN FIRMWARE
for Linksys WRT54GS models

THIS FIRMWARE IS FOR VERSION Linksys WRT54GS VERSIONS 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 and the Buffalotech WBR-G54 only!

Talisman/Basic 1.1

--------------------------

THIS FIRMWARE IS HARDWARE SPECIFIC. MAKE SURE THE FIRMWARE IMAGE IS INTENDED FOR

THE MODEL ROUTER YOU INTEND TO FLASH. USE OF THIS FIRMWARE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK.

IF YOU ARE UNCERTAIN WHICH ROUTER MODEL YOU OWN PLEASE SEE THE SVEASOFT FAQ AT

http://www.sveasoft.com FOR INFORMATION ON HOW TO DETERMINE THE HARDWARE MODEL.


Changelog from V1.0.5 to V1.1
-----------------------------

New Web Server
- CGI, httpd authorization, IPv6 support
- run custom web pages from rw partition
- SSL V3 support

Downloadable Package Management
- dynamic download to rw partition
- GUI interface
- SNMP, geoip, IPv6 radvd initial pkgs

New QoS/Access Restrictions
- unlimited entry support
- added CUSTOM QoS type w/fixed bw ceiling
- added IP-country mapping support
- added bandwidth rate support
- added bytes transferred support
- added multiple protocols
- completely new GUI
- firewall/QoS active on multiple interfaces simultaneously
- automatic bw estimator for uplink/dnlink (WAN only currently)

Add VLAN support to internal code/web GUI
- up to 16 VLAN's
- tagged/untagged
- static IP addresses

Add /proc interface to Ethernet driver
- supports BCM5325E, BCM5325F, ADM6996 chips
- stats in /proc/driver/et for whole chip
- stats in /proc/driver/robo for BCM vlans
- stats in /proc/driver/adm6996 for ADMtek vlans
- control in /proc/sys/dev/et for vlans, speed, 802.1q, etc.

Add misc wireless support features
Add support for WPA2
Add support for WME
Upgraded wireless drivers to latest
Merge latest Linksys V4.70.6 code changes
Busybox V1.0.1
Iptables V1.3.3
Pptpclient update to V1.7.0
SSHD (Dropbear) update to 0.46
PPPoE Encryption option
DNSMasq update to 2.23
Ebtables fix to increase wireless speeds
All known bug list bugs fixed

[/snip]

Grab it from http://www.sveasoft.com if you are a subscriber. If only my Buffalo had a USB port like the ASUS models, I could run my cell phone data network thru it without any other hardware.

One of my latest 'crazy scientist' experiments is giving the new DFS v2 server/client stuff in Windows 2003 R2 a work out over a cell phone datalink. Let me tell ya, it runs a lot better than v1 ever thought of. No longer do you have folders that are replicating partially and then replicating again with an even longer folder name. Today I cleaned up 2 Win2k servers that had decided to have a 'SYSVOL tornado party' with tons of stale and incorrect files. It seems to happen whenever one box gets low on non-paged pool ram. DFS v2 doesn't seem to do this anymore.

Either way... it's a totally sick and wrong test setup, but I love it.

Basically one system sits at a location with a decent amount of bandwidth (T1) and the other sits at home (pseudo-branch office) on a 144kbit (at best) cell phone 1xRTT CDMA connection. If the files are mostly uncompressed, you should see some speed ups due to the compression on the fly that DFS v2 uses.

In theory, and in practice can always be different, but so far, it seems to hold true.