Hacking wifi routers
LoopyByteloose
Posts: 12,537
About 4 years ago, I purchased an Asus wl500gp wifi router. This is considered a very good platform for hacking into. One can double the RAM by soldering in additional RAM, one can add two RS232 ports, and it already has two USB ports. The really interesting thing is that one can install other Linux firmware than offers very enhanced functionality, and one can add a USB-HDD to provide a low power 24/7 file server.
I've been very slow to get going with this as I didn't really need the wifi. But recently I got it up and running. But so much time has passed I am not sure if I am using optimal firmware or not.
I just updated to "Oleg the Russian"'s firmwater in Linux 2.6 kernel and dated 4//2/2012, But OpenWRT has improved a great deal and may be as good. I cannot locate any real comparisons past 2005.
So I am wondering if there are any wifi router hackers amongst us with some pearls of wisdom.
As I see it now, here are the Pros and Cons
Oleg -- may be 68% faster than OpenWrt, but his website and forum have drifted away from English language users in the recent years and he has retained the Asus user interface that is a bit odd.
OpenWRT --- Very good documentation and can install about 2000 software packages and has a nicer user interface, but may be slower.
I've been very slow to get going with this as I didn't really need the wifi. But recently I got it up and running. But so much time has passed I am not sure if I am using optimal firmware or not.
I just updated to "Oleg the Russian"'s firmwater in Linux 2.6 kernel and dated 4//2/2012, But OpenWRT has improved a great deal and may be as good. I cannot locate any real comparisons past 2005.
So I am wondering if there are any wifi router hackers amongst us with some pearls of wisdom.
As I see it now, here are the Pros and Cons
Oleg -- may be 68% faster than OpenWrt, but his website and forum have drifted away from English language users in the recent years and he has retained the Asus user interface that is a bit odd.
OpenWRT --- Very good documentation and can install about 2000 software packages and has a nicer user interface, but may be slower.
Comments
http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index
I guess I will stay with Oleg for a while and then consider exploring OpenWRT if I feel it is inadequate.
Have you installed any packages that you feel are 'must have'?
Oleg's firmware, and OpenWRT's seems to open the door to using these devices as small 24/7 servers behind a firewall and behind encrypted wifi. Rather than keeping one's desktop on 24/7 or hiring an outside service, the router is combined with a USB-HDD and then provided with a custom server or multiple server configuration for use in a rather limited fashion.
Also, one can do other things with installing custom firm. One can create a Hotspot device or what a wifi router selectively relay to another wifi router to create a wireless LAN link.
The main point is that there seems to be a lot of creative uses that one can pursue.
I have to admit that I am now just using the wifi router/gateway as that. But now that I've established a foothold, I know it would be much more useful doing some other tasks. For myself, I think the next steps will include a Printer server so that any and all computers in my home will have direct use of a printer and with the addition of a USB-HDD I will use the Samba server. That can be combined with hard disk imaging software to create a repository of backups for all three of my home computers. (One of the nicest things about Linux is that I can easily do harddisk imagining without buying Ghost, Acronis, or other software. The 'dd' command will do and when used in a Bash utility inclusive of Chron, it can even be automated.)
It would also be nice to split the wifi and the four wired Lan ports so that the Wifi goes out to the WAN only and is shared with guests, while the wired LAN remains private and behind a firewall.
I know these things are all possible. And I am aware there are issues with speed if one tries to do too much. But for now, I am just trying to locate others that have done some of these things.
To be honest, the best feature of the upgrade that I've found is the really pretty graphs that it produces. I've found that I consume about 95GB per month
dd-wrt certainly is affirmed to have a nice user face, but it and another firmware called Tomato seem to be for the install it, set it up and forget it crowd.
Buffalo routers apparently come with a branded version of dd-wrt installed. But dd-wrt is the business of selling improved firmware images. I'd rather not spend money at this point.
Open-wrt on the other hand is for the user that really wants to explore small Linux applications in a router/gateway LAN setting including wifi. Features that one must pay for on dd-wrt are free and while the user interface may not be a slick at dd-wrt, it is quite functional and reliable. So people claim that dd-wrt is difficult for really advanced router/gateway installations.
Oleg's firmware is really a direct hack of Asus Linux firmware and not as widely useful for all and every router/gateway, but he seems to have tweaked it to get exceptional performance. In other words, he really focuses on a specific group of hardware as he started with code that Asus made public and sought out its weak points. And the HTML user interface is still the Asus screens as he did not change them. The real improvements are done in SSH and at a terminal screen.
So for myself, I am still stuck with the dilemma of Oleg's firmware being the most useful for what I have and the fact that it has far less support in English. But it does seem that Open-wrt appeals to the broadest range of hardware and users.