Reusing Old Routers
This past weekend, after having received an Internet-enabled Blu-Ray player for my birthday, I decided to explore the possibility of using an old Wireless G router (Linksys WRT-54G) as a wireless bridge to connect the player to our Internet connection without having to run 40 feet of cable from where the Blu-Ray player is to where the current router is.
It actually went surprisingly well.
I started by seeing if I could put the WRT-54G into Client or Client Bridge mode. The Linksys web administration pages on the router had no options for doing this. So my first thought was, well, maybe Linksys enabled these features in a later release of the firmware. Indeed there was a newer version of the firmware, but the release notes didn't make any mention of these new features.
I connected the router to my laptop, did a factory reset on the router, set my ethernet port to a static IP, and turned off wireless on the laptop after having first downloaded the new firmware image from the Cisco Linksys support site. That was the first time I'd ever flashed a router's ROM, and it went flawlessly.
So now I had an old WRT-54G with the most current firmware, but was no further ahead.
Doing a bit more research, I discovered DD-WRT, an open source alternate firmware site for routers. An amazing effort which covers a staggering range of routers, I was able to determine that my router was on the list of supported devices. The DD-WRT firmare does provide the WRT-54G with client functionality not provided by Linksys.
(To determine the available devices supported by the DD-WRT project, go to the DD-WRT site and click on the "Router Database" button. Enter the manufacturer of your router. In my case, it is Linksys. The list of available devices is then displayed.)
Each DD-WRT firmware image applies to a specific version of hardware, so it is essential that you correctly identify the version of hardware of your router to determine if DD-WRT will work on your equipment.
The router database table shows your router's model number and hardware version, as well as whether it is supported. My WRT-54G's hardware version (version 6) was listed as supported. Clicking on the entry for my router, I was redirected to a page which listed several different firmware images. Rather than simply downloading all of them, I decided more research was required, so spent the next couple of hours reading the "fine print" in the DD-WRT wiki. This wiki page was an excellent step-by-step walk-through of the process. I followed the instructions nearly verbatim, including reading the phoenix page.
The critical bit of information here was the 30/30/30 reset, which until this time I never knew existed.
The only exception to following the DD-WRT wiki was at step 20.3. I selected the dd-wrt.v24_micro_generic.bin image from the DD-WRT site instead of the image mentioned in the wiki.
In all other instances, I followed the instructions to the letter.
And, probably 5 hours after I started the exercise, I was able to put my WRT-54G into Client Bridge mode, connect my Blu-Ray player to it, and have it connect to the Internet wirelessly.
(A good and accurate summary of how to set the Client Bridge mode options for a router with DD-WRT firmware is here.)
It proved to be a worthwhile way to reuse older equipment, rather than spending money needlessly on a wireless adapter (such as Mad Catz's or Microsoft's) or on cables. And now, my spiffy new Blu-Ray with built-in YouTube and Netflix access, can be fully utilized.
It actually went surprisingly well.
I started by seeing if I could put the WRT-54G into Client or Client Bridge mode. The Linksys web administration pages on the router had no options for doing this. So my first thought was, well, maybe Linksys enabled these features in a later release of the firmware. Indeed there was a newer version of the firmware, but the release notes didn't make any mention of these new features.
I connected the router to my laptop, did a factory reset on the router, set my ethernet port to a static IP, and turned off wireless on the laptop after having first downloaded the new firmware image from the Cisco Linksys support site. That was the first time I'd ever flashed a router's ROM, and it went flawlessly.
So now I had an old WRT-54G with the most current firmware, but was no further ahead.
Doing a bit more research, I discovered DD-WRT, an open source alternate firmware site for routers. An amazing effort which covers a staggering range of routers, I was able to determine that my router was on the list of supported devices. The DD-WRT firmare does provide the WRT-54G with client functionality not provided by Linksys.
(To determine the available devices supported by the DD-WRT project, go to the DD-WRT site and click on the "Router Database" button. Enter the manufacturer of your router. In my case, it is Linksys. The list of available devices is then displayed.)
Each DD-WRT firmware image applies to a specific version of hardware, so it is essential that you correctly identify the version of hardware of your router to determine if DD-WRT will work on your equipment.
The router database table shows your router's model number and hardware version, as well as whether it is supported. My WRT-54G's hardware version (version 6) was listed as supported. Clicking on the entry for my router, I was redirected to a page which listed several different firmware images. Rather than simply downloading all of them, I decided more research was required, so spent the next couple of hours reading the "fine print" in the DD-WRT wiki. This wiki page was an excellent step-by-step walk-through of the process. I followed the instructions nearly verbatim, including reading the phoenix page.
The critical bit of information here was the 30/30/30 reset, which until this time I never knew existed.
The only exception to following the DD-WRT wiki was at step 20.3. I selected the dd-wrt.v24_micro_generic.bin image from the DD-WRT site instead of the image mentioned in the wiki.
In all other instances, I followed the instructions to the letter.
And, probably 5 hours after I started the exercise, I was able to put my WRT-54G into Client Bridge mode, connect my Blu-Ray player to it, and have it connect to the Internet wirelessly.
(A good and accurate summary of how to set the Client Bridge mode options for a router with DD-WRT firmware is here.)
It proved to be a worthwhile way to reuse older equipment, rather than spending money needlessly on a wireless adapter (such as Mad Catz's or Microsoft's) or on cables. And now, my spiffy new Blu-Ray with built-in YouTube and Netflix access, can be fully utilized.
Comments
Post a Comment