AMAZING! hot!!! Buffalo or Linksys QUALITY wireless router for $5!

[wildwilly]

Originally posted by: Maximus96
how will you know that you'll get the linksys and not the buffalo router from this deal?

I've been reading forums and blogs about it, and I have not seen one person get the Buffalo router. Hopefully that won't change.

 

[Maximus96]

which forums can i go to to learn more about this? i read the link posted on top already. i'd like to get one to replace my netgear router but don't want to open a can of worms by sharing comcast with the neighbors.

 

[ta8689]

repost

 

[wildwilly]

http://www.twindx.com/node/106
http://www.twindx.com/node/109
http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000490073560/

 

[VaG]

I hope everyone just gets a thrill out of getting one over on someone because you would have to be beyond a cheap @ss to waste your time using this any other way than as it was intended. I don't think I've ever paid over $15 for a Linksys WRT-54G and I have a few.

 

[catnap1972]

Originally posted by: wildwilly
I said ****** it, and just ordered one. Even if the heartbeat script doesnt work, you can still use DD-WRT and have two different SSIDs. The FON service would be active, and you would have an encrypted SSID for your own use. No one can use your network without having a FON username/pass, and if you arent right in the city, almost no one would use it anyway. I'm in a secluded place so it would be fine for me.

Same thing I was thinking (we're in the sticks)...I doubt too many of the neighbors even know WTF Wifi is let alone how to leech off of someone else's router. I'm assuming you just need to agree to share the connection, not advertise that you are, correct?

EDIT: I guess you have to register your address on their website (map) but still don't have to hang a sign outside your door.

 

[DamianS]

Originally posted by: wildwilly
I've been reading forums and blogs about it, and I have not seen one person get the Buffalo router. Hopefully that won't change.

The Buffalo router is sent to European customers, and the Linksys to the US.

 

[Maximus96]

so how do you get this heartbeat thing to work? i need a new router and looking to get one thats flashable. i wonder if the current stock at the stores are flashable or not. i guess this FON one is for sure.

 

[wildwilly]

Originally posted by: DamianS

Originally posted by: wildwilly
I've been reading forums and blogs about it, and I have not seen one person get the Buffalo router. Hopefully that won't change.

The Buffalo router is sent to European customers, and the Linksys to the US.

Cool

 

[wildwilly]

Originally posted by: Maximus96
so how do you get this heartbeat thing to work? i need a new router and looking to get one thats flashable. i wonder if the current stock at the stores are flashable or not. i guess this FON one is for sure.

All WRT54GL 's are flashable. As far as the heartbeat script, I've seen one example. Let me try to find it...

 

[wildwilly]

Quoted from the twindx comments

Got my WRT54GL a couple of weeks ago, and did the following:

Flashed it with DD-WRT v23 SP1 and created the following rc_startup script:

echo '00 02 * * * root /usr/bin/wget "http://download.fon.com/heartbeat.php?mac=xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx" -O /tmp/inet.html' > /tmp/cron.d/heartbeat

where you need to replace the xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx with your router's wireless MAC address. The cron job is run at 2 am every day. Not sure if that's enough, but so far, so good

If you don't want to access the router from the command line and create the rc_startup script (using ssh, not telnet, which is always a good idea to disable altogether), then you can go to Administration/Diagnostics in the DD-WRT admin page, and enter the line above in the command line window you'll find there. Just remember to press 'Save Startup' when you're ready.

/tommi

 

[Maximus96]

so the MAC address does not get changed after flashing to DD-WRT?

 

[wildwilly]

Originally posted by: Maximus96
so the MAC address does not get changed after flashing to DD-WRT?

Don't think so. It's possible though.

 

[Maximus96]

well, took the plunge at $5 + $8s/h...we'll see how it goes.

 

[wildwilly]

You and I can work on this together

 

[mikeford]

If I understand this correctly for someone to access "any" of the fon wifi they need to first register with fon? As long as that isn't trivial to hack like the heartbeat thing, then its not much of a problem. If they can't come up with a fix for the heatbeat, company will go belly up in a month.

 

[Maximus96]

Originally posted by: wildwilly
You and I can work on this together

ha problem is i don't know linux. i was going to following the direction on the site you provided.

 

[wildwilly]

Originally posted by: Maximus96

Originally posted by: wildwilly
You and I can work on this together

ha problem is i don't know linux. i was going to following the direction on the site you provided.

I will as well, but if we have problems we can help each other figure them out. I know some linux, not a huge amount though.

 

[DamianS]

Originally posted by: mikeford
If I understand this correctly for someone to access "any" of the fon wifi they need to first register with fon? As long as that isn't trivial to hack like the heartbeat thing, then its not much of a problem. If they can't come up with a fix for the heatbeat, company will go belly up in a month.

Correct, you need to sign up with FON to access anyone's FON router. It's not open to anyone who happens to be passing by.
As a heads up, they're quite aware of the heartbeat issue and you should expect a drastic change in the reporting method. I don't know the time frame, but certainly before anyone here's one year commitment is up.

 

[wildwilly]

The article on the twindx site was pulled, but I managed to grab the google cache

Just the other day I wrote about my research into what makes the FON-supplied WRT54GL routers tick. Now I've got mine at home, set up and with FON's firmware removed. I haven't registered it with FON - if they come crying to me about having taken delivery of the router but not setting it up for FON, then I'll back it up, stick on their firmware, register and then go back to OpenWRT with my 'heartbeat' being faked by a cron job.

Here's what I've done, in the order that I've done it. I absolutely have to disclaim here - you're on your own if you do this, your milage may vary, Google is your friend, etc. If you ah heck things up you can generally recover, but be aware - it is possible to ah heck things up. I'm only talking from my experience.

First of all, I downloaded the most recent relevent OpenWRT firmware. This is available here at present, but if you're reading this in a few months time, take the time to explore the website first. The firmware you want is named openwrt-wrt54gs_v4-jffs2 at present, but expect the version 4 to become v5. Update: I was misreading the filename, v4 is referring to the hardware model, not firmware revision.

Next I hooked up my laptop to the router by cable, and powered up the router without having it connected to my DSL. After a moment or two I could get an IP address from it, and when I opened Firefox it opened straight into the FON frontend - which betrayed its origins by having OpenWRT splashed across the screen =) It wanted me to set a password, which I did, before I could get in to tinker. (The username to go with this is 'root'). I seem to recall, first boot up, it refused to let me set a password because the filesystem had been mounted read-only. When I reset, all was well - I think this is part of the normal behaviour straight after writing the firmware because exactly the same thing happened when I booted the vanilla OpenWRT for the first time.

Once this had been done, I went straight back into the web frontend and went to the section that lets you update your firmware. I can't remember what the tabs are - I'm typing this at work, and I haven't set up incoming HTTP access to the router so I can't check - but I found it quite quickly. Now, remember - FON's firmware is a patched version of OpenWRT, so it takes the same firmware files very happily. I uploaded thie firmware mentioned above, and... it just worked. Just like that. The router rebooted, I did "ipconfig /renew" in the Windows command prompt to get a new IP address from it, and I could see the same frontend, no longer in FON's orange and yellow but in the calmer blue hue of OpenWRT's default setup. The IP address it had given itself had gone from 192.168.10.1 to .1.1 and the password had gone.

Things to note:

1. Uploading new firmware from a PC is better by cable than by wireless. It makes more sense. It's probably get CRC checks and all sorts to make sure that it doesn't try and apply a corrupt firmware file, but you can't be sure without going through manuals. Be on the safe side and hook up with a Cat5.
2. I didn't have it hooked up to my DSL because I wanted to have full control over what was going to be going on, and I'd already seen the heartbeat.php thing mentioned before.
3. This router hasn't been registered with the FON network.


If you have registered with the FON network, apparently you'll find that, if you try and access the web frontend (probably 192.168.10.1) over your wifi connection, it'll fail. Wisely they decided that if you're going to run an insecure network (such as FON is) it might be a good idea to prevent access to the panel. You have no choice - you need to hook up with a patch cable. You should still be able to flash to a vanilla OpenWRT firmware though. They may also notice that you've gone missing from the FON network if you do this, in which case you'd need a script to run to periodically ping the heartbeat URL mentioned last time.

Okay - that's all I can offer in the way of information for now. Be aware that you will need to have a knowledge of Linux to get anything remotely useful out of this - if you don't, you might want to consider flashing the router with official Linksys firmware instead.

 

[mikeford]

A surcharge of ?/$ 45 willll be applied to all routers that are not registered with FON within 30 days of their purchase). We will notify you 15 days in advance of the said surcharge.

 

[mindless1]

This is a hot router to give to your neighbor for Christmas!

 

[mikeford]

I think I am going to get one for the free access to other fon locations.

 

[mikeford]

In for one, but site felt real flakey.

 

[GTFan]

Originally posted by: mikeford
A surcharge of ?/$ 45 willll be applied to all routers that are not registered with FON within 30 days of their purchase). We will notify you 15 days in advance of the said surcharge.

They say that, but you can pay for the router with paypal, so they'd have to send you an invoice in the mail to try and collect.