FREE! New public Alchemy version Sveasoft firmware for Linksys WRT54G / WRT54GS wireless 802.11g router

[GtPrOjEcTX]

just updated the firmware and did the recommended changes....lets see if I notice a difference...

 

[0roo0roo]

something to try on my gs w00t!

 

[weepul]

smart move by linksys.

but i have several things i don't understand. if the hardware was capable of doing so much more, why didn't they originally include it?

and now with this new firmware out, the demand for these 2 routers will definitely go up
generating more revenue for them.

//krunk (^_^x)

 

[0roo0roo]

well, they just didn't get around to it or they are saving the features for a future product? or they simply arehn't devoting that much resources to a shipped product, i don't know. kind of like asking why microsoft didn't include more games with windows i guess. supposedly this router is more like a mini computer then anything else. its got 32mb ram? i forget, but its essentially a mini computer

 

[Devistater]

Originally posted by: Tokar
But personally....i still dont find this firmware as a selling point for me.
I know 2 people who have the router and use it...and its performances degrades significantly after the signal has to go through one wall. Its a joke And we arent even talking more than 20-30 feet. Not to mention the fact that both people went out and got those Antennae from Radio Shack for $30 that supposedly increase the signal strength, that many techs who work for Linksys know about.
I hate linksys wireless products. So unless this firmware improves signal strength, $60 is too much to pay for something that stinks. There are better products for half that price...

As mentioned, this firmware allows you to increase the signal strength by over 300%. I use the router and have no problem doing it in the whole house and outside. There are people who use this router on long distance links of 2-3 miles or so (granted its with antenna mounted on roof, but still). In fact sveasoft forums has a discussion on how to armor the router so you can place it outside and run it off of PoE. Sveasoft himself is the one who runs it long distance and armors it. He's actually running a mini ISP with the router up in coastal mountains somewhere in sweden or whatever.
Another thing to consider are the actual cards. Linksys wireless cards aren't terribly good, if you are really concerned about range you should get one of the other brand's cards that do 200mw. The card has to transmit back as well.

Originally posted by: weepul
smart move by linksys.
but i have several things i don't understand. if the hardware was capable of doing so much more, why didn't they originally include it?
and now with this new firmware out, the demand for these 2 routers will definitely go up
generating more revenue for them.

For a number of reasons. First of all, linksys was basically compelled to release the source code. They used some GPL code in the router and people found it out so they HAD to release the source. Now they DID go beyond what they had to do and release complete buildable source with tools. As well, it takes a lot of work to do this stuff, if people are buying it as is, why bother? Also, linksys has a few higher end products, (1 small example is thier VPN routers, just get the wrt54gs flash it with sveasoft and do far more than thier VPN models, so they are losing sales on the VPN ones I'm sure) this will just hurt sales for that. And now that cisco has bought out linksys, I'm certain they dont like the idea of putting too many features into the router. If they ended up building all these things into the little router, they would probably lose far more money then they would make from losses of higher end models.
It would also increase thier support costs as now people would be calling them for help with linux, or calling them if they burnt out the transmitter for overpowering. Heck, from what little I know I know about these 2 features the OSPF and BGP are in multi thousand dollar routers, and probably this little router wouldn't do those 2 features well for a large network of hundreds of computers. They'd get customers upset that it didn't do an advertised feature (if they built all this in and advertised it) and yet more support costs.

So overall, it makes business sense for linksys NOT to build all of these things into these low end models of routers. But I'm glad we have an opportunity to circumvent that with 3rd party firmware.

 

[InlineFive]

So is there any difference in security features between the G and GS? I ordered the G...

 

[thephatp]

oooohhhhh this hot! Thanks for this great post! I'm going to try this out tonight!

 

[Devistater]

Originally posted by: PorBleemo
So is there any difference in security features between the G and GS? I ordered the G...

No, only the speedboosted mode which allows for slightly faster wireless transmissions. (See my thread on a previous hot deal of wrt54gs at amazon for details and speeds)

One other differance, the GS has more flash and ram internally. So theoretically you could add more stuff to the firmware. However, no one has done this yet that I know of, almost all 3rd party firmware that's released will work fine on either G or GS.

 

[TechFarmer]

Wow! This is an awsome deal! I'm returning my D-Link DI-624 for one of these Linksys routers! I didn't like Linksys products becuse of lack of static DHCP and Dynamic DNS. This new firmware solves those issues and give many more features as well. True QoS will be great for my Vonage VoIP phone!

 

[InlineFive]

Where is the comparison of the Free firmware vs. the Cost firmware?

 

[MaxDepth]

Thank you for all the links you have provided. I have this router and the older Sveasoft f/w upgrade. Theee are other sites that tell you how to improve the signal strength as well as make it weather-proof! Neeato!

My project is to increase the signal strength wide enough to allow me to take my laptop to the Durham Bulls baseball park (Triple A affiliate of the Devil Rays). Then I'll really be working from home!

All these links together makes this thread a great deal for me!

 

[Devistater]

Originally posted by: PorBleemo
Where is the comparison of the Free firmware vs. the Cost firmware?

The new alchemy development one you mean? Thats the one that will have that authentication method adding in you were asking, it will also have a captive portal added soon. The added "pay" feature list is both on sveasoft forums and also in a previous post of mine on this same thread.
Do CTRL F for Alchemy.

 

[Oakenfold]

Speaking of Vonage anyone tried this FW yet using Vonage? I'm on the border of trying the FW but curious to see if anyone has yet that uses Vonage.

 

[Devistater]

Originally posted by: Oakenfold
Speaking of Vonage anyone tried this FW yet using Vonage? I'm on the border of trying the FW but curious to see if anyone has yet that uses Vonage.

You might want to check the sveasoft forums. I'm pretty sure I've seen posts from people who use vonage there, and set up the QOS to give priority to the VoIP. In fact at one point I think I saw a thread that told you how to do it manually with IPTABLES in the router linux instead of using the web interface.

Just about any router should work fine with vonage, the issue that most people are concerned about is that they want to use thier bandwidth for other things and yet not lag the VoIP.

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: Devistater

Originally posted by: Oakenfold
Speaking of Vonage anyone tried this FW yet using Vonage? I'm on the border of trying the FW but curious to see if anyone has yet that uses Vonage.

You might want to check the sveasoft forums. I'm pretty sure I've seen posts from people who use vonage there, and set up the QOS to give priority to the VoIP. In fact at one point I think I saw a thread that told you how to do it manually with IPTABLES in the router linux instead of using the web interface.

Just about any router should work fine with vonage, the issue that most people are concerned about is that they want to use thier bandwidth for other things and yet not lag the VoIP.

I'm confused, so the basic version doesn't even support WPA or EPA-TLS?

 

[Devistater]

Originally posted by: cmetz
Devistater, thank you for posting this.

I'd love any links you have on how to twiddle that switch fabric chip. A four-port managed switch (five?) is still kinda small, but it's still ripe with hack potential.

The linksys wrt54g/gs has a switch chip inside it. This chip is the ADM6996 chip.
A number of details and the Datasheet from the manufacture on all the capabilities of the chip are on the manufactures site:
http://www.admtek.com.tw/product-htm/Switch/adm6996l.htm
BTW, that link takes a long time to load. Probably since its in taiwan So just let it sit for 60 seconds or so and let it load.
Here's a short list of some of the features of the chip itself:

Five 10/100M auto-detect Half/Full duplex switch ports with TX/FX
Interfaces + 1 10/100 MAC port
Support for up to 2048 MAC table addresses
64K x 12 built in SRAM
Two queues for QOS
Supports three types of Class of Service (CoS)
Performs forwarding and filtering at non-blocking, full wire speed
Supports 512 byte buffer allocation
Supports packet lengths up to 1522 bytes
Supports Congestion Flow Control
Broadcast storm filter function
CPU "see-through" PHY access
MAC cloning feature
Flexible port trunking on fault tolerance and load balance.
Provides a 32bit smart counter
Per port auto learning disable function
Supports a TP interface Auto MDIX function

Remember this is the switch chip itself. Most of its features work at full wire speed according to the datasheet.

Basically someone on the sveasoft forums just wrote a application to "translate" the settings to english, instead of direct memory writing, since the chip had a memory location you could write to to change things. So now all the settings are exposed.

Also sveasoft just moved the forum thread on it so its publically accessible. I wont quote it all here its too long. But here's the link:
http://www.sveasoft.com/modules/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2117

 

[Oakenfold]

Originally posted by: Devistater

Originally posted by: Oakenfold
Speaking of Vonage anyone tried this FW yet using Vonage? I'm on the border of trying the FW but curious to see if anyone has yet that uses Vonage.

You might want to check the sveasoft forums. I'm pretty sure I've seen posts from people who use vonage there, and set up the QOS to give priority to the VoIP. In fact at one point I think I saw a thread that told you how to do it manually with IPTABLES in the router linux instead of using the web interface.

Just about any router should work fine with vonage, the issue that most people are concerned about is that they want to use thier bandwidth for other things and yet not lag the VoIP.

Thanks Bro I'll take a look at it this weekend.
The wife hates it when I play with the router, I'm always doing something goofy like forgetting to re-enable DHCP (since there's no static DHCP on the basic FW i'm forced to use static ip again) and then the phones don't work cuz there's no IP to the ata telephone device.

 

[ItsPat]

Definatelly going to pick me up one of these this weekend. My AP-500 started making a nasty humming noise so good time to upgrade! Thanks OP.

 

[Devistater]

Originally posted by: PorBleemo
I'm confused, so the basic version doesn't even support WPA or EPA-TLS?

WPA is supported yes. I think WPA is supported in default linksys firmware even, as well as the non pay and "pay" versions of sveasoft. The EAP-TLLS is being added in later, as the quote I mentioned above says.

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: Devistater

Originally posted by: PorBleemo
I'm confused, so the basic version doesn't even support WPA or EPA-TLS?

WPA is supported yes. I think WPA is supported in default linksys firmware even, as well as the non pay and "pay" versions of sveasoft. The EAP-TLLS is being added in later, as the quote I mentioned above says.

I've been reading around and I'm a little confused. Is the only difference between TLS and TLLS is that in TLS the data isn't encrypted?

 

[dclive]

I read a few of the articles mentioned, including the review that really recommends this firmware. I don't understand one thing, though:

If I wanted to have, say, a neighborhood of WBR54G/S devices, all connected via WBS, and assuming they're all within range of at least one other WBR54G/S device, what are the limits in the system? In other words, if I have:

WBR1 <-----> WBR2 <-----> WBR3 <------> WBR4 <-----> WBR5 <-----> WBR6

And the cable internet connection is on WBR1, will WBR6 be able to get onto the Internet, assuming he can only see WBR5, and WBR5 can only see WBR4, and so forth? What happens to latentcy and bandwidth in a scenario like that? Are there any discussions you've seen on that type of an issue?

How difficult is it to configure, once you've flashed the new firmware? Are all functions exposed in the GUI, or must Linux commands be used and learned? What is the difficulty in installing new functionality to the devices, once flashed?

 

[Devistater]

Originally posted by: dclive
I read a few of the articles mentioned, including the review that really recommends this firmware. I don't understand one thing, though:

If I wanted to have, say, a neighborhood of WBR54G/S devices, all connected via WBS, and assuming they're all within range of at least one other WBR54G/S device, what are the limits in the system? In other words, if I have:

WBR1 <-----> WBR2 <-----> WBR3 <------> WBR4 <-----> WBR5 <-----> WBR6

And the cable internet connection is on WBR1, will WBR6 be able to get onto the Internet, assuming he can only see WBR5, and WBR5 can only see WBR4, and so forth? What happens to latentcy and bandwidth in a scenario like that? Are there any discussions you've seen on that type of an issue?

How difficult is it to configure, once you've flashed the new firmware? Are all functions exposed in the GUI, or must Linux commands be used and learned? What is the difficulty in installing new functionality to the devices, once flashed?

Ok first, this is the WRT54G/GS not the WBR. Is the WBR the Buffalotech WBR-G54? If so I'm not aware what firmware projects are going on for that or what features it has compared to the linksys wrt54g and the sveasoft firmware.
The kind of network you are thinking of is a MESH or WDS system. And it can be done and has been done. One end has the internet connection, the others all just pass it along. I seem to recall seeing that the practical limit is 4 devices strung together but I'm not sure. Latency and bandwith do go down, but being as most internet connections are only a couple megabits and the WRT54G is cabable of something like 25mbit wirelessly I doubt the bandwidth would be an issue for pure internet usage. The latency I'm not sure about. I would imagine it would be a fairly significant amount, but I doubt it would bother anyone unless they were a hardcore internet FPS gamer.

The sveasoft firmware supports WDS. There are MANY postings about getting this type of setup up and working on the sveasoft forums, a fair amount of people have done this. Most of the features mentioned in this thread are exposed in the GUI. So for a WDS/MESH network it shouldn't be THAT hard to configure. There are some advanced features of the router that require linux commands but in general a quick search of sveasoft forums turns up the commands you need. Once you flash a WRT54G all the additional functionality is in there, you dont need to "install" new functionality unless you want add in packages like kismet.

I've seen plenty of discusions about the mesh/wds type of networks. For more information (most of what I know I typed in this post) I suggest either sveasoft forums or google, or even the AT networking forum

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Devistater
The sveasoft firmware supports WDS. There are MANY postings about getting this type of setup up and working on the sveasoft forums, a fair amount of people have done this. Most of the features mentioned in this thread are exposed in the GUI. So for a WDS/MESH network it shouldn't be THAT hard to configure. There are some advanced features of the router that require linux commands but in general a quick search of sveasoft forums turns up the commands you need. Once you flash a WRT54G all the additional functionality is in there, you dont need to "install" new functionality unless you want add in packages like kismet.

I've seen plenty of discusions about the mesh/wds type of networks. For more information (most of what I know I typed in this post) I suggest either sveasoft forums or google, or even the AT networking forum

You translated what I was trying to say flawlessly! Thank you!

So, what about a WDS network with *two* hot internet connections (say, in case one house's cable connection goes down, another house's DSL connection would still be alive and well) - can that be done?

What about combining the bandwidth between the two, so that once the cable modem is saturated the DSL modem will kick into use? Do they have anything like that, again assuming the scenario/picture I posted above?

 

[Devistater]

Originally posted by: dclive
You translated what I was trying to say flawlessly! Thank you!

So, what about a WDS network with *two* hot internet connections (say, in case one house's cable connection goes down, another house's DSL connection would still be alive and well) - can that be done?

What about combining the bandwidth between the two, so that once the cable modem is saturated the DSL modem will kick into use? Do they have anything like that, again assuming the scenario/picture I posted above?

This is a very advanced type of feature. Typically called load balancing or load sharing. The kinda feature you often pay thousands of bucks for and use a cisco router/switch The linksys can't do this directly, but it MIGHT be possibly by using the "managed" switch chip built into it do split the networks (I've seen some discussions of VLAN and trying to do this, but other than that I dont know the details). I think it would end up being far more trouble than its worth. In general if you guys both use same ISP, if one guy goes down the other guy will too since most of cable or dsl trouble is from area type of problem. Like your neighborhood or city might go down.

The easiest solution would just be if you had an outtage more than a few mins long, just reconfigure the routers to use the other connection, assuming you use differant ISPs, or one goes down and one stays. Now I dont know about specifics of WDS. Its possible the WDS specification will just use the shortest number of "hops" to the nearest hot connection and use that. I mean theoretically it should do that since idea for WDS/MESH networks is to ultimately have a whole city of these things going. But I dont know specifics sorry.

 

[Yo2]

Thank you for posting this.

I have used sveasoft's previous releases, and thanks to their firmware (including power boost) they have converted a router that I dreaded to work with into one of my favorites. In fact IMHO linksys OWES sveasoft a commission on each of the 12 or so routers i have requisitioned since then. Without sveasoft's firmware I would have bought a dell 2300 or a netgear 614 or a dlink 614 but never touched another linksys.