DD-WRT

DD-WRT is a popular open source router firmware package originally developed for the Belkin WRT54G.  The package caught my attention as it allows a cheap old router to be reused as a client wireless bridge.  The download page has an excellent utility for identifying which routers are compatible.  To flash my router I needed to use TFTP. First I established an Ethernet connection with a static, not dynamic IP address, then I downloaded the Linksys GUI tftp client. There are some comments on the DD-WRT wiki about Windows 7 using CTCP, but I did not have this issue. Instead the challenge with a Belkin router is to initiate the file transfer immediately after the router starts responding after a power cycle.  The other issue I discovered is that not all bin files listed as compatible actually are: some bin files successfully upload but then are ignored.  My problem, however, was resolved by some detailed notes on the wiki which recommended dd-wrt.v24_generic-8184.bin for my hardware.

If the upload is successful the router responds for a few seconds while the upload is flashed, and then the connection is lost as the router restarts and DD-WRT defaults to 192.168.1.1 instead of 192.168.2.1. Reconfiguring the static IP address and browsing to the new default address revealed DD-WRT successfully loaded on my device.

ping-ddrt linksys-tftp

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    Optware - September 11, 2011

    […] finally bought myself a Buffalo wireless router with DD-WRT pre-installed. The hardware specs include a 680MHz Qualcomm Atheros CPU (using a MIPS32 core) and […]

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