The Open Source WRT54G Story

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: November 8, 2005 12:45:33 PM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The Open Source WRT54G Story
Reply-To: dewayne () warpspeed com

The Open Source WRT54G Story
November 8, 2005
<http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3562391>
The story of the Linksys Wireless-G Router (model WRT54G) and how you  
can turn a $60 router into a $600 router is a little bit CSI and a  
little bit Freaks & Geeks. It’s also the story of how the open source  
movement can produce a win-win scenario for both consumers and  
commercial vendors. What’s especially exciting is that tricking out  
this router doesn’t require any eBay sleuthing or other hunt for some  
off-the-wall piece of hardware. Instead, grab it off-the-shelf. The  
WRT54G is stacked high in every Best Buy and Circuit City across the  
country and, of course, most online retailers — Amazon.com sells it  
for $55. It’s ubiquitous and, some would say, a diamond in the rough.  
Or a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

While routers used to be the domain of networking specialists,  
they’ve gone mainstream along with residential broadband. Commodity  
routers can be had for as little as – well, "free after rebate” in  
some cases, and often not much more. To keep them cheap, consumer- 
grade vendors like Linksys repackage designs from OEM vendors rather  
than design the  hardware and software in-house.

The tradeoff for these sub-$100 routers can be reliability,  
particularly in the coding of the firmware – the software “brain”  
that controls the router’s functions. Consumer-grade firmware may be  
buggy, and may be limited in functionality compared to commercial- 
grade routers designed for business such as those made by Cisco and  
SonicWall.

The WRT54G was released in 2003 in anticipation of the 802.11g  
standard, with its theoretical maximum bandwidth of 54Mbps compared  
to 802.11b’s 11Mbps. In many respects the WRT54G is a typical  
wireless router – it accepts an incoming broadband link such as cable  
or DSL and shares it between its built-in four-port Ethernet switch  
and antennae for broadcasting the signal to wireless clients.

In June 2003 some folks on the Linux Kernel Mailing List sniffed  
around the WRT54G and found that its firmware was based on Linux  
components. Because Linux is released under the GNU General Public  
License, or GPL, the terms of the license obliged Linksys to make  
available the source code to the WRT54G firmware. As most router  
firmware  is proprietary code, vendors have no such obligation. It  
remains unclear whether Linksys was aware of the WRT54G’s Linux  
lineage, and its associated source requirements, at the time they  
released the router. But ultimately, under outside pressure to  
deliver on their legal obligation under the GPL, Linksys open sourced  
the WRT54G firmware in July 2003.

With the code in hand, developers learned exactly how to talk to the  
hardware inside and how to code any features the hardware could  
support. It has spawning a handful of open source firmware projects  
for the WRT54G that extend its capabilities, and reliability, far  
beyond what is expected from a cheap consumer-grade router.

Feature-Packed Firmwares

So the Linksys WRT54G can be loaded with replacement firmware with  
exciting new features. Which raises the question – like what?

Of course, you can expect most replacement firmware to support the  
same basic functions Linksys provides out of the box for this  
wireless router. Often these features will be more stable, in cases  
where Linksys’ bugs have been fixed by other developers. But that’s  
not what makes open source firmware so exciting.

The real deal is what the WRT54G can do, with the right replacement  
firmware, that you’d only expect to find on a commercial-grade router  
costing several times as much.

You could use the WRT54G as a repeater or a bridge. Create a wireless  
distribution system (WDS) or a mesh network. Run a VPN server. Or a  
VoIP server. Or a managed hotspot with a RADIUS server. Manage  
bandwidth use per protocol. Control traffic shaping. Support IPv6.  
Boost antenna power. Remotely access router logs. Operate the router  
as a miniature low-power PC, running a variety of Linux applications.

That’s just the short list. Some firmware offerings support a wide  
range of these features while others are more tailored to specific  
router applications. Some sport friendlier configuration interfaces  
while some are command-line driven. And because these firmware files  
descend from Linksys’ open-source progenitor, they are freely available.

The important caveat, of course, is that Linksys will not support  
alternative firmware, only their own official version. Should you run  
into a problem with  replacement firmware, or wind up disabling your  
router (which is rare but possible – stay tuned), you’ll be on your  
own. If you already own a WRT54G and it performs just the way you  
need it to, mucking around with replacement firmware might just break  
something that didn’t need fixing.

On the other hand, if adding enterprise features to a $60 router  
sounds worth the minimal risk, you don’t need any special hacker  
skills to get there. If you’ve already setup an off-the-shelf router  
before, replacing the WRT54G’s stock firmware with a feature-laden  
substitute is well within reach.

Choose Your Firmware

Besides Linksys’ own official firmware, there are more than a dozen  
varieties of firmware replacements available for the WRT54G. The most  
popular are named Alchemy and Talisman, released by a company called  
Sveasoft, and another named DD-WRT, by a guy named BrainSlayer.

[snip]
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>


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