Question

Converting a Linksys WRT54GS Wireless Router to a Wireless Bridge

Asked by: bigricky



I just ordered a Linksys WRT54GS Wireless Router... it should be here sometime this week.

This router will be reconfigured so that the WRT54GS will act as a Wireless Bridge.  My reasoning
is that I have four devices that ALL have ethernet ports, I do not want to buy a proprietary NIC for
each.  my intent it to flash the routers bios / firmware to an open source version.

I "do not" know what specific version GS it will be, I won't know that until I get it BUT supposedly
this can be done with ALL versions of this router.

my main router is a Linksys WRT350N and I plan to leave it as is, running the standard  Linksys
firmware v 1.03.7

as a point of interest, I have it set like this...

      SSID Broadcast            DISABLED
      MAC Filtering            ENABLED
      Encryption            WPA2 - 63 character strong key


My question is this... with all the OPEN firmware out there, what's the "best" and "easiest" to apply?

again, this is to be used as a wireless bridge (I've read Tomato is one but not capable of this).

I am also looking for rather specific instructions on how to do this.  I don't want to brick this router
right out of the box.

OH, one final thing... I'd like to be able to flash it back to Linksys Firmware if need be (is that possible?).

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Asked On
2008-12-15 at 10:22:21ID23986109
Topics

Networking Hardware

,

Wireless Networking

,

Network Routers

Participating Experts
2
Points
50
Comments
6

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Answers

 

by: sedward5Posted on 2008-12-15 at 10:35:15ID: 23176337

DD-WRT should be just what you're looking for, they have a good deal of well written documentation. Here's a link to exactly what you want to do:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Wireless_Bridge

And yes, they do leave the option of reverting to Linksys' standard firmware (there's directions on the site for that too).

 

by: hfraserPosted on 2008-12-15 at 11:45:33ID: 23176969

I'm a big fan of Tomato because of its feature set and web GUI, and I believe it's WET mode is the wireless ethernet bridge you're looking for. It also supports WDS, but this is overkill for your application since you're not interested in wireless connections to the second AP.

However, according to the docs, newer WRT54GS routers aren't supported, so I think you're beat. Best to go with sedward5's suggestion of DD-WRT (which I've also used with no problems) and avoid the chance of bricking your router.

 

by: bigrickyPosted on 2008-12-16 at 11:23:27ID: 23186881

hfraser... WDS (aka wireless connection the this secondary router) would be useful too.  I had heard that tomato did not support WET / Wireless bridging.

I'm not seeing any clear cut instructions on flashing the router either.  maybe I'm not looking it the right place but sedward5 did give me a link for user instructions but that appears to be useful after you have it flashed.

my main concern is to use this router as a wireless bridge but I also see a benefit to having the option to connect wirelessly as well.

I'm torn... I see OpenWRT, DD-WRT and Tomato all out there.

I've also heard that you need to load versions and upgrade them.  dd-wrt for example has v23, then v24 and a v24 sp1.  I'm not clear if 23 has to be loaded first, the 24, then 24 sp1.  and with Tomato, I read something about installing Mini first, then a second version.  am I way off base or does this sound about right?

 

by: bigrickyPosted on 2008-12-16 at 11:27:24ID: 23186939

I missed where you said that tomato doesn't support the newer GS model.

 

by: hfraserPosted on 2008-12-16 at 14:05:47ID: 23188783

From the Tomato home page:

»» Routers that are known to work with Tomato:

    * Linksys WRT54G v1-v4, WRT54GS v1-v4, WRT54GL v1.x, WRTSL54GS (no USB support)
    * Buffalo WHR-G54S, WHR-HP-G54, WZR-G54, WBR2-G54, WBR-G54, WZR-HP-G54, WZR-RS-G54, WZR-RS-G54HP, WVR-G54-NF, WHR2-A54-G54, WHR3-AG54
    * Asus WL500G Premium (no USB support), WL500GE, WL520GU
    * Sparklan WX6615GT, Fuji RT390W, Microsoft MN-700

This will not work on Linksys WRT54G/GS v5 or newer WRT54G/GS routers.



Under the Basic configuration, the mode dropdown lists "Wireless Ethernet Bridge" as an option. This, to my understanding, is WET.


The Tomato Wiki has instructions installing from the Linksys GUI. You can simply do an upgrade. I've installed from directly from a later version of Tomato, and never did the sequence of upgrades.

 

by: bigrickyPosted on 2008-12-22 at 11:40:08ID: 23228960

I order the Linksys WRT54GS online... the one I received was a version 7.2 - I then checked the various open source firmwares and went with DD-WRT as suggested originally.  it could not have been easier to flash.  although I didn't get the expected results during the flashing (the router never rebooted on its own), the flash was successful with manual reboots or the router.

thank you all for your assistance!

rich

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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