I have put in a few wireless routers but never got into the internals.
I now have one in my home and will be adding a Range Extender.
I possess a WRT54G, running Windows XP and uploaded the latest firmware
(version 3+ dated Dec 2004 I think) from Linksys.com.
In reading the latest PC Mag, I ran across an interesting article on
the Satori firmware and extra options it adds. (
www.linksys.org)
A few questions:
1. Is this the best choice of stable firmware for my WRT54G to add new
options, perhaps increase signal power (if it really works) and tweak
other necessary parameters for best performance/range?
2. Are there other firmware vendors worth looking at on linksys.org?
Also take a look at the Wifi-box version (
www.linksysinfo.org or
sourceforge.net/projects/wifi-box). I like wifi-box better than Satori, but
either is better than any of the official Linksys versions. I've been using
wifi-box version 2.00.8.1 pre6-i for over a year (I haven't tried the latest
version). Wifi-box also has a signal pwr setting, though I didn't notice
that much difference in signal pwr performance with either wifi-box or the
Satori version that I tried. But it could be that I didn't give it a very
thorough testing--I already get a reasonably decent signal all around my
house and it doesn't deteriorate too much.
Some of the things I like about wifi-box are that VPN passthrough actually
works (I never could get it to work with the official Linksys firmware), it
has a "static DHCP" feature, and the port forwarding page is much easier to
use.
The static DHCP feature combines the best of both worlds, static IP
addresses with DHCP-assigned IP addresses. It's a DHCP server in which you
can reserve specific IP addresses for specific machines (identified by MAC
address). DHCP means you don't have to reconfigure your machines every time
your ISP changes their DNS servers or IP address, and static means your
machines have local IP addresses that never change. I find this handy
because my network printers are identified by IP address and because I can
be sure the VPN passthrough is always being forwarded to the right machine
(my VPN server) every time.
The wifi-box firmware also adds a one-tunnel VPN server, so it's almost like
an upgrade to a Linksys VPN router. It's not suitable for a small-business
VPN because it's only one tunnel . . . but, I have a BEFVP41 20-tunnel VPN
router that I can't get to work, so that's no better than a one-tunnel WRT.
(The VP41 wants to use ipsec, but W2K/XP natively supports pptp. And if I
simply disable the VPN server and try to use VPN passthrough, guess
what--the VP41's VPN passthrough doesn't work!)
Nevertheless, instead of using the VPN server in the wifi-box WRT, I just
use the VPN passthrough and use a Win2K or XP machine as the VPN server.
After struggling for years trying to get stable VPN passthrough on a number
of BEFSR41 and stock WRT54G boxes, the wifi-box firmware is a breath of
fresh air because it really works.
