Many years ago I bought many WRT54G (GL, V4, GS V4, V5), at first I used dd-wrt in all modes, especially repeater and client mode. I also put kismet on one of them.
To improve kismet range I made a 2 meters RG8 cable with TNC-RP and N coupled to my cantenna (Nescafe), picture to follow.
Last year 2010 I spent a whole weekend to put Freeradius on one of the WRT54GL, I used openwrt whiterussian. After hours and hours to find out the right EAP that fit on my 4MB flash, I got the Freeradius to authenticate my dd-wrt WRT150N and my cadillac access point HP MSM466 (EAP-PEAP). I basically run Freeradius under Ubuntu to trim down the unwanted EAP. It was quite headache to find free flash space, I removed all the not used modules to have only barebone router with Freeradius.
Now I try to backup my flash with the Freeradius, some people suggest to use JTAG but I saw a guy using CFE boot to backup the flash, much faster, so I decide to put serial on the WRT to access CFE.
A few week ago I saw a TP-LINK 941ND (2 streams with 3 radios chains) for $43, chipset is Atheros and has dd-wrt support, so I decide to give it a try to replace my WRT54G used as client bridge for a Sony tv which has only ethernet port. It tooks 15min to flash dd-wrt.
To run client-bridge on TP-Link it took a while as to made it works, mac cloning was required, for some reason the wifi mac and the lan mac seems to be the same? so with mac cloning to have wifi mac a value +1 from lan mac. Under Broadcom WRT54G all the mac address are different so no mac cloning is required there, client-bridge just works out-of-the-box. I made a post under dd-wrt forum to thanks the guy who gave the mac cloning tip.
I don’t know why the genius behind Linksys marketing changed the router “look”, personally I hate the new”space-age UFO” look, they tried to make it look like an appliance you can put in the living room, so the guest to your house can say “wow what a nice looking UFO”. I maybe old fashion but I prefer the WRT54G look. I kind of like the Netgear vertical look.
D-link new router DIR-645 cylindrical smart antenna router is quite “shocking” in a good way, I went to FCC report to have peek inside and I’m quite impress with the design, I thought the DIR-645 used some new Atheros chipset but to my surprise the chipset is Ralink!? The Tx power is also impressive >100mW (20dBm+). The way the antenna array is setup remind me of Ruckus AP. I really want to have a hang on the DIR-645 to see how it performs. I’m a big fan of smart antenna, steer the signal to where the client device is a smart thing to do.
vswr1 