DD-WRT

[Мастер]

So, apparently this is a project which provides open-source firmware for routers, including the particular model of Linksys I happen to have.

What I want to do is, take this Linksys wireless router, plug multiple devices (at this stage, a PC and a printer, but possibly more in the future) into the router, and have it send their traffic over the air to a wireless router in another room, which is connected to the internet. It appears that this is not something the Linksys wireless routers are designed to do, Linksys providing a separate product for that purpose.

I currently have a solution for this cobbled together, using two components (a wired hub of some sort, from Linksys, and a wireless access point from Netgear), but would like to use a single component instead of the two if possible. From what I can tell, it looks like this would be possible if I install the new firmware.

Does anyone have any experience with this firmware? Is there any reason not to go ahead and install it?

[Lance]

I've done exactly that before. It worked well and was easy enough to set up. It's been a while though so I don't really remember the details.

[Мастер]

Installed. There were a few stressful moments when I thought I might have stuffed it up and killed the router. But at the end, it worked. That is, worked in the sense that it responded to a ping in the default subnet, and produced a configuration menu at the default IP address.

The next part of the job was to get it working, in the sense that it would do what I wanted to do, rather than just responding to pings. That did not have such stressful moments, because doing it wrong just means the configuration needs to be corrected - doing the software update wrong would have meant throwing it in the rubbish bin. However, it did have many aggravating moments, as I struggled to get it working. Eventually, it did. Everything beautiful.

The only thing that bugs me a bit is, it seems like I need to put a static IP address into the remote router. Shouldn't it be able to get a DHCP address from the main router? The main appears to be 192.168.2.1 (I have physical access to it, but it isn't mine, I don't know the password, can't get it, etc.), and I can ping four different devices in the 192.168.2.10x range - these would be my laptop (connected wirelessly to the main router), the desktop computer (connected wirelessly to the remote router), the printer (connected by wire to the main router), and my phone (connected wirelessly to the main router). These pings were done from my laptop, so this includes ping from a device on the main router, to other devices on the main router, and back out to the remote router. So it looks like I have one big flat network, devices on both routers can see each other in the same private IP subnet.

But why can't the IP of the remote router (I set it to 192.168.2.6) be set by DHCP? Maybe there's a setting and I just haven't found it yet. Or is there some reason that having the remote router on DHCP would break everything?

[Lance]

Hmmm, yeah, I don't know. I would think it should pull an address from the main router too.

There may be an option somewhere to turn DHCP on for the WAN port in the remote router.