[Tfug] WRT54G (et al.) hacking

[Eric Gearhart]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 10:25 PM, Bexley Hall<bexley401 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Is anyone *intimately* familiar with the hardware on
> these beasts?  My understanding is that they appear
> (to the software) as three network interfaces:
> - the WLAN interface
> - the wireless interface
> - the "switch" interface
>
> The latter is where I am looking for details.
> Specifically, is this *just* a switch glued onto
> a regular network interface (i.e., the third
> interface on the CPU looks like a "regular"
> interface FEEDING a 5 port switch)?  Or, is
> there some extra magic involved?
>
> Ideally, I would like to treat (in software)
> the four external "ports" (discounting the WLAN)
> as SEPARATE interfaces (i.e., disable the "switch"
> functionality)

Don,

I'm somewhat intimately familiar... I love the non-castrated WRT54G
line. Each port appears as its own separate port afaik, and they are
bridged together using standard Linux bridging (br0 or br1 I think...
don't have my WRT nearby at the moment).

OpenWRT could do what you're trying to do I believe... heck even
dd-wrt has options for the bridging and VLANs of the individual ports
I believe.

Also - if you want one that has the specs of the original WRT 54Gs
Linksys was gracious enough to offer a WRT54GL (note the L). From the
wikipedia article
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_WRT54G_series#WRT54GL):

"Linksys released the WRT54GL in 2005 to support third-party firmware
based on Linux, after the original WRT54G line was switched from Linux
to VxWorks, starting with version 5. The WRT54GL is technically a
reissue of the version 4 WRT54G. Cisco was sued by the FSF for
copyright infringement, but the case was settled"

--
Eric
http://nixwizard.net