Formatting Linksys Routers With OpenWRT Third Party Firmware



Formatting Linksys Routers With OpenWRT Third Party Firmware

ABSTRACT

This application note describes how to format Linksys routers with OpenWRT, a third party firmware, and the basic configuration of the software.

KEYWORDS

Linksys, Router, Firmware, OpenWRT

INTRODUCTION

Home networking is becoming more and more commonplace. Industry firmware on routers have limited configurability and little or no support for running other network based programs. One result of this has been people moving to third party firmwares for their routers, such as OpenWRT. Third party firmwares can offer better quality of service, more network configurability, and can support running network based programs. The objective of this note is to cover how to install and configure OpenWRT on a common Linksys router.

Installation

The first step is to download the binary image of OpenWRT for your router. OpenWRT is hosted on the website . On the right side of the webpage is a bock titled “Latest Release: 8.09” with a couple links below it. This tells you the latest realease of the firmware is version 8.09. Click on the download, then click on the number of the latest release. The next page is a list of platforms. Most common Linksys routers are Broadcom and require the brcm-2.4 kernel. If you are not sure, on the main page there is a link for “supported devices”. Follow this link to find your router version and what platform it is; for now we will assume Broadcom. Once you click on your platform, you will be brought to a list of versions. For example, if your router is a wrt54g, you would click “openwrt-wrt54g-squashfs.bin”. This will open up a file download window; save the file to your computer. Now that you have the firmware image, you can update the router. All Linksys routers have a web interface to connect and configure it. Their default address is 192.168.1.1, so in a web browser address browser type “192.168.1.1”. This connects you to the web interface of your router. Next, click on the administration tab along the top of the interface. Once you click that, under that tab will be a secondary tab that says “Firmware Upgrade”, click that. This takes you to the firmware upgrade page of your router. There will be a text box and a browse button to select the new firmware; you can either type in the direct path to the firmware image or click the browse button and select the firmware image. Once the image is selected and the path is displayed in the text box, click the button labeled “Upgrade”. Your router is now installed with OpenWRT.

Configuration

Now that the firmware is installed, we can connect to the router through telnet. Using a telnet program, telnet into 192.168.1.1 to gain access to your router. The first thing to configure is DHCP on the WAN port. If this is not configured and enabled, your router will not be able to connect to the internet on the WAN port. To configure DHCP run:

uci set network.wan.proto=dhcp

uci commit network

ifup wan

These enable DHCP on the WAN port. In order for the changes to take effect, you will need to cycle your routers power. This can be done by unplugging your router and plugging it back in, or using the command:

reboot

Upon installation of the firmware, wireless is disabled. The next step is to enable wifi. Run the commands:

uci set wireless.wl0.disabled=0

uci commit wireless && wifi

This enables wifi, but without any security. In order to add security to the wireless interface, go the to directory /etc/config using

cd /etc/config

All the wireless configuration settings are in the “wireless” config file. Run the command

vi wireless

to open the wireless configuration file. There are two section to this file; the first section starts with “config wifi-device” and the second section starts with “config wifi-iface”. Nothing needs to be done with the first section for security. In order to enable security, edit the second section by adding the lines

option encryption none, wep, psk, psk2, wpa, wpa2

where you only select one of encryption types. Once you have selected the desired encryption for security, you need to designate a key. The key is not auto generated. To add the key, add the lines

option key _______

and put whatever key you want where the blank line is. This will be the key that the router will check against for all incoming connections from clients. That is it for enabling wireless security, save changes, exit vi, and reboot the router. The wireless for your router will now be activated.

Physical ports can be configured using ifconfig command and LAN configuration settings can be configured in /etc/config/network. Go to oldwiki.OpenWrtDocs.html and go click on Kamikaze link under firmware configuration to see more on configuring networks.

Packages

The last advantage OpenWRT gives is support for packages. Packages are programs you can install on your router to take computing burden off of your computer. Packages you can install are SQL, various firewalls, Quality of Service programs, etc. In order to see what packages you can install on your router, run the commands

opkg update

opkg list

This updates, then displays the list of all the packages that can be installed on your router. To install a package run

opkg install ‘package name’

This installs the package onto your routers flash. Packages are separate from router firmware, support and documentation for packages are done through each programs own website or company.

CONCLUSION

OpenWRT is a great way to expand the usability of your Linksys router and to improve the computing power of your network. Installation and configuration is simple and easy and it supports many packages to improve your router’s effectiveness.

RESOURCES



oldwiki.OpenWrtDocs.html

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