If you have a supported wireless AP or gateway and want to have fun extending it without getting too deep into building software, give dd-wrt a try.
I have a collection of Linksys wireless junk, enough that I should consider becoming a stock holder. When we moved into this house I was thinking of running cables from the basement up to the 2nd floor. But this house does not have a simple means to run cable from the basement to the attic and I really don’t want to punch holes in the walls.
So I setup a Linksys WAP54G in the basement, another WAP54G in the guest room, and a WET54GS5 on my second floor where Lily and my computers are. Eventually I purchased a WRT54G v5 and replaced the WAP54G in the basement. I think I wanted to play with the idea of using the WRT54G as a replacement for my Linux gateway. The old WAP55G got put away on the shelf.
The second floor WET54GS5 was a 5 port switch bridge; it seemed like a good idea at the time. The thing is simple to setup but it spontaneously reboots often and support for it is really non-existent. It’s a dead end product.
The shelved WAP54G only has 8MB of RAM and 2MB FLASH which in the past excluded it from hacking. Now the website www.dd-wrt.com has a replacement firmware v2.3 SP2 micro image which fits and is a stripped down. Using these instructions, I installed the image on the WRT54G v5. It works really well and I’ve replaced the 5 port switch bridge with the WRT54G.
On the WRT54G the WAN connection is now configured as just another LAN port. I configured the device as a “Client Bridge” and connect it to the AP in the basement. At the WRT Wiki is a pretty good description of how to set it up. It’s been running without a hiccup for over two weeks now. My game consoles, the laptops, etc. all work fine.
zeus says:
oye disculpa hay alguno de estos DD-WRT para el wap54g y si lo has usado que tal te funciono salu2
September 5, 2007 — 8:38 pm
Paul says:
Hi!
I found this article searching for dd-wrt and wet54gs5, though I’m unclear if you are running DD-WRT on your wet54gs5. I have two of them and have similar impressions of the device. It was a great concept at the time, but wasn’t particularly reliable. Have you tried putting DD-WRT on yours and if so did you have improved results? It’s not listed in the dd-wrt database of hardware so I’m not prepared to try flashing one of my units just yet.
Thanks!
— Paul
November 14, 2010 — 8:24 pm
Jan Dembowski says:
Paul,
I’ve never ran DD-WRT on my WET54GS5. That’s probably doable but I ended up getting two Netgear WNR834B v2 and replacing that setup. Draft-N worked better for me.
I currently run DD-WRT on my two WNR834B v2 APs. The Netgear firmware was giving me grief and had not been updated in ages. I’m not pushing the envelope so the setup works very well for me.
November 14, 2010 — 8:44 pm