How To Make Your Router 'Featurific'

Have you ever asked yourself, "how do I make my router perform better?" Once I had a wireless router that was no better than a brick. I could not get much out of it until I came across something. It transformed the device and brought the best out of it. That is what I want to share with you. You just need to try this and see it unleash your router.. a whole new world of possibilities.

I will use a Linksys router to illustrate this.



A legacy Linksys router has very good hardware but the firmware does not bring out all it's capabilities. When you log into the router's GUI, under 'Advanced Routing' in Setup page, the router can be seen to operate in gateway or router modes only. Thus, it can only run RIP or be configured with a static route. This among many other things are the limitations I talk about. When unleashed, the same router can run RIPv2 and BGP. All you need is to upgrade the firmware on your router with a compatible dd-wrt firmware. This is free and can be got from dd-wrt.com website.








Which Features Can We Get?
When I upgraded the firmware of this Linksys WRT54G v1.0 to dd-wrt firmware, the router became an entirely new device. Let me share some of the features I see.

 In this picture, we can see that the same router which had only Access Point (AP) mode can now operate as an AP, a Client, A Wireless Bridge, a Repeater Bridge and a Client Bridge all in one, depending on the mode you wish to run. One nice feature as a Repeater is that here, the SSID of the of the AP and the Repeater could be different, and their security keys and authentication types different also









Again, under the upgraded firmware, the router can now be used in conjunction with an external RADIUS server to provide authentication, a feature we could not get previously.

RADIUS

Access Control

This next picture shows that you can use the Linksys router as if you are using high end managed Cisco routers for QoS management, blocking specific scavenger P2P applications like Bittorrent, Edonkey and the rest (like using NBAR on CLI) This is really awesome.

Hotspot

  Other features include but not limited to real-time monitoring of router resources, bandwidth monitoring, VPN server and client setup, Hotspot with billing platform, EoIP tunnelling, VLAN isolation with lots of flexibility and lots more. If you are a networking freak like me, it's just better experienced than told.
(See pictures below)

Router Status

Real-time Bandwidth Monitoring

How does it work?

Lots of care should be taken in the firmware upgrade else you may make your router a complete brick..lol. The firmware works with a whole variety of routers like Linksys, EnGenius, Dell, Cisco, Ubiquiti, TP-Link, Mikrotik, and many more.

1. First, you have to verify that your router model is supported on the platform. (Note: before attempting to upgrade, it is advised you visit the site and go through the instructions well)

2. You have to be careful to download the appropriate firmware for the initial flashing of your router (I suggest you visit the site or ask for further clarification).

3. When you have downloaded the appropriate firmware, you hard reset your router by holding down the reset button for 30 Sec while the router is powered ON, still holding down the reset button, you power off the router and still hold down the reset button for another 30 sec. Power ON the router again while holding down the power button for another 30 Secs. Then you are good to go (I know you are asking why). You need to do this if you do not want to brick (condemn) your router.

4. Log into your router via a web browser eg: http://192.168.1.1 (Ensure you connect your router and your PC with a network cable. Do not use wireless connection)

5. Go to  the firmware upgrade page. Upload the firmware file you downloaded. (Warning: Do not close the page or disconnect until you get a message that the upgrade has been completed).

6. After the upgrade, hard reset your router again (as in 3 above).

Log into the page again and you are good.
Note:  Username and Password changes (root/admin).


The brains behind dd-wrt are  +Sebastian Gottschall , +Christian Scheele, +Peter Steinhauser , +Felix Fietkau , +sylvain bothorel   and others.


If you have any question, do not hesitate to ask. If this has been helpful, do not hesitate to let us know. Drop your comments please. Thank you.