Pablo Averbuj

More WRT54G fun

The last entry before this website went on hiatus was about the WRT54g I had just gotten. Since then, a friend let me borrow one of his spare WRT54g (thanks sungo), which allowed me to start playing with OpenWRT. I have to say I’m much happier with OpenWRT than I was with sveasoft’s firmwares. The versions I’m running haven’t provided a web UI, to which I had no attachment. Instead I manage everything via SSH/CLI. It boots with a pretty small foot print. Then I can install packages similar to how I would on a Debian box. This gives me a lot more flexibility and much more manageable.

Once I got the borrowed one running OpenWRT in a suitable configuation, I turned the second access point into a client. This solved my isolated living room issue. The main wrt54g has unrestricted wireless association, but it won’t route any traffic. It runs a VPN server for such a purpose. The second linksys sits in the living room and acts as a wireless client. It associates to the wireless lan, then VPN’s onto the network, then acts routes the local living room traffic (xbox, tivo) over the VPN. Really works beautifully.