Episode: 662
Title: HPR0662: DD-WRT
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0662/hpr0662.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 00:33:57

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Thanks a lot 36.
Welcome back to Public Radio, my name is Soak. I bought, and I have it here, he says
holding it up to the camera. Oh wait, it's a wireless G broadband router, WRT54GL, basically
you had another router it died, we're on our backup, it's an old MF-Linxis B router with
about three bytes of memory it seems, and literally every day or two if you have wireless
running you have to reset it, unplug and restart. So I'm going to replace this NF router
with this WRT54GL and I'm going to put ddwrt onto it whilst I'm recording this. So first
get my trusty love man out, this is a wonderful gift from MiniZoke, mainly because I'm just
going to try and start my, I mean, I open this packet, alright, slice it down there, and
pull this cellophane rubbish off, which is probably sounding wonderful in your ears. I have
the wife's triple E set up and I'll explain why in a moment, or not because I forgot
basically because it's running Windows, I can run i.e. as I mention in a moment.
Ah, CD and documentation start here, throw that to one side, don't care, how I called
it, very useful, around it itself, ooh, they've actually got a little cat 5 cable, which
is probably about two foot long or something, but it looks very short, I actually had another
one set up already. Uh, bunny ears, and at the back it says run CD first, so let's pull
that off and ignore it. Alright, now this is going to be the very exciting bit for you to
listen to. Actually, I'm not going to bore you with details, so I'm going to go through
and cut boring bits like this out. I'm going to have a zoggle log post going through some
of this, and hopefully it actually makes a bit of sense. They suggest, they said basically
sort of resetting it before and after, I mean, you need to resell it to force it to load
the new firmware, which we're about to load. I'm going to pull the network cable across
here, because I set it up the other side. Basically, you said we're replacing the firmware,
so plug that in there, and sure enough we get light on number one. What do I need to do?
I need to turn wireless off on the triple E. Yeah, wireless LAN Bluetooth off, don't care
about any of that. So, we're now hard connected, hard while you're in. This add-on can cause
internet explorer to stop responding or crash. What? Just open it without the dial add-on
then. I don't know what add-on it was. Skype, I think. I don't know. Don't care. And now
it's not opening internet explorer. I figured the easiest way was just go to 192.168.1.1.1,
I think, as a default. But apparently, now there we get into explorer 192.168.1.1.
The server, right. Yes, admin and admin, I think was the username password. There we go.
Welcome to internet explorer 8. Annoying. Asked me later. Go away. Anyway, so the basic
idea is that you go to what the hell? Seriously, internet explorer stopped trying to open a new
page. It tried to do something. Right. Anyway, the basic idea is you open up internet explorer.
I'm not quite sure why it says you need to use internet explorer, which sucks. I have heard
that other people use just use Firefox and stuff. Supposedly, it's because Firefox will
detect that the script is waiting and say it's hung and then pause running of the script
which like breaks it or something. So feel free to try. However, I must point out if you
brick it tough, don't go hassling me. This is going to avoid your warranty and yes, I just
bought it and I'm going to avoid the warranty, go figure. You do this entirely at your own
risk. Just because I got it working, you following my instructions is not mean yours is going
to work. There are multiple different versions and this, that and the other. So we shall
see how it works. And I apologize if I swear when I break it. Anyway, so you get a 192.168.1.1.1,
which is the default link system, logging in with admin and admin, the username and password.
And under administration, I think it is, or maybe not. Yes, administration firmware update.
Now what we're going to do, we're going to browse and if you go to the DDWRT website,
DD-WRT.com. But again, Zagdoll will have a link. So you go there, you can look at the
browser database. You search further out that you want or you have, I mean in this case,
I actually looked at what was nice and well supported and had lots of memory and stuff.
So links is WRT54GL is the one I have. Just got it off new egg, standard stuff. And then
from there, it turns around and says that you need to do this, that and the other. Here
are some notes and this is what's going on. So I'm going to do a quick search again for
this one. So yeah, links is revisions. It's got 16 mega RAM, 4 mega flash, additional
information, initial flashing mini generic via web interface. Give it at least two minutes
after reboot. And it shows you what's supported a bunch of different builds and everything.
And then there's the mini build for required from initial flashing via web, which is
DD-WRT.v24 and it's got mini underscore generic dot bin. So that's the file I need. So I'm
going to try and remember where I downloaded it to. Yes, DD-WRT mini generic, just double
check, mini generic, yes. Open and upgrade. This is going to take a while, not a huge amount
of time, but a few minutes. So there's also a life hacker article, which is talking how
to turn your $60 router into a $600 router, which is also rather cool, which talks about
using DD-WRT. Upgrade is successful. Now of course it's not going to work because it's
going to have to reset things, but it wants me to say that I have to give it a couple of
minutes to sort that out. In fact, if I look, the power light is cycling because it recycles
the router for you, so the power light is flashing because it's still thinking about it. So there's
no wireless, there's nothing at the moment. It's, oh, it just came back. We now have a wireless
line of stuff. All right, so we must log in. What's out the right use? Yes. The use name is
Root, and the password is now admin. Now, and again, in the top right corner it says firmware,
DD-WRT, version 24, SP2, blah, blah, blah. We're running the mini stuff. 20 seconds, it's been
loaded average, 0.69, 0.16, 0.05, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, somewhere through here,
let's try administration, because that would seem to be an obvious place. Yes, firmware upgrade.
We can now browse, and there's a bunch of different ones. So your mini builds,
micro-generic, Xbox, no-cade, generic, standard generic, standard generic.
Why are there different ones, standard ones, USB, apparently? VoIP, generic, and VPN, generic,
VPN, one sets open VPN up, and stuff. I'm going to try the VoIP, generic. It's pretty much
the same as a standard generic, but there is some extra stuff for VoIP. That sounded very idiotic,
didn't it? But the idea is, I'm going to try and get it. So when we use Gizmo to come
podcast and things, hopefully it will improve. So we're going to try the VoIP, generic.
If not, I can always just flash it again with a different one. I scroll down, because it's
triply, it's off the bottom, and upgrade. Upgrading firmware, please wait 300 seconds.
Literally, it's timing down and counting. 285, 284, 284. No, I'm not going to count down,
although I'm not going to be an idiot on there. But yes, so this is going to take it to the VoIP
generic. And if I go to where is it, this topic, I think it was installation guide, was it?
Actually, there's a huge amount of stuff to read, basically. There is a peacock thread,
and the idea behind calling it peacock is because it is a peacock is very obvious,
they're very big and sort of shiny. So the peacock thread is meant to be very obvious,
there's also the general installation guide, and the general installation guide has some
cool information there. Upgrade successful unit is rebooting, please wait a moment. And there was
also one that, oh, where was it? I don't have it now. There was one that explained everything
about what the difference between all the things, you know, this has this program, this is that
the Xbox One, for example, is if you've got an Xbox plugged in, it needs certain ports available
to do online gaming, and it uses the QLS quality of service or whatever it stands for. So another
to make those ports, preferred ports, so therefore they had faster access times, so the idea is you
would gain really nice and quickly. Ah, there we go. Now it's restarted and actually reloaded
back into the same page, except now on the top right, the firmware is DDWRT version 24-SP2
10109. I'm VoIP. I'm going up 42 seconds, load average is 1 IP is 0.0.0.0, stuff because none of
this is of course on. And that's about it for now. In theory, ah, throw that over there.
In theory, all the computers now plugged in, hopefully, and it's probably going to die fairly
surely because I think we're both set up for 192.168. Anyway, 192.168.1.1, I had issues with the DSL
when it was 192.168.0.1 and the rail trend that being 1.1, or for some reason because it was under
the same, or nearly because it wasn't the same netmask, it was nearly the same, it just seemed to
cause issues and flipping it up to say 192.168.10.1 fixed everything. Anyway, so we're back in to the DDWRT
stuff and it gives you, oh, some basic information, but that's about it really. His name root,
password, admin, need to change that fairly quickly though. What other settings do we,
local IP is 192.168.1.1. So we changed that to 192.168.10.1. We want to enable a DHCP server,
start address, 1.100 is default, maximum DHCP uses 50, I'm going to drop that down to 10
cause I really don't see the need for everyone to have access. All timezone, timezone, figure it out,
UTC minus 8, that's good. A bunch of stuff there. All right, anyway. Apply settings.
It's very swanky actually, it's kind of weird that I don't see why links this don't actually put
the DDWRT router stuff on there. Anyway, so, now 1.168.10.1,
should, now work of course. Yeah, and now of course, 1.1 is unavailable, but 10.1 is also unavailable,
that's clever. I broke it. Yay, I broke it, website's not available. All right, we have blinking lights
though. Something blinking anyway. I've completely broken it. Nice. No, I know, I know what it is.
Yeah, I need to go onto my network's disconnect and then auto F0. For some reason it doesn't,
otherwise it doesn't refresh the IP address because it's already under the least time. That's
what I'm doing wrong. Yes, and now I can get back into 1.92.168.10.1.
Runt, I mean, so changing it to 10.1 should not kill my DSL,
and NTP client, we can set up and stuff. I mean, there's huge amounts of other things,
DDS, MAC address, clone, advanced routing, virtual lands, just huge amounts of things,
and I really am going to have to play around and see what I can do. And there's Ethernet
over IP tunneling, which, in theory, if I set up for some of these things, it would
majorly help, but anyway, so wireless, basic settings, a bunch of things here. I need to change,
I actually put some security on it, and I tend to disable the SSID, even though that's pointless,
because if you just look, you can see the SSID every pack of the scent has it in there, but it
stops people accidentally connecting, and security, security, security. SPI Firewall,
that's some cool stuff there, that's interesting, and let's enable the log,
drop to rejected, accepted. That's kind of cool, let's do some of that.
I am really going to have to play around with some of this, but administration, I need to go into
and change the password, and the username as well if I can. I say, oh, it can change the
username as well. Excellent. So, if I go to my key pass, because I have the password stored in there,
and encrypt the database, because it's, you know, 67,000 letters long, I can go and set that up.
Okay, I'm going to have to edit this, and I'm so much like boring rubbish inside here.
I dropped two thirds of it, change the username, and make it something random, I think.
Password and web access, interesting, we can turn on or off, disable the info, just take off,
say HTTP or HTTPS, web GUI management, disable, turn up management, disable, allow any remote IP
disable, cron jobs, we can enable cron jobs, that's pretty darn cool.
Reset button enable or disable IPv6 language selection, Chinese simplified what?
Anyway, so there's some really cool stuff here, huge,
a bunch of different stuff about router GUI styles. Overclock, I mean, this is just fantastic,
the amount of stuff they are offering is just awesome, and I'm going to spend the rest of the week
basically playing around with it, I think, because there are more settings than you can shake a stick as,
but I'm going to end this here and see how bad it sounds. But like I said, I go to zoog. I'm
going to put some stuff on there with links, twad out, see what you think. Thank you for listening,
if you want to give me any feedback, you can go to zoog.org, that's xrate oscarkeloeco.oscaromeo golf,
you can send me feedback through there, or you can email me at zoogsorrowatgmail.com, that's xrate oscarkeloeco
Sierra oscaromeo uniform at gmail.com.