I picked up two Linksys WRT54G routers the other day from Best Buy. I hate that store, but they did have these on sale for $35 each after rebates. Anyway, I decided on upgrading our wireless network at home because I wanted to connect my newly modded xbox to the network without running a bunch of CAT5.
I knew the only way to do this was to purchase an ethernet bridge, most of which cost between $70 - $100. I was sure that there had to be another way. Then I remembered reading a while back that the Linksys WRT54G router firmware had been made open source by Cisco (Linksys parent company) and there had been a flurry of 'hacked' firmware releases since. I started reading into the whole area and was amazed by the progress that had been made.
Basically there are two different firmware releases that are being actively developed and supported. These are OpenWRT and Sveasoft. I noticed that the Sveasoft releases seemed to be better supported, and this is because there is a $20 annual subscription to their forums and pre-release downloads. I decided that I would probably need a little support through this new venture, so I forked over my $20.
The Sveasoft firmware is available in a couple of different states. The stable release is named Satori, the release with the most development is a release candidate named Alchemy, and there is a beta being exclusively tested named Talisman. I chose to flash my routers using the Alchemy RC4.
This new firmware can be interfaced just like the original from Linksys through the web, and great care has been taken to maintain the look of this web control panel. There are a number of extra features that the router is physically capable of supporting out of the box, but which the original firmware limits. One example is the ability to operate the router as a wireless ethernet bridge. Bingo! Other features include, but are not limited to, increased radio power output (up to 900% of the original output), VPN capabilities, the ability to run small linux applications locally (on the router), and fine tuning a new Afterburner feature.
Needless to say, the routers are talking together, the xbox is able to access the internet, and I am still able to support the other PCs in my house with no problems. The speeds are great compared to 802.11b, but I want to phase out all the 802.11b adaptors on the network to take full advantage of the 802.11g capability.
A new feature I am starting to play around with is running the Xlink Kai software on the router instead of a PC. The Xlink Kai service is a tunneling protocol that allows multiplayer xbox experiences using the system link feature. This serveice is free and a great alternative to Xbox Live!.
I will post more updates as I am able to get things running in a stable fashion.
