FREE! New public Alchemy version Sveasoft firmware for Linksys WRT54G / WRT54GS wireless 802.11g router

[Steelerz37]

Originally posted by: Manyakis

Originally posted by: Steelerz37
I just setup WDS between a 2.2 and a 3.0 both running Alchemy final. Seems to be working great. Sure beats running cable across the house so I can get internet access to my lab in the basement, and instead of just 1 connection i get 4 instantly. Not only that but it boosts the signal all over the house so I get great signal most everywhere

did you use WPA for security or WEP?

WEP, last time I tried WPA I either couldnt connect or it kept dropping I forget which. That was with the 2.2, I havent tried WPA with the 3.0

 

[Devistater]

abc:
I found some more info on the VLAN stuff, in a quote on the sveasoft forums:

[The] BCM5325 ... specs I got from roboswitch.com says it cannot do 802.1q based vlans, only port based vlans are supported. Also it have poorer QoS support and per-port bandwidth control is absent too.

The BCM would be the one on the newer hardware, the less capable one.
And btw, the QoS they are talking about is not for the internet QoS, thats a separate system thats at the router software level, not the hardware switch chip level. This is a QoS if you have lots of people constantly transferring internal files over your network and it ties up your network so much you want to give priority to someone else. At least thats how I understand it.
Then in another quote:

COOL! You can actually use this as a full layer3 switch! If u map eatch port to a vlan u get a 6port l3 switch (with routing/fw/trafic-shaping/unameit) for just 100$ or so! Verry impresive. Too bad they dont make this devices with 16ports

And in reply to that:

Just get a L2 vlan-capable switch and throw it on the WRT. Smile
I am using a Cisco 2924XL with my WRT and it works nicely.

I dont understand any of that about layer 3 switches and stuff, but if you do then you might be interested in that VLAN stuff

 

[xyyz]

i just got the WRT54GS v.2 ... but i see that this version isn't supported by the latest firmware. i've seen that two people have tried alchemy v.1 and haven't had any noticable issues. has anyone else given this a shot? what results did ya'll get?

 

[Bmott]

I have a version 2.0 GS and have been using V1.0 for 4 days now. NO problems yet to report.

 

[essasin]

ive been using sveasoft for two months and it works great

 

[xyyz]

problem to report on the v2 GS and v1. the wireless abilities suddenly stopped working. i've tried many thing, from power cycling, to well... power cycling, but nothing seems to work.

 

[Manyakis]

I can't get wpa to work with alchemy v1.0

 

[abc]

Originally posted by: abc
yep i do own an older one... and a smc...

i'd like two wrt54's, one i might make as a wireless access point, turning off dhcp.

the other reason is it's a good deal, having both, if I toast one and don't have the

time to fix it, at least I still have a Router to provide Internet access for pcs for my family.

i got it today... it's version 3.0

 

[Albis]

it doesn't look as if the 54G v3 works with this firmware. it's not listed as compatible

 

[abc]

didnt some people in the 'forums' report already testing it on the v3.0 and it seemed stable?

 

[knightc2]

I have a question that I have been trying to answer for quite some time. If any one can help I would appreciate it. Anyway, we want to allow users to connect to the internet with their laptops on a wireless network. The problem is that we want the wireless router to force these laptops to go through our proxy server. The proxy server is on port 8080 and I do not know how to tell the router to direct ALL traffic through the proxy server. THere doesn't seem to be a way to do this. Maybe this new firmware would allow this? Any ideas?

 

[Devistater]

Originally posted by: xyyz
problem to report on the v2 GS and v1. the wireless abilities suddenly stopped working. i've tried many thing, from power cycling, to well... power cycling, but nothing seems to work.

Make sure you do a full factory defaults reset. Hold the reset button down for about 30 seconds solid. Then let go. This will reset all variables to defaults of the current firmware. Sometiems you have leftover settings from older versions or linksys firmware that screw up stuff.
I've been using alchemy 1.0 for a while now wireless and wired, no issues.

Same advice to Manyakis about his WPA probs.

Originally posted by: knightc2
I have a question that I have been trying to answer for quite some time. If any one can help I would appreciate it. Anyway, we want to allow users to connect to the internet with their laptops on a wireless network. The problem is that we want the wireless router to force these laptops to go through our proxy server. The proxy server is on port 8080 and I do not know how to tell the router to direct ALL traffic through the proxy server. THere doesn't seem to be a way to do this. Maybe this new firmware would allow this? Any ideas?

Lots of ways to go about this. I would imagine you could figure out some iptables settings for linux to redirect everything. And block all outgoing port 80 traffic. Actually, since most all IE setups can easily be setup to automatically configure the proxy, figure out how to set that up (i.e. setup something that when IE tries to automatically detect proxy settings, soemthing would tell it your proxy setup), then block port 80 to outgoing. Then when you ran IE on any computer wireless or wired it would configure to use that 8080 port automatically. You can setup an automatic script at a configurable address, or just check the box that says automatically config (I'm guessing it would expect that server at a certain location unless you use the automatic config from certain URL option).

Another possability is I think there's a Captive Portal setup inside alchemy, it may need to be activated somehow first, but I think its in there. Captive Portal is intended for uses like that, its specially designed for like internet cafe's where you would want to redirect any attempted wireless access to a page where you'd logon first (after you presumably paid for the access) and then use the net.
I'm thinking one or the other methods or a combination of both should work, and sveasoft supports both.

Actually now that I think of it, you could have the captive portal setup to like put you on a page that says "to access the internet, please check this option to autoconfig proxy in IE options, then restart IE." Then people could check that box that says auto config and it would config the proxy and all other uses of port 80 would be blocked.

Anyway I'm sure there's lots of ways to go about this.

I googled for a couple mins and found this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/docu...6/all/reskit/en-us/part6/c26ie6rk.mspx
Has lots of information about automatic proxy configuration. Unfortunately I dont know much about that aspect, and its probably a question more properly asked in the networking forum if it regards details of the IE/MS automatic proxy config. BTW, I just checked firefox options and it has much the same options. Manual config, automatic config, or automatic config pointing to a script URL.

 

[Devistater]

Originally posted by: Albis
it doesn't look as if the 54G v3 works with this firmware. it's not listed as compatible

[Wolf edit: Removed misinformation/flame, Alchemy will work fine on the Gv3.0 and GSv2.0 - this is one of the things we tested before relase which was the reason for the delay. The README will be updated and was not intentionally left unedited. Notice that there is no changelog? That was also not intended, simply forgotten since we are very pre-occupied with Talisman coding and support.]

Thats a post from here: http://www.linksysinfo.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=4466
If this is the same Wolf as on sveasoft forums, he is one of the main developers along with sveasoft on the sveasoft firmware. So thats as authoritative source as you can get.
Also most of the rest of the posts on that thread say it works. So give it a try it might work. I'm going to check the sveasoft official support forums for more info.

 

[knightc2]

Thanks for the response. The problem I have is that I would have no control over IE settings on these machines. We want to allow laptop users to connect to the internet when they enter our building, but only though our proxy server. It would have to assign an IP via DHCP (easy to do) and then route traffic through our proxy server at IP 198.xxx.xxx.xxx:8080. I thought this would be fairly easy to accomplish, but maybe not. Is there and easier way to do this? I will look in to the captive portal option.

 

[Devistater]

Originally posted by: knightc2
Thanks for the response. The problem I have is that I would have no control over IE settings on these machines. We want to allow laptop users to connect to the internet when they enter our building, but only though our proxy server. It would have to assign an IP via DHCP (easy to do) and then route traffic through our proxy server at IP 198.xxx.xxx.xxx:8080. I thought this would be fairly easy to accomplish, but maybe not. Is there and easier way to do this? I will look in to the captive portal option.

Ask in the network forum for ways to do that (no need to specifically mention what router you have or whatever) and see what they say. I just dont know enough about this stuff to say definitivly what possible solutions are possible.
I know you dont have control over IE settings, but if you had a captive portal webpage that popped up and said click that option in IE in order to access the internet and had pics of how to do it, I think people would take a few seconds out of thier way to do it And if it was the automatic option, I'd think you could take the same machine home and use it on a normal network and still have it work without a proxy.

Anyway try askign in the network forum. I'm thinking there are people over there that know far more about that than me.

 

[knightc2]

Thanks for your help. I will try posting in the networking forum. I will also try your suggestions as they may solve my problem as well. I just figured this would be an easy fix, but I guess not. Oh well.

 

[kevman]

Bump,

I'm a late player to this 3rd party firmware game.

i picked up the Linksys G router from Compusa and got Versoin 3.0. (19.99 afte PM/Rebates)

What i've been wondering is , am better off returning it and trying to get an older versoin of the router or should i hang on and wait for a 3rd party firmware that is supported to be avialable on the router. I'm more into using the 3rd party stuff and checking out all the features, i'm not gonna be content very long for just plugging it in out of the box.

Thanks

 

[Devistater]

Originally posted by: kevman
What i've been wondering is , am better off returning it and trying to get an older versoin of the router or should i hang on and wait for a 3rd party firmware that is supported to be avialable on the router.

Its unlikely that you will be able to easily find an older version at a store like compusa. Right now I'm trying to get a definitive answer from sveasoft about the versions, because I think that the firmware supports the newer versions as well.

 

[kevman]

Originally posted by: Devistater

Originally posted by: kevman
What i've been wondering is , am better off returning it and trying to get an older versoin of the router or should i hang on and wait for a 3rd party firmware that is supported to be avialable on the router.

Its unlikely that you will be able to easily find an older version at a store like compusa. Right now I'm trying to get a definitive answer from sveasoft about the versions, because I think that the firmware supports the newer versions as well.

cool. keep us posted. another silly question, the files i downloaded for alchemy are simply bin files. Do i just use the Linksys update proggy and point it to those bin files ? there's no install docs in the archive file .

 

[Albis]

i'm using the alchemy firmware with my wrt54g verison 3 and it works perfectly!

 

[Devistater]

Originally posted by: kevman
cool. keep us posted. another silly question, the files i downloaded for alchemy are simply bin files. Do i just use the Linksys update proggy and point it to those bin files ? there's no install docs in the archive file .

When you connect to the router by typing the IP address into your web browser, you can goto a screen (administration, firmware upgrade I think) that allows you to upgrade through the web browser. Use IE for this just to make sure it works. You just click the browse button on the web interface and point it to the bin file.


For the alchemy 1.0 the ONLY way to upgrade to it is use the web browser. The alternative would be TFTP but it doesn't work for alchemy 1.0 since the 1.0 firmware is too large for it.
I'm pretty sure the linksys thingy wont do it either but you can try. If it says its too big, then it wont work.

 

[kevman]

Originally posted by: Albis
i'm using the alchemy firmware with my wrt54g verison 3 and it works perfectly!

albis,

Are you using one of the firmwares that are listed here: http://www.linksysinfo.org/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=35

Did you use the web interface to upgrade the firmware ?

 

[kevman]

welll, i took a leap of faith and upgraded to alchemy 1.0, no brick, seems to be ok thus far, have not had a chance to use any features yet. trying to get it ot connect ti my existing router wirelessly

 

[Albis]

sorry for the late response kevman, but yeah that's the firmware i'm using now and it's great

i'm glad the linksys router finally has static dhcp

i can't beleive some routers don't have static dhcp in this day

 

[kevman]

funny thing

it doesnt seem to work as i though it did. I can't get an IP from my Cable Modem for some reason. Its set to DCHP as it shoudl be but it doesnt get it. Any ideas ?