The router to replace the one I fried arrived yesterday. I went with an Asus WL-500gP V2. I had a chance to play with it last night and was able to get it up and running. Like the Buffalo router it replaced, dd-wrt could not be flashed from the default firmware, so instead I had to use the tftp method. It involves booting the router to special mode that starts a tftp daemon, uploading the firmware to the router, waiting a while and then rebooting it. I messed up a few steps along the way and at one point thought I had bricked my router, but it turned out I was just mis-configuring the IP address on the PC I was using the transfer the firmware from and I also forgot to set the tftp mode to binary. Here is a list of steps I used to flash the dd-wrt firmware to the Asus router:
- Shutdown all network interfaces on the PC
- Power the router on
- Power the router off
- Press and hold the black restore button while powering up the router
- When the power LED starts flashing release the restore button
- Bring up the PC's wired interface with static IP 192.168.1.2
- Check that 192.168.1.1 (the router) responds to ping
- tftp to 192.168.1.1 and run:
tftp> mode binary(set tftp to binary mode)
tftp> trace(to get feedback)
tftp> put dd-wrt.v24_usb_generic.bin
... and wait for the upload to finish
- Wait about 5 minutes (I am not sure if this is necessary, but I think it is to allow the router time to copy the firmware)
- Shutdown the PC's wired interface
- Power cycle the router (the power LED will remain solid and the air LED will light)
- Bring up the PC's wired interface with DHCP
- Log into dd-wrt and configure the router
I used the USB version of dd-wrt since the Asus router has two USB ports that I can attach storage or a printer to. I didn't have time to see if I could get that working, but I hope to soon.
