So .dd-wrt v23 SP1 was released earlier this week and I didn’t have time to flash my Linksys WRT54G v4 till today. Linksys now has 3 varieties of this router: WRT54G, WRT54GS, WRT54GL. The main difference between the 3 is that the WRT54G no longer supports outside firmware, and that line was renamed to WRT54GL (L = Linux). The WRT54GS comes with SpeedBooster technology. According to Linksysinfo.org, the only difference is that the WRT54GS comes with twice as much RAM.
You can download the newest firmware here or click one of the following direct links:
dd-wrt.v23_sp1_micro.zip
dd-wrt.v23_sp1_mini.zip
dd-wrt.v23_sp1_standard.zip
dd-wrt.v23_sp1_voip.zip
dd-wrt.v23_sp1_vpn.zip
I went with the standard as usual, since I didn’t want to limit my options and didn’t really need it customized for VPN or VoIP. To give you a better idea on how to decide, this was taken from their homepage:
DD-WRT v23 SP1 final is now available for download in the following distributions:
micro – made for low memory and flash space devices. its does support the WRT54G/GS v5 too. but you need a jtag adapter to get it on this unit for the first time. consult the dd-wrt wiki for step by step instructions
mini – minimal feature set dd-wrt. it contains almost everything you need and leaves also enough flash space free for doing some customization using jffs
standard – standard feature set dd-wrt which contains almost everything you need for professional usage including snmp, hotspot features like chillispot and sputnik ™.
voip – contains a additional SIP Gateway Routing system for managing SIP capable devices in a private network
vpn – contains a full featured openvpn client for high secure network connections.
Some notes, the default username has been changed from admin to root. So you have to log in using root and your previous password. Also do note, they recommend you to reset your router to factory settings and I always forget what my default WRT54G username/password is. So if you have forgotten, the default username/password is (blank)/admin (from Default Router Usernames and Passwords).
Under DHCP, the default Client Lease Time was set to 1440 minutes. I thought that was a funky number, so I changed it to 3600 minutes. Later I realized was thinking 3600 seconds per hour and if that was minutes, it would mean 60 hours. So I went and calculated how many minutes per day, and guess what, 24 * 60 = 1440 minutes per day. Haha. The default was what I already wanted. Previously the client lease time was set to 10 minutes. Not sure if that was the default, or I somehow managed to set it to that low.
Of course I’ve bumped up my Xmit Power from 28mW to 251mW, however it appears there’s this new setting labeled Noise Reference which can be set between 0 and -100db. It’s default to -98db, so I’m just going to leave it there for now, but if you know what the advantages of changing that (yes, I’m too lazy to go look it up right now), please let me know.
I haven’t played around with the settings much yet. Re-enabled my port forwarding table and setup my wireless security and things have been working fine so far. One thing I noticed is that DNS lookup seems to break afterawhile, and I had to set my DNS servers manually to bypass resetting the router everyday. I wonder if this update fixed that.
Don’t set your Xmit to 251…it will burn out your router and actually works less well than it would at a lower setting. Most suggest something under 70, but I’ve seen semi-competent sources go as high as 125. Definitely nothing over that.