Modded WRT54G with Wifibox

[Zxian]

Ok... this is just a little story of a small project I did today. I figured I'd share a bit of the fun with everyone.

About 3 months ago, I bought a Linksys WRT54G router. I wanted it for the 802.11g network and I had heard that it was a little bit more robust than my previous router.

After looking around, I found some modified firmware for the WRT54G (Linksys firmware is derived from Linux, and thus under the GPL). I managed to get my hands on the Alchemy firmware from Sveasoft, and I was blown away at the feature set.

Lately though, I started to run into some troubles... random disconnects... slow internet, etc etc. After some searching, I found out that the Alchemy firmware caused the router to run quite hot (there's a 200MHz processor in there...).

If you look back a bit in the Hardware Hangout, you'll see that I was in the market for a new CPU heatsink and fan. As a result of that purchase, I had an extra fan laying around. I went to the lab at UBC today and added a couple of power wires inside the router that would then connect to my fan (voiding the warranty in the process... ). I also added a switch to the back of the router to turn the fan on and off. The fan is quite loud right now, so I'm probably going to add a resitor to the other connector on the switch (it's a double throw switch) to give the fan a "low" setting".

Then, I re-flashed the router with the WifiBox firmware... and boy! what a difference. My internet speeds are back up, I haven't had any strange disconnects or lag so far (it's been running for about 2 hours now), and the air coming out the top vent (where the fan is) is quite cool (which is good).

One of the really neat things about the WifiBox firmware is that you have the ability to have the router work as a VPN server - something that you'd probably pay about $200 in the store for. I haven't done very much extensive testing, but it's a feature that I'm definately going to be playing with over the next couple of days.

I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow... it's 1:45AM right now, and I've got to get up in a few hours to go to work...