Hi
I have heard a lot about OpenWrt and therefore I bought a new router model WRT54GS vers. 6 and have installed it on my local network today. I have also updated the Linksys firmware from 1.50.0 to the latest 1.52.0. And everything seems to work very fine uptil now :-)
Now I would like to make this router version 6 into a lot more :), but....

I can not find any specific alternative firmaware to my router version !

Question is therefore:
Can any of you help me with some links to firmware and manuels to my router version ?
And also some help about any problems with the alternative firmware updates you tell me about ?

The whole "thing" has one purpose - getting rid of software firewalls like the one I use right now:
ZoneAlarm Security Suite incl. antivirus and all that.
This software simple kills my old AMD 1800+ with 1 GB Ram inside.
So my plan is the get a hardware firewall that I can fully control and a good antivirus software.
I could ofcourse bay a new computer but here in Denmark we change all TV signals and thing like that to digital in the year 2009, so I would like to vait until 2009 before I invest a lot of money in 3-4 new computers with mediacenter og home server plus mayby 1Gb network.

Now you all know why I asking for some help, so if the day have been nice until now let us hope the day continue to be nice...

Bear

If I were you, I'd return that router and get something like a WRT54GL from NewEgg, Amazon, etc.  They are $52US - $62US depending upon rebate.

The version 6 is only partially supported by OpenWRT and worse, only has 2MB of flash.  That's enough to run OpenWRT, but I don't think you can add much if anything at all. (I've never used one, but the FAQ says 2MB will leave you pretty cramped.)

The WRT54GL (note that the 'L' is important) has 4MB flash and 16MB ram and works very nicely.  It leaves a good amount of room to add software,

Plus, by buying the GL you are voting with your wallet for the Linux based units over the later VxWorks based units.

Whatever you do, have fun!

More info about WRT54GS support here:

http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Har … ys/WRT54GS

-Steve

Hi Steve

Ths for you help. I can see now that the advise I got from someone here in Denmark had a lot of missing informations about the different versions:

Flash memory
Ram
and supported alternative software

So I shall have a new version as it looks at this moment

Bear

Believe me, the sheer OpenWRT coolness you will experience after you find the right router will more than make up for the initial frustration.

That said, I'd do some research in the forums search about just what it might take to do the virus scanning you are talking about.  I'm not certain that the WRT54GL would be up to it.  However, something like the WRTSL54GS, which is about 99USD, has 8MB flash and 32MB ram.  Plus a USB port so that you can have a swap partition and plenty of disk space. (From a small usb fob to a, say, a terabyte RAID array. (I think it will do RAID.  Haven't actually tried.)

I'm finding that the wireless range on my WRTSL54GS is awful, though.  However, Vincent has several of them and says the range is fine, so mine might be defective.

-Steve

Hi Steve

I think my bad english have made a misunderstanding. I know that I write to fast sometimes and my english is not that good. The main reason for that is, that I´m a dane born and live in Denmark ;-)

And now to the more serious stuff:

My idea was to separate Firewall and antivirus when getting a not to expency hardware firewall in a Linksys router updated with an alternative firmware that provide the router with a good firewall setup and a firewall we can work with as we need.

I think that if I use a AVG Pro antivirus, then the virus and spyware problem is solved and that software do not use a lot of ram when protecting my computer online.
I have just bought a 2-year license to ZoneAlarm Security Suite and I hoped that the software would solve the whole problem, but it slow down the computer a lot

And you say that you have a WRTSL54GS with a lot of memory plus the extras and that sounds good.

The problem with the wireless range is not very important for me - not in this year or next year anyway. Because I normally turn off the wireless system in my routers connected to my cabelmodem. I use (right now) a Belkin accesspoint as my wireless system and that accesspoint is connected to my router with a cable. I have made a small closet on the wall close to my main computer to all my networks items (cablemodem, switch, router and USB printserver). So therefore I have and accesspoint placed another place in the middle of our house
(I hope that the Belkin accesspoint will work together with my new Linksys router with alternative firmware

But another thing is, that I can not find the model you talk about when I search for it here in Denmark. So if I buy the model you talk about do you know or think that model/type will work in Europe/Denmark?

Bjorn