thechief wrote:How much is this fee?
I think it was something like $5? This was some time ago
This vendor only has Broadcom sources on their FTP at the moment as these are their current products
I was under the impression this community was already very familar with the NB5 series since they already had 'reference' firmware
kngtrider wrote:Their explanation to me at the time for the switch was along of the lines of 'Broadcom is a more expensive chipset' (IE, better)
thechief wrote:Interesting notion. The cpus are almost the same, and are binary-compatible with AR7. The other components on the system boards (e.g., ethernet switch, wifi chip) may be thought to be "better" - but I doubt it. Certainly, the performance is not better. However, perhaps some of the capacitors on Broadcom boards are of a better quality than those on el cheapo AR7 boards (particularly with respect to overheating). We are all familiar with overheating capacitors on some AR7 routers. That is the main weakness I can see on these boards.
kngtrider wrote:In fact in my experience its very hard finding new modems with Infineon AR7
Pluscom still produce AR7 routers. And there are all sorts of new devices in the far East.
Perhaps you might wish to write a brief tutorial on how you got TV working?
Yeah I will post an appropiate thread
kngtrider wrote:-even with what some people might perceive as 'heavy loads' such as IPTV via multicast or p2p/bitorrent at line speeds, CPU usage is very low so far, 98% idle with 2+ days
thechief wrote:The modem chip does most of the work. The mips cpu (a risc cpu running between 125mhz and 212mhz) is pretty powerful, but mainly just services the Linux system, and spends the rest of the time twiddling its pins! If you were running things like OpenVPN, Darkstat, etc., the cpu might work harder - but probably not by much. I have even tried running Squid on a smbfs partition, and it had very little impact on cpu usage. In short, the cpu is over-powered for the job given to it. A cpu that runs at half (or even a quarter of) the speed would do just as well.
Chip manufacturers increased their clockspeeds after they went to native adsl2 (out of the box ) they again later did the same when they started to add software features such as USB file/print/samba or DLNA, bandwidth monitoring.
Many 125MHz models were sold before the ADSL2 firmware and drivers was even ready. Even with the same firmware/drivers the newer hardware does sync better but that may due to modem generational improvements rather than overall speed . Im pretty sure i saw very high cpu utilisations on older hardware under normal use when things got busy but that may be down to the software running on it.
Netgear for example did bundle VPN Endpoints in the firmware for a while before discontinuing this feature when they changed platforms. This complemented their SMB/Enterprise VPN lineup so they wanted a consumer unit with VPN so end users who telework could have somehting that was consumer oriented.
kngtrider wrote:-SSH is enabled on the wan side even though i have Remote SSH and Remote Web disabled.
thechief wrote:It is disabled by default. It would only be enabled if you did so manually. By the way, how did you ascertain that it is enabled?
Yes the pages indicate it is off by default
I tested via my WAN IP, via a domain name which resolves to my WAN IP and by asking another person on anther internet connection to try to connect to my connection.
Port 22 and 80 are running on the WAN IP
I never toggled remote ssh or remote web ON either in the Linksys firmware or when I put RT on. I did subsequent to my post toggle it on/off to see if it would turn off and it didnt.
I have restored to defaults once or twice during testing the firmware so far.
kngtrider wrote:-The LED configuration that has been developed is very practical.
thechief wrote:Thanks. It took quite a bit of trial and error (and one or two unexpected system rests) to get it to where it currently is. I am sure it could be improved with more trial and error - but it can be a risky process.
IMO end users dont need flashing PPP/DSL LEDs or even dual colour. On/Off is more than sufficent since these LEDs will signfify if a successful internet connection has been established compared to the old days of dialup where the lights signfied serial port/low level signals.
As long as the ethernet lights flash for their correct ports - good switch support thats all I am concerned about.
If you think you have the same setup working on most hardware, dont touch it. Some users do not even have the modem in an accessibile or visibile location.
IMO client software should provide most of the status functionalilty for convience and ease of use but as many know client software wether its UPNP or a custom program isnt always 100% reliable. Having said that if said programs cant connect to the router the router is probably frozen and the LEDs may not be very useful anyway.
Belkin have taken this concept on board and rationalised their LED setup. There is like one LED on their hardware, anything further is provided by their software which runs in the system tray and has a virtual LED. The 2011 Linksys series has the ethernet lights on the back against each port.
kngtrider wrote:-With my current configuration of two virtual circuits, the homepage of RT doesn't correctly report the WAN IP or the WAN uptime even though these are present in the system
i get
WAN IP Address: ("ISP") ("TV")
WAN Uptime: ("ISP") ("TV")
thechief wrote:Can't be helped. The page is simply showing what the core logic reports. What is the output of "showip.sh"? (run from telnet/ssh).
showip.sh, ifconfig, system log and UPNP all report correct IP address.
IIRC with only one circuit, these fields get filled in , I dont remeber if it worked with the he circuit named as 'quickstart' or also if it worked when quickstart was deleted and replaced with someone else as I did.
kngtrider wrote:I have spent a lot of time messing with different firmwares and different modems over the years and the time spent getting this going was well worth it in hindsight.
thechief wrote: We are always looking for ways to improve the firmware - but the platform is not well documented, so any further insights that you have have would be welcome.
No Problem. Happy to help out here since this comminity helped me solve a problem too.
This community has been around for a very long time so it is dedicated. What I have noticed with other communities even DDWRT and Tomato is that they are a little embryonic if thats the appropiate term, very small communities with majority of users not having advanced technical skills to aid the very fewdevelopers who run each project and many times the developers take their toys and leave. Other times code is developed as is for specific models simply because the developers are supporting a particular model blind or theres little requests for a particular model. Little requests because the communties members are so relatively small and narrowminded
Yet if one was too search for how many 'blogs' and 'techsites' 'recommend' flashing say DDWRT onto a router they may outnumber of these communities.
There are even a few published books about DDWRT/Linksys routers, yet many of the resources mentioned are now gone or outofdate
DSL products more so than routers are long life products and the firmware is more critical on DSL products both for a feature set, bug fix and performance aspects. Where as routers have a less critical function to play. Garbage goes in and garbage goes out to either the other ethernet ports or the wireless. No Integrated modem to worry about or ATM or anything ISP/WAN related as they are purely Ethernet devices with a simplier PPP client thrown in for ease of use.
Also DSL products are much more likely to have crippled features for various commercial or technical reasons or to even be locked to a particular provider.
Unofruntly North America has the mentalilty that the rest of the world largely desnt share in that they are happy to swap between identical provider supplied hardware simply because the status quo there is any internet equipment or even cellfones are the ISPs responsibily, and a geek uprising has occured of people trying to rollback any crippling or locking..
I am aware of several well known networking manfuacturers who will only add certain features to their modems [that other manufs already have as default] if they get a hardware supply contract with a particular ISP , such as IPTV,SIP, PPP Relay or half bridge.
For some ISP specific variants of hardware/software there literatly is no official support for these units other than the absolute minimal requuired and any support has been community generated by enterprising people such as this community.
I have also had the 'firmware' dicussion with some vendors where we discussed why they abanond older revisions so early when the newer revisions are very similar and the response in most of these instances was 'well when do you do draw the line'. From a technical and commercial standpoint i can understand this well, but since these devices are paperweights without good firmware that justification needs more weight in general.
A well designed and thought out 'black box' firmware or a good motherboard bios shouldnt need major upates over its life. Its the early devices or things not as well thought out to being with or rushed that need cirtical updates. whethere these are delivered is another mater.
WAG200G is one of these devices, and this is infamous with linksys WAG series. They really dont care about the WAG series but they are obliged to make and sell these devices . I get the feeling they really really dont want to make DSL devices if they had the choice and probably none else. I have seen WAG series changelogs were certain things such as timezones added that were out of the box on other brands, and so on.
THe pages on the default WAG200G are another example of this mentality.
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Editor
NitroWare.net
[Edited by thechief to sort out some orphaned quote/endquote codes]