Geeks in Paradise | Brian Chee » Open Source AP:

August 31, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Open Source AP:

TAGS: Toys and tools

The ANCL gang has now done a couple enterprise wireless shootouts and so far the obvious differences between the enterprise grade access points and consumer grade have mostly been in the realm of authentication, vlans, and tying those vlans to multiple SSID's. So while performance is also a consideration, we did not have the facilities available to us to do performance testing at that time. So while enterprise wireless hasn't stood still, the open source world seems to be catching up quickly.

So imagine my surprise when a Jesuit Priest introduced me to DD-WRT, an open source project that shoves Linux onto a Linksys WRT-54G and enables a bushel full of enterprise features, like:

• 802.1x authentication with peap/leap connectors
• vlan support
• multiple ssid support each with their own WEP/WPA key
• nfs support to bring in additional software features that wouldn't fit onto flash
• client bridge, client router, and AP
• Advanced routing (BGP for gawd sakes!)
• DNS Cache
• VPN passthru or pptp vpn support

I should in all good conscience point out that not all Linksys WRT-54G's are supported...version 5.0 from is notorious in that it only has 1/2 the ram of previous versions and it is supposedly impossible to shoe horn DD-WRT onto that version. This project has also forked many times with names like tofu, and HyperWRT where the authors have gone to other platforms (buffalo, etc) and one has gone onto a very popular embedded systems board from Soekris Engineering that has become the darling of the embedded Linux world.

Being a Linux geek, I just had to try this out. CompUSA just happened to have a couple older units left on the shelf and after much digging (with sales folks looking at me very oddly) I found a couple units to try out. Yup, not only does it work, it's also faster than the original firmware off my cable modem connection.

So if you're an SMB looking for enterprise features, maybe you might want to consider rolling your own AP by downloading DD-WRT or one of the forked versions.

Posted by Brian Chee on August 31, 2006 12:59 PM

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