Over my time off I’ve spent some time messing around with my Linksys WRT54G access point. It had been collecting dust in my bedroom while I focused on other ways in which to waste time. As I mentioned a few posts back, I had been looking into what it would take to create a neighborhood-wide network. The WRT54G seems ideally suited for such a task.
A while ago I installed OpenWRT on the access point as I wanted to see how Linux worked on the box. What I didn’t find out until yesterday is how truly powerful this little box is when Linux is under the hood. For instance, one thing I need to do is to have it be my home internet gateway and split the internet connection into a trusted segment (the LAN) and an untrusted segment (WiFi). When I first read that the wireless connection was bridged to the ethernet switch, I thought this wasn’t possible. I found out yesterday that – while the wireless is bridged to the switch, it is configurable with vlans! Thus, I can treat each port on the switch as if they were independent, meaning that splitting traffic can be easily done with firewall rules.
Its truly amazing to know that a $50 box can do all of this. Linux rules!
Yeah, I’m using the DD-WRT firmware on that AP, and it’s rocking hard.