In today’s post I would like to share my experience with the Linksys WRT54GX ver2 router. Granted it is based on 802.11G MIMO technology which has been superceded by Draft N technology, it does have some excellent points which make it a strong contender and the subject of this post.

I have experimented with a few Draft-N wireless routers from Level One and Belkin and have discovered they stop short of delivering the promised range on the box especially in multi-storey houses and buildings.

The Linksys WRT54GX on the other hand is able to broadcast a strong signal through several concrete walls despite being placed in less-than-perfect locations, such as below staircases and nooks and corners.

This router has given me excellent service all these years, with hardly any need for power-cycling or resetting, while being paired with a simple TMNet Billion modem. So recently when this router began giving me some trouble I immediately took a trip to Low Yat to purchase a new unit of this exact model, given its reliability in the past. My trip turned out to be a disappointment when I found out this model had been discontinued and replaced with N routers. Given my not-so-fantastic experience with Level One and Belkin N routers, I decided to give the Linksys N routers a skip and went home and decided to perform a thorough examination of the router to determine what was wrong.

Upon further checking, I discovered the router was working well when I connected to it through a wired connection, but the wireless portion was not working altogether. In fact, it was worse, the status screen on the web interface indicated there was no wireless module installed at all. The wireless light on the router failed to come on as well. I decided to upgrade the firmware to version 2.00.20 and it was still the same. Every setting seemed correct and I was beginning to wonder if the wireless module had malfunctioned.

That’s when I performed a search on Google for “WRT54GX wireless MAC missing”. It is amazing what the correct keywords can do for a query. It can really mean a world of difference between getting the results you need and sifting through pages after pages of irrelevant results.

Anyway, the search results lead me to this page on the Linksys forums which was a post by hameluck from the United States with the exact same problem I was facing!

The best part was that he had discovered a solution to the problem, and the reason why the wireless module was not working was that the wireless daughter card in the modem had become loose from its connector. Without wasting anytime, I unscrewed the device and sure enough I saw that the wireless card had become loose from its connector. I pushed it back in, powered the router back on and voila! the wireless module was functional again.

As mentioned above, the router is placed below a staircase and despite all the concrete, it is still able to send a strong signal across an entire double storey house, right up to the very corners of the house. Despite all the marketing hype, I have yet to see an 802.11n router perform as well as this router can.

Most offices today are WiFi enabled, given the ubiquity of broadband Internet and mobile computing. However, these WiFi networks are intended for internal use, since they typically would provide access to company network resources such as printers, servers, shared folders and the like.

So, when a visitor or a client drops by the office and would like to hook up to the WiFi to check his/her email, a potential security risk is created. The risk is not only limited to malicious users with the intention to abuse network resources, it could also cause viruses to creep into the company’s network over the wireless connection.

Now consider a scenario of someone who would like to share their broadband connection at home with the people living around the block, much like a neighborhood hotspot. Despite the noble intention, a huge security risk is created if they were to allow anyone to access their network.

So the question now becomes how to go about sharing a single broadband connection wirelessly, while maintaining the security and integrity of the network? When I came across this need some time ago, I searched high and low on the Internet without much help.  After a bit of experimenting, I discovered the perfect solution to this problem, and is known as Double NAT.

The first thing that has to happen is that you will need two WiFi routers. The reason for this is that you want to ensure your internal network is secure and accessible only to people whom you specifically allow. The other WiFi router will serve as your Public Hotspot. You can even choose to leave this unencrypted if you want to allow anyone at all to use your wireless connection.

Next, you would set up each WiFi router with different SSIDs, so that they serve as distinct wireless networks. It is highly recommended to encrypt your primary (or internal WiFi) connection with WPA, you may even choose to hide the SSID if its purely for internal use and you do not intend to make your internal WiFi discoverable.

Also ensure that the two routers are on different channels so that their signals do not interfere with each other (especially if they are going to be placed within each other’s wireless range). Next, set the LAN IP addresses of both these routers to different subnets. For example, if your primary WiFi router’s IP address is in the range of 192.168.0.xxx, you could set up your secondary WiFi router in the range or 192.168.1.xxx. Finally, ensure that the DHCP server function on both routers is enabled.

Usually, in a typical PPPoE setup, the WiFi router is connected to the ADSL modem on the “WAN” or “Internet” port. The WiFi router is then configured to ‘dial’ the PPPoE connection using a username or password. In this scenario, we are going to extend this network setup by linking the “WAN” port of the second WiFi router to a vacant “LAN” port on the primary WiFi router.

The Internet connection of the second WiFi router should be configured not as PPPoE, but with DHCP, usually with a setting called “Obtain an IP address automatically from my ISP”, or “Dynamic IP address”. Using the IP address ranges in the example above, with this setup, the primary WiFi router will assign an IP address in the range of 192.168.0.xxx to the WAN port of the secondary router, while the secondary router will further assign IP address in the range of 192.168.1.xxx to its clients.

Therefore, you have effectively separated the two wireless networks on different subnets using different encryption keys, while sharing the same broadband connection.

While some people feel that this approach (known as Double NAT) is not good, I personally have set this up in two different locations with perfect results. The wireless clients on the secondary WiFi are able to run all Internet-enabled applications such as Skype, MSN Messenger and the like in addition to surfing the web and accessing emails without any problems or extra configuration.

Recently, TM Net has implemented a series of measures to mitigate the amount of spam on its networks, specifically its ADSL service, Streamyx. One of these measures is stricter filtering, and in some cases blocking of port 25 for all Streamyx accounts with dynamic IP addresses.

What this means is that if you have subscribed to a Personal Streamyx account, or a Business Broadband (SOHO Package), you may experience problems with sending out emails with the default settings of port 25, especially if you are sending out emails using your own domain name. If your customers frequently complain of not receiving your emails, this could be a tell tale sign. Users who are using their Streamyx email accounts may not be affected (example@streamyx.com) by this, since it involves emails on hosted domains (eg info@hosteddomain.com).

Personally, I experienced problems with sending out emails from my locally hosted and foreign hosted domains on port 25 and that is when I discovered this countermeasure by TM Net. In my case, my host Webserver has provided an alternative port, 587 for SMTP and this works much more reliably compared to port 25 (since TM Net is performing heavy filtering on this port). Therefore, it is advisable to contact your web host to find out if they have any alternative ports you can use for SMTP, especially if you experience slowness in sending emails.

If your web host does not have an alternative port, you can try TM Net’s suggested solution, which is to use smtp-proxy.tm.net.my as the SMTP server in place of your hosted domain name (eg mail.hosteddomain.com). For more information on how to set this up for your email clients, refer to this website : http://webmail.tm.net.my/info/proxy.html