A Wireless Distribution System is a system that enables the wireless interconnection of access points in an IEEE 802.11 network. It allows a wireless network to be expanded using multiple access points without the need for a wired backbone to link them, as is traditionally required.

This is a cheap and easy way to extend your wireless network coverage. It's cheap, because you can extend your network with couple of routers (which usually costs less that 60$) with the open-source firmware like Tomato including the Linux-powered Netgear wgr614L or other compatible routers. It's easy, because you need only apply a few configuration settings to your routers, creating a repeater bridge to extend your wireless network.

WDS Rules & Regulation

There are a few rules to implementing a functional WDS network. For optimal compatibility, you should use the same routers throughout -- or, in this case, the same firmware, running Tomato on both routers.

Both routers must communicate on the same wireless channel. Both routers must be configured to the same kind of 802.11 network, whether B, mixed B/G, or G. An exclusive G network must use channel 1, 6, or 11.

If you use WPA security, you must set up both routers as exclusive G networks. DD-WRT does not support WPA2 in WDS. WEP security can be used in a network with B support.

WPA security also requires identical SSID assignments for both routers. If using WEP or no security, you can opt to assign different SSIDs to each router. You may have more control over which AP your clients connect to if each has a different SSID.

WDS Step-By-Step

WDS reqquires to configure two or more Access point. For convenience I have described the configuration of two AP for the time being. However the number of AP is extendable. Figure 1 shows the configuration of Router 1 and Figure 2 shows the configuration of router 2.

Step 1: Set the LAN IP address for each router. Click Basic->Network and scroll to the LAN section. The default Local IP Address for your router is 192.168.1.1, which is usually fine. (The examples here also use 192.168.1.1, but it doesn't make any difference if you set it differnet - the first three octets of the IP address have to match for the nodes to communicate on the network.)

Assign a new Local IP Address to your second router. The logical choice would be 192.168.1.2

Step 2: On the same configuration page, scroll down to DHCP server checkbox. I enabled the DHCP server on both routers, but set them to assign addresses in different ranges. Router 1 will assign addresses starting at 192.168.0.100 and Router 2 starts assignments at 192.168.0.150.

You can set these parameters whatever you like, as long as your address pools don't overlap. With this setup, you can quickly tell from any client PC with which access point it is currently associated, based on it's IP address. That's sometimes helpful for troubleshooting.

Router 2 needs the DNS entries assigned by your ISP. Configure the DNS as shown in the image.

Step 3: Disable the Internet connection on Router 2 only. Click Basic->Network and under WAN Setup, set the Connection Type to "Disable."

Step 4: Disable the firewall on Router 2 only. You don't need this to be active because your second router is simply passing traffic to your primary router, whose firewall is active by default. Running both firewalls at the same time could cause unreliable behavior.

Step 5: Set the wireless network mode, SSID and channel for both routers. The operating channel should be same in both the routers. Click Basic->Network Settings. Set your Wireless Mode to "WDS" for both routers.

Router 1 should be configured with the MAC of Router 2 and Router 2 should be configured with the MAC of the Router 1. Please refer to the figure below.

Figure 1.a

Figure 1.b

Figure 1 : Configuration of Router 1

Figure 2.a

Figure 2.b

Figure 2 : Configuration of router 2

Now you have done with the settings. Now you should be able to access internet from the LAN side of both routers.

[Note: ] It is recommandable to back up the router configuration before playing with the settings so that you can go back to your earlier configuration in case you messed it up.

Brief History

Actually the open source firmware development started after linksys announces the release of their new router - WRT 54G. In June 2003 some folks on the Linux Kernel Mailing List sniffed around this router and found that its firmware was based on Linux components. Because Linux is released under the GNU General Public License, or GPL, the terms of the license obliged Linksys to make available the source code of the WRT54G firmware. As most router firmware is proprietary code, vendors have no such obligation. It remains unclear whether Linksys was aware of the WRT54G’s Linux lineage, and its associated source requirements, at the time they released the router. But ultimately, under outside pressure to deliver on their legal obligation under the GPL, Linksys open sourced the WRT54G firmware in July 2003.

With the code in hand, developers learned exactly how to talk to the hardware inside and how to code any features the hardware could support. It has spawning a handful of open source firmware projects for the WRT54G that extend its capabilities, and reliability, far beyond what is expected from a cheap consumer-grade router. Developers started thinking about a firmware which can run on the same platform but with amazing feature set that doesn't come by default.

This was the history based on which the Tomato, DD-WRT, Open-WRT firmware project were started to be developed. Now these firmwares are going through evaluation for years - many developers in the open source community has developed different features, enriched and tested the firmwares. So by time these firmwares have been proved to be stable and feature-packed also. Besides this since all those firmwares are open sourced the source code is also freely available making it easy for the developers to customize the firmware for their own. Netgear 614v8 is manufactured keeping this open source demand in mind. This router is designed to support most of the third party broadcom based firmware to encourage the open source development.

Feature-Packed Firmwares

So Netgear 614v8 can be loaded with replacement firmware with exciting new features. Which raises the question – like what?

Of course, you can expect most replacement firmware to support the same basic functions Netgear provides out of the box for this wireless router. Often these features will be more stable, in cases where Netgear bugs have been fixed by other developers. But that’s not what makes open source firmware so exciting.

The real deal, that 614v8 can do with a right replacement firmware, that you’d only expect to find on a commercial-grade router costing several times.

You could use the wgr614v8 as a repeater or a bridge. Create a wireless distribution system (WDS) or a mesh network. Run a VPN server. Or a VoIP server. Or a managed hotspot with a RADIUS server. Manage bandwidth use per protocol. Control traffic shaping. Support IPv6. Boost antenna power. Remotely access router logs. Operate the router as a miniature low-power PC, running a variety of Linux applications.

That’s just the short list. Some firmware offerings support a wide range of these features while others are more tailored to specific router applications. Some sport friendlier configuration interfaces while some are command-line driven. And because these firmware files descend from Linksys’ open-source progenitor, they are freely available.

So that's the advantage. With open source firmware your router got a new brain a new outlook. Come on, try the opensource releases. Myopenrouter will continue releasing different firmwares for 614v8. Try that out and enjoy the freedom....

Good Luck

 

 

This review is about the latest release of the Tomato firmware released on 17 th April.

Firmware Name - tomato_wgr614l.chk

The above link contains a zip archive which contains the aforesaid 'chk' image which has been tested. Please Note that I have not been able to test all the features of the Great Tomato firmware. I will discuss about the bugs that I have found till date and obviously regarding the bugs that has been solved in this release. Thanks to the development team for making this version available to the forum.

Bugs Solved in this release:
======================

1. Firmware Upgrade issue has been resolved. Any Netgear compatible chk image can be installed successfully through this image. The great thing here is - you do not need to open up the router. Just buy any WGR614L router from your nearest dealer and install this firmware from the 'Router Upgrade' page of the Default Netgear firmware (refer to the blog by Tathagata Das) if you really like to feel the essence of the great Tomato firmware which has earned a huge popularity throughout the globe. Please note that this will void the warranty from Netgear. And if you again feel that Tomato does not suit you revert back to the Default Netgear image just from UI (refer to the blog by Tathagata Das). Hey, it looks so simple... this time.

2. Wireless gets enabled automatically even if you reset the board - this issue has also been resolved. Don't worry if you really messed up the settings, do the factory reset. Your wireless will be up in next reboot.

3. LAN connection remains as usual even after changing any WAN parameters. The previous Tomato release has a problem - if you modify any WAN settings the LAN connection used to get lost. This was a peculiar problem and it is great to see that this issue has also been fixed in this release.

Bugs in this release
================

1. Wireless disabling problem still remains in this release. Wireless radio turns on with the factory default settings but once it turned on can not be turned off anymore. The 'Status Overview' page shows disable button but it does not work.

2. After factory reset DHCP server end IP does not get initialized with correct Value. In the 'Basic Network' page the 'DHCP server end IP' shows some garbage value. It should initialized with some default IP in the router's LAN subnet.

3. For Wireless, only WEP and disabled security works perfectly. I have been able to test 64 bit WEP only. 128 bit WEP is yet to be tested. While testing the wireless I have came across some absurd behavior. My observation is as follows,
i. When the AP is configured for WPA (both Personal and Enterprise), it goes out of vicinity. This AP has not been found from the clients around it. It holds true for both TKIP and AES. Since I have the serial console as well I tried to do some analysis of this issue - the wireless module 'wl' is still inserted in the kernel and hence 'ifconfig' command also shows the interface attributes correctly. Disabling/Enabling this interface using the wlconf tool does not revert the scenario as well. I will continue to look into this issue once I have some time.
ii. When the AP is configured with WPA2 (both personal and Enterprise) surprisingly the AP comes into vicinity but with no security. All the adjacent station shows this AP as a non-secured one and eventually they can connect to this AP as well. So in case of WPA2 this firmware probably can set the SSID, channel and the other parameters to the wireless driver except the WPA2 specific ones. That's why this AP is still configured as non-secured one. This status page shows that it is WPA2 configured. I was wondering that the status page does not get information from the wireless driver - probably it just read out the configuration section. I have not been able to check the code in details but will do that surely.

4. Basic Wireless Filter has some issues. If I specify a particular MAC address and set the policy to 'Block the following clients' it works fine - the connection gets lost if that particular MAC is already connected. But if the policy changed to 'Permit only the following client' without changing the MAC - it malfunctions - the connection can not be established anymore.

Thats all for now - actually these are result of the Quick test I have been able to perform at my side. I will add more blogs once I compete the procedure. Hope many other people will come up with new bugs of this release so that we will be able to release a bug free version quickly.