avablog

My current project is to expand my WiFi network at the house. Materials needed include:

• Broadband connection (obtained)
• Router (obtained)
• Antenna (needed; I’m looking here)
• Cabling (needed; again, here)

I’ll also have to determine how this network will look. How difficult can it be? When all’s said and done, I hope to have a nice strong signal throughout the property…and beyond.

The new Linksys WRT54GL will be here tomorrow (08/22/07). Then, tomorrow night, I’ll flash the Linksys with the DD-WRT firmware and prepare to embark on my VLAN adventure. I like the word embark.

08.24.07: I have the DD-WRT firmware loaded to the WRT54GL v1.1, and it seems to be working fine. Next step is to get the VLANs working. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

Command line:

nvram set vlan0ports=”3 2 1 5*”
nvram set vlan3hwname=et0
nvram set vlan3ports=”0 5″
nvram set rc_startup=”ifconfig vlan3 192.168.2.1 netmask 255.255.255.0″
nvram set rc_firewall=’
iptables -I FORWARD -i vlan1 -o vlan3 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I FORWARD -i vlan3 -o vlan1 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I INPUT -i vlan3 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I INPUT -i vlan1 -j ACCEPT

nvram commit

Setup/VLANs: Uncheck Port 4 from VLAN0 and check Port 4 on VLAN3
DNS Masq:

interface=vlan3
interface=eth1
dhcp-range=192.168.2.192.168.2.200,14d

I think I might be missing a couple things, per this page (PDF). It’ll be really cool if I can get all this working. My original plan was to do the VLAN at the access point, but I may as well do it at the router now and leave the ap alone. I’ll leave the radio running on the Linksys and use it to connect to my WLAN, while the ap provides the “public” Internet signal.

8.30.07: I’m still at it! Here’s the latest, from last night:

Last night I made another run at the VLAN setup on my GLv1.1 running v23 SP2. I did the following, taken from this thread:

1. Formatted my VLANs page like this.

2. SSHed in an added these lines, one at a time, at the prompt:

nvram set vlan0ports="3 2 1 5*"
nvram set vlan2hwname=et0
nvram set vlan2ports="0 5"

3. Entered this on into the Commands box in the GUI:

ifconfig vlan2 192.168.2.1 netmask 255.255.255.0

and hit Save Startup.

4. Under DNSmasq, entered this:

interface=vlan2
interface=vlan1
interface=vlan0
interface=eth1
dhcp-range=192.168.1.100,192.168.1.200,24h
dhcp-range=192.168.2.100,192.168.2.200,24h

and clicked Save Changes.

5. Disable the DHCP server and reboot.

Following these changes, I attached my AP1200 to port 4, but it didn’t pick up any Internet traffic. I can access the setup pages for the router at 192.168.0.1 [i]and[/i] 192.168.1.1. I tried turning the DHCP server back on and rebooting the GL and the AP1200, but there was no love to be had.

Reading over this again, I see something stupid I did. I have my router’s IP range set at 192.168.0.1, and the entries I put in listed the first DHCP range starting 192.168.1.100, which would be the default settings for the router.

I think I need to do a hard reset of the router and start over using this latest directions here. Oh, and I’ll have to make sure I add this text:

interface=vlan2
dhcp-range=192.168.2.100,192.168.2.200,24h

in Step 4 instead of the text that’s there now.

09.11.07: Made another run at it last night and couldn’t get it to work. It’s clear I’m changing something, because I notice some network oddness, but I don’t have any way to tell whether what I’m doing is working.