OpenWRT on Asus WL-500gP: Installation Guide

1. Access Asus router via web browser from PC. Programmed WAN IP address and network information.

2. Powered off the Asus router.

3. Downloaded openwrt-brcm-2.4-squashfs.trx and saved to my PC local disk.

4. Disabled all NIC's on the PC except for the one connected to the Asus.

5. Held in black "restore" button on back of router while powering it on. Waiting until power light (orange broken circle with line in top) stopped flashing.

6. Ran ASUS "Firmware Restoration" utility. Selected the file "openwrt-brcm-2.4-squashfs.trx" and submit. Waiting until status bar went across screen, then watched router reboot. Waiting another five minutes for good measure.

instructions on using firmware restoration:

• Disable all but one network interfaces on your PC. This is nessesary because the firmware restoration tool is not very intelligent in finding the correct interface to use for communicating with the router.
• Configure Windows TCP/IP networking to have static IP address 192.168.1.10 as shown in this image.
• Disconnect the power cable.
• Press the reset button on the back of the router.
• Keep pressing the reset button while inserting the power cable again.
• Keep pressing the reset button until the power LED starts flashing every second.
• Start the firmware restoration tool on your PC (You can find this tool on the CD or download it from the Asus website).
• This tool should find the Asus router -> select it.
• Select the correct firmware file you want to upload. Double check again if it's the correct one!
• Press upload.

7. Using a web browser on the PC accessed the router on 192.168.1.1 and set a root password.

8. Using SSH accessed the router as 'root' and the new password and checked everything out.

br0       Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:18:F3:70:5D:E4  
          inet addr:192.168.31.1  Bcast:192.168.31.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:264 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:186 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:25278 (24.6 KiB)  TX bytes:46890 (45.7 KiB)

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:18:F3:70:5D:E4  
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING PROMISC MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:260 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1783 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:30678 (29.9 KiB)  TX bytes:161902 (158.1 KiB)
          Interrupt:4 

eth2      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:18:F3:70:5D:E4  
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING ALLMULTI MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:3263
          TX packets:1696 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:107811 (105.2 KiB)
          Interrupt:2 Base address:0x2000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

vlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:18:F3:70:5D:E4  
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING ALLMULTI MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:264 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1781 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:26334 (25.7 KiB)  TX bytes:149714 (146.2 KiB)

vlan1     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:18:F3:70:5D:E4  
          inet addr:64.21.204.250  Bcast:64.21.204.255  Mask:255.255.255.248
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

My desire is to have 3 interfaces, one WAN, one LAN, and one WiFi. (screened subnet architecture)

Here are some notes on vlans with OpenWRT:

• hwname is always eth0, the switch itself.
• always include port 5 because it is how the traffic is seen by the CPU (internal tagged port)

configuration concept:

Port 0: WAN:: vlan1 - connect to router, public IP address
Port 1: LAN1: vlan0 - connect to network switch, private LAN IP address
port 2: LAN2: vlan1
port 3: LAN3: vlan2
port 4: LAN4: vlan2
Wifi :::::::: vlan2

• It's a good idea when choosing a vlan layout to keep port 1 in vlan0. At least the WRT54GS v1.0 will not accept new firmware via TFTP if port 1 is in another VLAN.

nvram set vlan0hwname=et0
nvram set vlan0ports="1 5*"

nvram set vlan1hwname=et0
nvram set vlan1ports="0 2 5*"

nvram set vlan2hwname=et0
nvram set vlan2ports="3 4 5*"

nvram set wan_ifname=vlan1
nvram set wan_ifnames=vlan1
nvram set wan_ipaddr=PUBLIC.IP.ADDRESS
nvram set wan_netmask=255.255.255.248
nvram set wan_proto=static
nvram set wan_gateway=PUBLIC.IP.GATEWAY

nvram set lan_ifname=br0
nvram set lan_ifnames="vlan0"
nvram set lan_ipaddr=192.168.XX.1
nvram set lan_netmask=255.255.255.0
nvram set lan_proto=static

nvram set dmz_ifname=br1
nvram set dmz_ifnames="vlan2 eth2"
nvram set dmz_proto=static
nvram set dmz_ipaddr=192.168.XY.1
nvram set dmz_netmask=255.255.255.0

nvram set ifup_interfaces="lan wan wifi dmz"

echo `nvram get vlan0ports` > /proc/switch/eth0/vlan/0/ports
echo `nvram get vlan1ports` > /proc/switch/eth0/vlan/1/ports
echo `nvram get vlan2ports` > /proc/switch/eth0/vlan/2/ports

I'm going to write this to nvram.

nvram commit

Note that lan, wan, and wifi are reserved names meaningful to the firmware.

Now I'm switching the wire from port 1 to 4 and changing the PC IP to 192.168.XY.10.

SSH into the router 192.168.XY.1

nvram set lan_ipaddr=192.168.XX.1
nvram set lan_dns=DNS.SERVER.YOU.CHOOSE
nvram set wan_ipaddr=PUBLIC.IP.ADDRESS

/etc/init.d/S40network restart

I'm going to write this to nvram.

nvram commit