Tuesday, October 14, 2008

MLPPP Tomato on the Asus WL-520gu

I picked up the Asus WL-520gu for $20 (after MIR). My hope was to run Tomato/MLPPP as is described at here: dslreports-tomato-mlppp and at fixppp.org. However, that's only for the Linksys WRT54GL and similar devices. With help from Guspaz and dsl_ricer I was able to get it all to build, connect and run with MLPPP (though I haven't verified that it's actually working properly).

Since the dd-wrt and tomato firmware for the WL-520gu also work on the Buffalo WHR-G125, this MLPPP version *should* work on the Buffalo as well, though I don't own one and haven't tried.

DISCLAIMER: this is an account of how I got MLPPP/Tomato working on my Asus WL-520gu. I am not recommending anyone try this, and if you do, I will not be held responsible if you brick your router.

Basically, what we're going to do is flash with dd-wrt, then with basic tomato (ND version), get the router up and running, then flash with the MLPPP version. I'll describe how to build the firmware in another post. I am assuming you have a DSL modem configured to allow the router to perform pppoe negotiation.

1. Follow the steps to flash the router with dd-wrt outlined here: dd-wrt on WL-520gu. Reboot and configure to make sure it works and connects to your ISP.

2. Using a similar procedure as was done in step 1., using the asus recovery tool, flash the router with TomatoND firmware version v1.19. NOTE: you must use the ND version of Tomato. The current version is v1.21, but I used v1.19 because that is what the stable version of MLPPP is based upon. It can be found on the Tomato download page (specifically, here)

3. reboot the router and configure it appropriately to your settings. The WAN side probably won't connect via pppoe via your modem. I followed the advice in this thread to get it to connect:
I found that vlan1ports nvram variable on Tomato was set to "0 5u" I changed this as follows (from telnet login to the router):
nvram set vlan1ports="0 5"
nvram commit
reboot


4. Repeat step 2 using the MLPPP version of the tomatoND firmware that I built.

Now, step 2 may be unnecessary if you want to directly flash with the MLPPP version....I didn't try that though, so I don't know if there'd be any issue.

I use a 2write 2700HG-B modem/router. Had to configure it to bridge mode....this post was super useful (though VPI for Bell is 0, not 8).

Useful links:
http://fixppp.org/
http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/showthread.php?t=594003

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20484600-TomatoMLPPP-released-evade-throttle-or-bond-two-DSL-lineshttp://www.linksysinfo.org/forums/showthread.php?t=57746
http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=26194
http://www.dslreports.com/faq/15835
http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/r21066151-2wire-2700HGB-bridge-mode-simple-tutorial

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