View Full Version : what firmware to choose??
hanscees
21-10-2004, 21:50
Hi,
There are soo many firmwares out there. What version do I need?
The functionality I search is this:
I already have a firewall with two nics. So I do not need natting.
The wifi device must be in my lan with its wan interface, since I want to share a printer with it.
-I want wpa encoding with mac filtering
- I want the 500g to have three networks: wan, lan and wifi and to be able to firewall between them
-I want the shared printer in the 500g-lan network to be accesible from the wan network.
So the structure I seek is this:
internet----FW----PC's (192.168.0.2 wan network)
.......................... |
.......................192.168.0.3
............................500g wan ----- 500g lan (192.168.1.1) with printer
.............................\
..............................500g wifi network 192.168.2.1
I want firewalling between wifi and wan, and between lan and wan.
I want the wan-network pc's to be able to print to the shared printer in the 500g-lan network.
I have not been able to do this with 1.8.1.9. Is there a firmware that wil enable me to do this?
Hope someone can help me because asus sure as hell won't (don't know why).
Hans-Cees
Antiloop
21-10-2004, 22:40
use fw 1.7.5.9-5 for example
1.8.x.x do not contain wireless firewall anymore
also do not post in firmware releases, as it is -not- a firmware release
hanscees
22-10-2004, 19:38
Hi, thanks for the answer.
Tried WL500g_1.7.5.9_en.zip, but that one has no wpa.
Tried wl500g-1.7.5.9-5.zip and that looks fine as far as I have tested.
wpa is present and the printer is accessible form the wan, where my pc's are. I am using router mode.
It took me quit a while to find where the firmware is too:
http://files.wl500g.info/asus/wl500g/
You might want to put that in your faq. I will be reporting back as to the other functions as well.
Hans-Cees
hanscees
22-10-2004, 22:49
hi,
I have done some further testing with wl500g-1.7.5.9-5.
Alas wpa is present but does not operate together with windows xp home edition. That is very unfortunate. I have a dell truemobile 1350 that is tested as good in the reported compatible hardware.
When I use no encryption or wep it does work. But wep is flawed so this is not ideal at all.
If anybody has ideas how to get wpa to work please let me know.
I have tried both aes as tkip. Can I set debugging on or something?
Hans-Cees
Windows is notorios flawed in combination with WPA. SP2 is addressing these problems, though I haven't tried it with WPA yet. My advice to you is: try WEP, while its not as safe as WPA, it is safe enough for home users.
Antiloop
23-10-2004, 14:01
Hi, thanks for the answer.
Tried WL500g_1.7.5.9_en.zip, but that one has no wpa.
Tried wl500g-1.7.5.9-5.zip and that looks fine as far as I have tested.
wpa is present and the printer is accessible form the wan, where my pc's are. I am using router mode.
It took me quit a while to find where the firmware is too:
http://files.wl500g.info/asus/wl500g/
You might want to put that in your faq. I will be reporting back as to the other functions as well.
Hans-Cees
the firmwares can be downloaded from this forum directly in the 'Firmware releases' forum, so you don't need to go to that url
about WPA, WPA is working fine since version 1.1.3.3 so you are doing something wrong
first of all be sure to reset the router to defaults and setup from scratch
hanscees
23-10-2004, 20:31
>the firmwares can be downloaded from this forum directly in the 'Firmware releases' forum, so you don't need to go to that url
But old releases are not to be found there easily. I could not find the one you pointed to at all.
Anyway I did a reset and the first time it worked. I than went on to perfect the configuration and all stopped working again. I have not been able to get it working again, have reset many times now.
I changed a bunch of settings at the time, amongst some changing the passphrase for tkip, hiding ssid and going from home gateway to router.
If you could give me any clue that would be most welcome. Specially how to troubleshoot this thing. I speak pretty good linux, but do not know where to find the settings and so on, to see if they are used as I type them in for instance. There also seems to be extremely little logging to check.
I have setup all the settings from scratch, but without encryption. Everything works fine. If I enable wpa, nothings works anymore.
LIttle update: I now installed 1.8.1.7-2a. Erased all configuration with the restore button. All worked without wpa. I then made wpa with tkip active. One session went ok. I then switched off wlg500 router. After that it does not work anymore....... After I restart windows I do have a connection.
I hope this will stay that way..
Hans-Cees
hanscees
24-10-2004, 14:32
>
If you could give me any clue that would be most welcome. Specially how to troubleshoot this thing. I speak pretty good linux, but do not know where to find the settings and so on, to see if they are used as I type them in for instance. There also seems to be extremely little logging to check.
LIttle update: I now installed 1.8.1.7-2a. Erased all configuration with the restore button. All worked without wpa. I then made wpa with tkip active. One session went ok. I then switched off wlg500 router. After that it does not work anymore....... After I restart windows I do have a connection.
After a day I can say it finally works with wl500g-1.8.1.7-2a: wpa with tkip and also wan-side printing.
Some conclusions I have drawn:
- None of the firmwares from Asus are adequate if you want to use all features they advertise with, and that is really disgracefull
- The open source version makes up for that and my thanks goes to those who do that as well as to this forum.
- Apparently wpa is troublesome with windows. If you change passphrases please reboot windows (I use XP home sp2).
- I am not sure erasing settings by pushing the reset button a long time always works. In the end I uploaded another version to get it working. But this may or may not have been caused by windows not working properly.
- The logging on the wl500g is inadequate for any troubleshooting. It should have a debug setting to have usefull logging.
Hopefully others can learn from my experience. At this time I would not recommend the wl500g to my friends due to the Asus firmware.
Thanks again for the help.
Hans-Cees
Craigster
24-10-2004, 16:23
Just a thought / selfish request here...
It would save huge amounts of time and make functionality available in the various firmware releases much clearer for the newBs (such as myself) if someone could please please please compile a table of firmware version vs functionality (and browser vs command line/scipt access). Maintaining a useful level of detail might be a challenge, but anything is better than nothing.
I see posts in other threads with suggestions of downgrading to get particular functions, but its very hard to know what all the tradeoffs are. :confused:
Are we having to put up with trade-offs because the 500g has too many advertised talents to fit into the available firmware space? (I'm trying to put it nicely).
Originally posted by hanscees:
Some conclusions I have drawn:
- None of the firmwares from Asus are adequate if you want to use all features they advertise with, and that is really disgracefull
- The open source version makes up for that and my thanks goes to those who do that as well as to this forum.
After 2 months experience with this router (and being a novice), I'm starting to agree with hanscees
My own current frustration is trying to understand how the wired firewall and separate wireless firewall seem to have been collapsed at some stage into a single one in 1.8.1.9. Or are both still present but in latest release the browser interface applies same rules to both? Manual is superceded, making it a bit harder to work out which firewall rules to apply.
Nevertheless, very appreciative of all your contributions already! Would not have got this far without them.
Thanks
:)
It would save huge amounts of time and make functionality available in the various firmware releases much clearer for the newBs (such as myself) if someone could please please please compile a table of firmware version vs functionality (and browser vs command line/scipt access). Maintaining a useful level of detail might be a challenge, but anything is better than nothing.
Good idea.
Craigster
21-02-2005, 11:29
Good idea.
Oleg and Antiloop: I've just come back and seen the changelog. Used it immediately ! Outstanding the contribution you guys make to this community.
Thanks.
:) :) :)