Re: firewall/router with traffic shaping and dial-up fallback?

Sam Cramer,

> I bought an Actiontec some time ago with the intention of using it as a
> home firewall/router with traffic shaping and with fallback to dial-up
> service in the case of a cable modem service outage.
> 
> At the time I figured that the Actiontec would soon be easily modified and
> that I would have a fair amount of time to play with it (with a 4 kids and
> a pretty hectic household this probably wasn't too realistic).  Due to the
> heroic efforts of a number of members of this list, it looks like the
> modifiability may be just around the corner, though I'm unclear as to
> whether daughter-boards will be required for hacking, and whether they will
> be available to those of us who must be careful not to pick up the wrong
> end of a soldering iron.

I claim that no "daughterboard" would be required to make this work 
because I don't think you need to re-build the kernel, and therefore, you 
should never end up making a "door-stop".

In fact, Patrick has shown that you can in fact recover a "doorstop" with 
nothing more than a $6 USB cable from Fry's.  The console UART is "nice", 
but not required.

> Even with the ability to build new kernels and load new images, I'm not
> clear on how straightforward it will be to implement the functionality I
> desire.  It looks like I can get most of what I want (save for the dial-up
> part) by plunking down around $80 for the Linksys WRT54g and installing
> Sveasoft firmware.

I'm not sure what this would get you...please explain...

> Whether this makes sense depends on the likelihood that
> the Actiontec can be hacked to do what I want, the complexity of that
> hacking, and the extra expense associated with it (e.g. buying a
> daughter-board/reflasher).

The only thing you need to "re-flash" is a Linux box setup to rebuild 
uClinux programs, and configured to do "bootp" using your DHCPD server and 
setup to respond to TFTP requests.  (In fact, you may be able to download 
a modified ROM file system just using Windows and Actiontec-supplied 
"recovery software".)  You will need Linux to rebuild the ROM file system 
and/or re-compile programs.  (Unless someone makes a uClinux build 
environment that runs under Cygwin.)

I'd like to see working *exactly* what you describe.  I'd think that you 
could set things up such that everything from your LAN passes through the 
Actiontec box on one of the two Ethernet ports and then normally out the 
second port to the cable modem box.  If the cable modem box stops 
responding (e.g., checked using periodic "pings" of an outside host), then 
you'd make the Actiontec box dial-out and take over the WAN traffic.

Just a small matter of (shell?) programming! :-)

Best regards,

Bruce

-- 
  Bruce D. Lightner
  Lightner Engineering
  La Jolla, California
  Voice: +1-858-551-4011
  FAX: +1-858-551-0777
  Email: lightner-2huV/[email protected]
  URL: http://www.lightner.net/lightner/bruce/

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