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

"Bruce D. Lightner" <lightner-2huV/[email protected]> writes:

> 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.

Cool.  There's a Fry's on my way to work :-).  Seriously: messing with a
USB cable I can handle -- soldering SMT parts is way beyond my abilities.

If I understand correctly, traffic shaping with wondershaper requires that
the QOS stuff be compiled into the kernel.  Is it present in the Actiontec
kernel?

>> 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...

The Linksys wireless router also runs ucLinux.  There's an active
development community (including Sveasoft, a commercial concern) which has
added lots of nice features, including traffic shaping and control of
antenna strength.  However, they don't have a modem. so I would have to
give up on the fallback to dial-up part if I went this route.

> 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 run Linux, so this is not a problem.

> 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! :-)

Sounds like it is time for me to read up on how to build userland programs
and the ROM fs.

Bruce, thanks for your informative reply!  

Sam
__
ActionHack Mailing List - ActionHack-W7/[email protected]
http://www.express.org/mailman/listinfo/actionhack
http://www.embeddedlinuxinterfacing.com/wiki.php/ActiontecDualModem