Saturday's meeting

[dsavage@peaknet.net]

You may recall at the last Wednesday evening meeting we were going to
install DD-WRT on a new Linksys WRT1900acs router. Unfortunately we had to
postpone this effort when the flu visited Steve's house. So... The
Saturday meeting was delayed about a half hour while I dashed home and
grabbed the router I'd left behind.

The problem I'd been having with the DD-WRT firmware was simply connecting
to the router out of the box. It's address was supposed to be at the
familiar 192.168.1.1 - only it wasn't.

After fussing with that for almost an hour - can't ping it, can't
traceroute to it, nuttin' - a new guy to our little clan (Wendell) plugged
his little Acer notebook into one of the LAN ports and VOILA! He got the
admin web page. When I asked him what the IP address was, he said
something weird like 10.182.44.167. I connected my laptop to the router
and went to that address but couldn't connect. Obviously my static network
settings were not quite right, so I changed to DHCP and rebooted my laptop
while connected ONLY to the router (no WiFi). TA DA!

So the secret to this new nugget is that it comes from the factory NOT
preset to 192.168.1.1, but to a very strange and unexpected (but still
non-routable) IP address. It will tell you what it is, but only with its
own DHCP server. You have to set your PC or laptop to DHCP, connect to a
LAN (not WAN) port with an Ethernet cable, and restart your PC/laptop. Use
ipconfig to see what address you're assigned, then find the IP address in
that subnet that the router is using and point your browser to it. Once
you're there, can you connect an Ethernet cable to the router's WAN port
and connect to the Internet.

With Step 0 complete, I was able to go to the DD-WRT web site and download
the two firmware images needed by the Linksys WRT1900acs:

     *********************************************************
     **  PLEASE NOTE: Go to dd-wrt.com, NOT to dd-wrt.org.  **
     **  The .org site is a malware nest that will try to   **
     **  trick you into downloading phony Flash and Java    **
     **  'updates'.                                         **
     *********************************************************

     1. factory-to-ddwrt.img
     2. ddwrt-linksys-wrt1900ac-webflash.bin

Loading the first "stub" makes it possible to load the second (and all
future updates). Despite all the dire warnings about possibly bricking my
new router, both images installed flawlessly.

If you're interested in buying one of these fancy new Linksys routers for
yourself, you can get it here:

http://www.amazon.com/Linksys-WRT1900ACS-Dual-Band-Gigabit-Router/dp/B014MIBLSA/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1458434283&sr=1-1&keywords=wrt1900acs

The price increased $50 since I bought mine in early February for $179.99.
Still and all, it's a beast of a machine and because it fully supports
DD-WRT -- as all of Linksys current products now do -- it's a must for the
serious household or small business.

--Doc Savage
  Fairview Heights, IL

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