Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 17:35 Post subject: Cantenna for Linksys E2500
I'm building a 2.4GHz cantenna for a Linksys E2500 v1, which has a 2x2:2 antenna configuration according to Wikidevi. I plan to use the device as a wireless repeater bridge with one of the internal antennas replaced with my cantenna.
I just checked the web interface and I don't have any "1+2" option for the TX/RX antenna fields. My only options are Left, Right and Auto. I'm on build 21061.
I think I got it now. As mentioned on wikidevi, the E2500 has two wireless chips. WI1 is my 2.4GHz radio and has the wires soldered directly to the board, whereas WI2 has uFL connectors.
Also, I found that regular dd-wrt doesn't support the 5GHz radio, so I flashed Advanced Tomato which is based on Shibby's Tomato, which shows the 5GHz interface.
Config options for future readers:
- Wireless Client Mode: 2.4GHz/eth1
- Wireless Mode (in 2.4GHz section): Wireless Client
- SSID (in 2.4GHz section): set to the primary router's SSID
- Channel (in 2.4GHz section): use the "Scan" button to find the channel of the primary router
- Wireless Mode (in 5GHz section): Access Point
- SSID (in 5GHz section): the desired SSID of the repeater
I was getting lots of packet loss on the 2.4GHz bridge on Advanced Tomato version 3.5-140. I flashed it again with regular Tomato (tomato-E2500-NVRAM60K-1.28.AT-RT-N5x-MIPSR2-3.5-140-Max.bin) and the packet loss went away.
Also for some reason the Advanced Tomato GUI remained after flashing even though I can see that the firmware version changed.