[plazma]

Ok, upgraded a new clients Router today as they had changed over broadband providers and stumbled over an old unused Belkin F5D733UK. Ok i tell them looking at what looks to be an AP/Bridge Device, this can be probably configured as a repeater so we can extend the wifi onto the top floor.

ALAS i neglected to take into account it had a Belkin Badge...

So after a short outburst, my first thought as ever when i come across old wifi gear that does not cut the mustard, can i get DD-WRT onto it. So i found a few people who had loaded the international version F5D733 with DD-WRT using TFTP, but no mention of the uk one (which has two antennas).

So what the hell i think its worthless as it is, lets give it a go and factory reset the router using the reset pin back to its default IP (from the belkin manual of 192.168.2.225)

So then i downloaded the generic micro code from here:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv2/down.php?path=downloads%2Fv24%2FBroadcom%2FBelkin%2FF5D7330/

Flash to device using TFTP using guide : http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Tftp_flash

Tool on on guide, its a bit tricky getting the timing right but it does work, eventually if you catch it after power on.

Once it eventually took the flash, i waited patiently for the flash to write out (about 3 - 4 minutes from memory and waited for the router to reboot)

Set my lan card to dhcp and the router/ap came up with dhcp server and an gw ip of 192.168.1.1

However i was unable to login, so i stupidly did a hardware reset thinking it would ask me to set the details on next boot.

This tuned DHCP off and the IP changed back to belkins original 192.168.2.225. So after some googing:

Default username was root and password was admin

Then once in i followed the repeating bridge guide from:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Repeater_Bridge

On initial testing everything worked, however the wifi kept on dropping off.

This after some playing (guide says it might not work in bridge/repeater mode and to set repeat only) dropped off in both. I eventually decided after having a play with about everything else to adjust the ACK timing from 2000 (default) to 300 this made it fail to connect at all. Remember back to the days of cough WEP cough cough back tracking, I used to frequently change the ACK to 1000 to give a better and more stable connection. Stuck in 1000 and whey it connects fine and so far has been online for 30 minutes copying a files.

Ok the transfer rate is just under 1 meg a second but to be honest as long as the customer can get wifi the other side of it and surf the web no one is probably going to complain to much. This might be the rubbish netgear that was the only 54g device i had to test the setup with.

Notes: during the drop outs i set both routers for 54G and left it set like this figuring what the hell uses B class these days.

WPA2 Using AES was set, one of the guide i found said it may work with WEP but jog on, WPA or above for me thanks, cough cough back track some more.

The device has a BCM4710 chipset, according to a few pages i found its ok to crank the tx power from 70mw to 84mw, although from what i read you dont want to crank it higher due to the signal to noise.

So im going to leave it on test for a while and see how it goes.

Sorry its long winded, but maybe it will help someone else from throwing one of these sorry little belkin F5D733UK access points away as DD-WRT to the rescue yet again you can go to the ball after, just close your eyes and click your hells and ... you get the idea.

And if anyone can correct me if im wrong, but because im working in repeater mode the 3+ meg i would normally get on a 54G connection halfs when your in repeater, so 1 meg is probably about right speed wise.

Peace and Love .. PLAzmA

[willyolly]

I spent 2 days trying to configure Belkin F5D7330 (UK) until I found this post. Following it solved all the issues I had. Great job PLAzmA

[plazma]

Word mate, im glad i helped someone out, you made my day saying thnx.

PS although the AP worked well in my testing with another DD-WRT router and an old netgear something or other i use for a test AP i did have an issue with the clients network and what i suspect was new format BT Business hub getting very upset due to what i suspect was the repeated packets on the network, something to watch out for.

PS: something to make DD-WRT the nuts out there smile, here is a pic of my modded dir 615 http://postimage.org/image/i5ep91jff/

Spread the DD-WRT love [/url]