Gadgetory

I just bought a new router and have this old Linksys wrt54g s just lying around now but rather than ditch it I'm gonna give it some new life with new third-party firmware it's pretty easy I'm Tom Wright from cnet.com I'll show you how to do it on today's inside your secrets every router like this one has software that runs on it and what we're talking about is changing that software from the factory default to an open-source version and whether you're replacing your old router or you're just frustrated with your new one there are a few reasons you might want to do this my links is here can only act as an access point for turning my internet into Wireless then the Tomato firmware that's the firmware I'm gonna put on here will allow it to act as a bridge allowing machines in my house that don't have Wi-Fi access to the network wirelessly it can also act as a site survey tool giving me the strengths of nearby networks and letting me know which frequencies they occupy now in a crowded neighborhood this can help you reduce interference on your network tremendously tomatoe also has a bandwidth usage monitor if your ISP has a cap on bandwidth this is indispensable and telling if you're close to the cap there are also other features like wake-on-lan static dhcp and more so how do you do it well there are many third-party firmware out there some work better with specific routers look around a dd-wrt free wrt Tarifa and others to find one that works with your router I'm going to use tomato which says it works with the Linksys wrt54g s versions 1 through versions 4 look underneath your router for a serial number or more specific model number to match it up then download the firmware extract it to a folder read the readme file to determine which file goes with your router then connect your router to your computer open the routers admin screen as described in your manual or just look it up on a search engine click administration click firmware upgrade select and upload the correct firmware for your router you're going to want to wait for about two minutes while the firmware is uploaded and flashed then it should reload to the tomato screen now tomato advises you you may want to reset the settings to default to avoid any minor incompatibilities between the Linksys firmware and the tomato firmware also probably want to browse around the FAQ at polar cloud comm for more info on how to use the new firmware that's it for this insider secret I'm Tom Merritt cnet.com