The Site > Old Forums > US Robotics > USR 8054 Change to D-Link 624+ Firmware

reply to techie06

Re: USR 8054 Change to D-Link 624+ Firmware

reply to alexmil
absolutely no reboots.
Very stable.
No question,d-link firmware works better for me

reply to techie06
I had a USR8054 sitting around, since I normally use a Linksys WRT54G, so I thought why not try this... since the USR Firmware sucks.

I have now had the 1.19 DI-624+ firmware running for 4 days, with no problems.

Here is my setup:

Actiontec GT701 in transparent bridge mode ->
USR 8054 WAN port.

Connected to the LAN ports of the 8054 are a MS Switch, Linksys print server, and 1 PC with built in Realtek ethernet.

Connected to the Switch are 3 other PC's, with 3Com ethernet cards. These are connected a bit of distance by cat5 cable through the location.

1 PC situated about 100 feet away using a Linksys wireless PCI card.

2 Notebook PC's, one with an Intel wireless PC card, the other with a Linksys wireless card.

Oh, and all the wireless clients except the PCI card are 802.11g, the card is 802.11b.

The wireless is set up with private SSID, 6 chars long, WPA-PSK encryption (TKIP). Best I can tell, this firmware does not support AES, it just does WPA-802.1x (Radius) and WPA-PSK(TKIP). There are no problems so far, the clients stay connected steadily, and get good signal and throughput. Wireless power is set to highest, with speed enhanced mode enabled.

Of course, on the hardwired side, no issues at all.

The built in DHCP server, while not needed, I enabled and disabled DHCP on the Win2k3 server (for testing). Using some static leases, some dynamic. All working great.

Have tried various things for incoming connections (Virtual Servers... heh), firewall'ing certain PC's for a time, or even throwing an old copy of Diablo 1 on a PC and trying it out.

The PC's, if using SSDP, do see the router via the upnp feature.

VPN passthrough, multicast streaming, dynamic DNS updates, all testing and working fine.

I have not tried DMZ function yet.

All log features were enabled, and for 4 days, no router resets and the DSL connection has not been dropped.

All-in-all, everything seems quite steady, and honestly I like this way better than the WRT54G (even with custom firmware), and definitely no contest as far as the USR Firmware goes.

I have not tried to see if you can recover the USR firmware, if you are having problems, but here are a couple suggestions:

1) When you do firmware flashes, please remember, it's best to reset to factory defaults, then reboot router, then flash, then reset factory defaults, reboot. THEN set your router up.

2) Try this recovery procedure for dlinks, I do not know if it'll work, but worth a try.

On a hardwired PC, config your TCP/IP properties manually with: IP 192.168.1.2 (or other unused IP from 2 to 254), subnet mask 255.255.255.0, gateway 192.168.0.1. DNS can remain blank.

Unplug power cable from the router, hold in the reset button, plug it in. Keep holding the button for 15 seconds, then let it go.

This puts the router in crash recovery mode. There are two ways to try this recovery, via web interface, and via tftp.

For web, now open IE on the statically assigned IP PC, and go to »192.168.0.1. User admin, password blank. Select your USR firware file, and try to upgrade it.

For tftp, look on google or soemthing, and grab a tftp client. When you get the router in crash recovery mode as above, use the tftp program to send the USR firmware to the router.

Directly after the upgrade is finished (web or tftp), go to the router (leave it powered on), and reset it. Hold in the rest button for 15 seconds, the router will reset.

Now restore your PC to use DHCP (automatic), renew the lease, and see what IP information you have. If you have an IP in the 192.168.0.0 network, you're still dlink, if it's in the 192.168.1.0 network, you have USR. Either way, browse to either 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.254 username admin password blank, to verify dlink is still there, or usr flash worked.

Honestly, if this doesn't work, I have no help for you.

Personally, I'm sticking with the dlink firmware.

Edit: Dyxlexic!

reply to beos_lin
hmm oh well mine kept rebooting with the new 1.19 dlink f/w, so i just went back to my toshiba pcx4500 cable modem with 802.11g/routing and my netgear 8 port switch, im very happy with that.

UPDATE

before i had the USR connected to my switch through a crossover cord on the wan side, now i moved it into the other room, with a 50 ft cat5 cord running from the switch into the wan of the usr and then a patch cord into the another computer and its been a few hours and havnt lost my connection once, wired and wireless it seems stable now.
tommorrow im going to take my laptop outside and see if the USR has a stronger signal than the toshiba, the toshiba only has one antenna so we will see.

reply to htw
i was trying to find the 1.19 firmware upgrade on the web,
typed in d-link 624+ in the serch window,
nothing poped up, like this 624+ router doesn't exist.
Please, post a link to 1.19 firmware.

»ftp://ftp.dlink.co.uk/di_broadband_gat···9b09.zip

question :

why take the 1.19 when the 2.03 is available ?

so, for some of you, it works with a 808054 ... I'll myabe give it a try then ...

b/c the 2.03 is for revision B and it doesnt work

reply to htw
htw1999, thanks for all your testing and the GREAT writeup! I am considering the DLink upgrade, but want to know for sure that it can be flashed back to the USR firmware. Since your USR8054 had been a spare and you know what you're doing, any chance that you could test the procedure to flash it back to the USR firmware for us?

Thanks again for the great writeup!
-Stach

reply to beos_lin
Just upgraded my 8045 to the D-link fw and it's working perfectly. thx

reply to beos_lin
i've been trying to revert it to a USR firmware (just to see if it's possible) but it just won't flash.

i've tried the crash recovery mode but that would not allow me to flash the fimware.

i can't find enough info on how to flash it through tftp so havent really check that one out. Although i've downloaded the "weird solutions" (graphical) tftp client.
But wouldn't the firmware need to be uploaded in it's decompressed form through tftp?

something else i noticed is that when i decompres the D-link v115_rom.bin (see first post) i get a "BAK.MEM" file. extracting the 1.19 D-link firmware and the USR Firmware i get a "NML.MEM" file. anyone know the difference?

*edit, just found out that the firmware must be kept in it's compresed form because it gets unpacked in the bootproces before it gets loaded into the memory.

more info on: »www.kilgus.net/hacking/di624p.html

reply to beos_lin
ok guys, here it is.
For all you who want to revert to the USR firmware (or wanted to be certain it could be done) i've found a fixed firmware.

fw is located at: »ftp://ftp.gamebeast.de/pub/dlink/di624···evax.bin

thx to gamebeast @ »forum.dlink.de/topic.asp?TOPIC_I···chpage=2

i've succesfully reverted my 8054 from the d-link fw back to the 1.57 USR fw.

Pandor, GREAT work and thanks for the info. Since the forum you pointed to is in German, could you provide a quick step by step guide for flashing back to the USR firmware from the Dlink firmware?

Also, which firmware do you personally like better (DL or USR)?

Thanks again!
-Stach

i'm not german myself (i'm dutch) but i had some german @ school so i understand some.

as i understand it's a fixed firmware so no need for any special flashing technique (the same way as the 1.15 D-link fw from the first post that can be used on the USR i guess, but the other way arround in this case ).
You just go to the firware update page of the D-link webinterface and load the urs firmware from there. It should take it without problems.
then you can just flash any USR firmware you'dd like.

The D-link firware seemed stable at first but after running some heavy bittorrent load it started resetting on me so i'm back to the usr 1.57 now. It seem verry stable to me but the wireless part needs some tweaking.
I'm getting a high beacon loss with my intel 2200BG.

reply to stach
Just grab the .bin file he linked to, and use the Dlink Firmware Upgrade page on your router to select that file and do the upgrade. After you do the upgrade, perform a hard factory reset on the USR. Go to the management page (192.168.123.254) and set it up.

I tested this and it works. I also went ahead per request and tested the ability to use the dlink crash recovery procedure to flash back to the USR, with no luck.

reply to beos_lin
Other than possible stability issues, does the D-Link firmware have any advantages over the latest USR firmware?

For example, I've got a D-Link pci card with "Super-G" support which I think is limited to Atheros chipsets. Does the D-Link firmware let a TI chipset offer it as well?

reply to beos_lin
Super-G standart support Atheros chips. USR have TI ACX111 chip that not supprot "2 channels junction" (Super-G).
In USR 8054 you can fit only d-link 624+ Firmware (for TI chip). Firmware for d-link 624 is diferent (for Atheros only)

reply to htw
I have been reading with interest as my 8054 is rubbish with emule.

The dlink firmware keeps rebooting so i want to reflash to the USR.

I cant so far

Possibly i downloaded the wrong hacked dlink firmware as the file i have isn't the same name as the ftp link and now the link doesn't work - can anyone help with a copy

How do you do a hard factory reset

For whatever reason, the FTP link doesn't work from either IE or Firefox for me, but I can still manually ftp from the command prompt and see/get it just fine.

If you still need the file, reply back with your email and I'll send it to you.

-Stach