Re: liksys WRT54G

      simplest of terms.  Vlan 1 is inside, Vlan 2 is outside.  By
      nature, one cannot reach another, thus Virtual LAN's.
      In the middle sits a bridge, and iptables mangles packets between
      them.  This is your nat, firewall, application inspection, etc.
      A process on the wan grabs a dhcp address, adds it outside, and a
      default route to the upstream dslam or cmts.  It also registers it
      as the external address to nat your internal traffic as to the
      world, effectively hiding your internal routable subnets.
      The inside vlan uses a private address, usually 192.168.1.1/24 by
      default.  This gives you 253 usable address, and gives out a
      subset of that via dhcp.  When clients come up wired or wireless,
      they get an address from the dhcp server when they broadcast for
      an address.
      Routers usually bridge the wireless 802.11 radio(s) to this vlan
      as well, bringing them all into the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet on that
      vlan.  The DHCP server gives wired or wireless clients a local
      192.168.1.0/24 address out of the subset it hands out, including
      the gateway for the subnet (itself, 192.168.1.1), and dns servers
      for it, again itself.
      They get a local dns server that is usually dnsmasq running on the
      router, caching and forwarding to the upstream provider dns
      servers given externally to the router when it gets its WAN
      address.  It forwards your requests on mostly.
      Wireless does some form of security, hopefully, letting client
      onto the ssid with a pre-share key or some other.  No wpa1, only
      wpa2+aes.  Tkip is exploitable, so is wps pin registration (easily
      crackable without mitigation routines).
      Most routers these days use dd-wrt, or some variant, usually some
      oem abomination hack of linux.  Your wrt54g is like the granddaddy
      of dd-wrt routers, see what generation it is and see if it's
      upgradable.  Probably doing yourself a favor upgrading the 10yr
      old firmware to something secure anyways, keeping some foreign
      entity from redirecting your dns for bank servers to snatch your
      credentials.
      Clear as mud?  Google lots of those words.
      -mb
      On 10/19/2014 12:31 AM, Michael Havens wrote:
        then. I thought I read that it is also a wan part.  How does
        that work? Like I know the internet is a wan but how does it
        work in this case?
          wrote:
              I have the same device in my networking system. My answer
              may not be 100% correct, but here is my SWAG: 
              The device was designed to serve as a router with DHCP
              server capabilities, in other words it hands out IP
              addresses to requests that come from one of the output
              ports.
              You can access the device using its web page and turn that
              feature off, it then acts as a bridge router and the DHCP
              functioning will come from further upsteam, from your
              other router.
              The network will not function correctly if you have two
              different devices trying to pass out IP addresses using
              DHCP. Everything pretty much quits talking to each other.
              While I have never tried using the device by plugging
              everything only into the output ports, I am guessing that
              connection setup would use the device as a bare dumb
              switch. No more double DHCP, only happy connectivity.
              I am reasonably sure my explanation is not technically
              correct, but is functional. I was quite loose with input,
              output, upstream, and  downstream analogies, but that is
              the way I think of them.
              By the way on a separate item, it is my understanding that
              most of these devices are hacked and infected and should
              be either upgraded, or replaced. I have yet to do either,
              but I think that is the case.
              HM
                      back there are 4 LAN ports and another port labled
                      Internet. My setup had the cable from the modem
                      feeding into that port and everything worked until
                      a couple of days ago. Today I switched that cable
                      to a LAN port and everything worked again. I asked
                      in another thread the purpose of the internet port
                      and MR Butash gave me an answer but it is still a
                      lot hazy. In my research to answer the question
                      myself I found a wikipedia article that states:
                          original 
                          first released in December 2002. It has a 4+1
                          port 
                          Internet/WAN port is part of the same internal
                          network switch, but on a different 
                          to be an input port for the internet
                          internet and why did it stop working as such?
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