A buddy of mine was complaining about his wifi being slow, so we decided to set about a project to set up the network at his house. We are trying to keep costs very low. I want to document what we've done thus far and see if anyone has suggestions!
Service: Verizon FiOS 1gbit symmetrical
Needs
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Flashing the MR18s
OpenWRT shows that if we're lucky, these can be flashed via UART by using the serial console to send it a command to pull firmware from a TFTP server on your LAN. However, you might be running firmware that is too new, which gives you a really stupid error message that we will see in a little bit. The observant will have noticed that this has gone poorly after seeing "JTAG" on our parts list. But I digress.
Setting up
The above adapter is a PL2303 with drivers for everything available here: http://www.prolific.com.tw/US/ShowProduct.aspx?p_id=229&pcid=41 Mac users have Serial app, which has its own userland drivers, but it will not give you the tty device that you need. After installing you should be able to attach by doing:
Wiring
It seems that the whole thing can start if you also connect VCC. Do not connect VCC with PoE plugged in or you may damage your USB port.
GND
TX
RX
VCC
Attempt 1
Looks like we can see it booting:
Let's try to see if the ODM command works:
Nope! Looks like our firmware is too new. Sunk cost fallacy says we have to make these $60 dollars work. Time to do a bad job soldering some wires on:
Stay tuned for figuring out how to shoehorn the USBJTAGNT configuration into OpenOCD!
Service: Verizon FiOS 1gbit symmetrical
Needs
- Lots of clients. Many gadgets + IoT stuff everywhere
- Several people gaming at once
- Strong wifi signal everywhere (5GHz and 2.4 for legacy devices and a surprisingly large amount of the IoT stuff with old NICs)
- Guest networks
- NAS
- VPN but only for brief remote access, not for constant use
- ZOTAC CI323 Nano $75
- Onboard GBE NIC
- $18The mPCIE slot the wifi card is installed in can host one of these: https://www.amazon.com/CERRXIAN-Gigabit-Ethernet-Express-1000Mbps/dp/B0816BL79R/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=mini+pci+ethernet+adapter&qid=1582854325&sr=8-3
- It's Realtek and should work with pfSense
- Recycler gave us some PoE Netgears. Score!
- 3x Meraki MR18 $60
- 2x2 MIMO 802.11n ~ 600mbps
- https://www.ebay.com/itm/Cisco-Meraki-MR18-HW-Dual-Band-Cloud-Managed-Wireless-Access-Point-Unclaimed/202753453454?epid=1930458946&hash=item2f350c2d8e:g:MAUAAOSw7HFdTdJu
- Shittiest USB JTAG from Amazon $10
- Most fragile looking USB UART TTL cable from Amazon $7
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- pfSense
--
Flashing the MR18s
OpenWRT shows that if we're lucky, these can be flashed via UART by using the serial console to send it a command to pull firmware from a TFTP server on your LAN. However, you might be running firmware that is too new, which gives you a really stupid error message that we will see in a little bit. The observant will have noticed that this has gone poorly after seeing "JTAG" on our parts list. But I digress.
Setting up
The above adapter is a PL2303 with drivers for everything available here: http://www.prolific.com.tw/US/ShowProduct.aspx?p_id=229&pcid=41 Mac users have Serial app, which has its own userland drivers, but it will not give you the tty device that you need. After installing you should be able to attach by doing:
Bash:
screen /dev/tty.usbserial 115200
It seems that the whole thing can start if you also connect VCC. Do not connect VCC with PoE plugged in or you may damage your USB port.
GND
TX
RX
VCC
Attempt 1
Looks like we can see it booting:
Code:
__________________sri____________________
944x BootROM Ver. (asic) 1.0 [Nov 8 2011 13:42:57]
_________________________________________
find_hif: bootstrap = 0x31c58
Nand Flash init
hdr: [0xbd000400 : 0xbd000400 : 0x6fb4 : 0xe5c86b84]
nand_load_fw: read 13 pages
nand_load_fw: 0x10000 0x800 0xbd000bf0
nand_load_fw: 0x20000 0x800 0xbd0013f0
nand_load_fw: 0x30000 0x800 0xbd001bf0
nand_load_fw: 0x40000 0x800 0xbd0023f0
nand_load_fw: 0x50000 0x800 0xbd002bf0
nand_load_fw: 0x60000 0x800 0xbd0033f0
nand_load_fw: 0x70000 0x800 0xbd003bf0
nand_load_fw: 0x80000 0x800 0xbd0043f0
nand_load_fw: 0x90000 0x800 0xbd004bf0
nand_load_fw: 0xa0000 0x800 0xbd0053f0
nand_load_fw: 0xb0000 0x800 0xbd005bf0
nand_load_fw: 0xc0000 0x800 0xbd0063f0
nand_load_fw: 0xd0000 0x800 0xbd006bf0
f/w 0 read complete, jumping to 0xbd000400
Meraki Atheros LinuxLoader MR18 built Jan 31 2014 15:53:22
qca955x_init_ddr ok
test_memory ok
D-cache size: 64K
I-cache size: 32K
init_dram_uncached ok
init_icache ok
init_dcache ok
enable_caches ok
test_memory ok
nand_flash_init ok
loading fw at 256
hdr: [0x8e73ed8a : 0x400 : 0x16fee8 ]
part1: Copying image to memory ... ...........
done.
part1: Checking sha1 (from 0x80060000 length 1507048) ... match
part1: sha1 calculated: 3f387c516d74dd96356e306e69763365853d075a
starting stage2
decompressing embedded kernel image 0x81c024f0(0x16d9d9)
got osize 446134
.....................done
starting linux
[ 0.000000] Linux version 3.4.113-meraki-ar7100 (jenkins@dal248.meraki.com) (gcc version 4.8.3 (GCC) ) #4 Wed Dec 11 15:43:47 PST 2019
Code:
<Meraki> odm
UNRECOGNIZED COMMAND LOGGED TO CLOUD SERVERS.
<Meraki> odm help
UNRECOGNIZED COMMAND LOGGED TO CLOUD SERVERS.
<Meraki> ^CWARNING! THIS CONSOLE IS LOGGED! UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS FORBIDDEN!
<Meraki> ^C^CWARNING! THIS COWARNING! THIS CONSOLE IS LOGGED! UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS FORBIDDEN!
Stay tuned for figuring out how to shoehorn the USBJTAGNT configuration into OpenOCD!
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