There is a limit of 4096 simultaneous connections (TCP/UDP). I am not sure if that is Hardware or Software.
With that many Devices, I would recommend a serious Layer 3 Routing Switch.
Just with two active devices behind my router, I have ~115 port going as I write this reply.
Netgear has some Layer 3 routing Switches that are capable of providing what you need. But they will be more expensive than a WNDR4500. It is a good piece of hardware, but definitely optimized for a home or very small office environment.
Elsewhere on this forum, there are sections dedicated to running DD-WRT on x86 hardware. pfSense and a dual core Atom based solution may be a mininum for you.
If money is less of an issue, Cisco 3750_ Switch would be a very valid choice on the high end.
Sorry guys, I haven't had much time to dedicate to this, but I'm pretty sure I can get it compiled and working once I sit down with it.
With the holiday season approaching I'll have more time to tinker... Maybe in the meantime I'll get my build environment settled and get some more background knowledge on it all.
After I've got a build that's working I'll look into adding the modifications listed earlier in the thread. Only thing that makes me nervous is that I don't have a serial cable setup for this beast... I can make one easy enough, but really don't want to go through the hassle.
Anyone have a device they can test some builds against for me? Only if you can recover from a bricked state quickly would I want you to do it, otherwise I guess I'll be plunging into it as I can return it under a store warranty and I'm pretty sure I can get together a serial interface together as well. (Have a few new DB9 plugs lying around)
Well I've made some progress with the WNDR4500 and I'm going to post my findings here in a few posts. This post is for the gpio mappings I've discovered, I'll edit this as needed if other pins are discovered to have a use.
0 - ?
1 - Front top button green LED
2 - Power green LED
3 - Power orange LED
4 - Front top button (Hand)
5 - Front bottom button ((*))
6 - Reset button on back near power jack
7 - IF YOU POLL IT THE ROUTER STOPS RESPONDING, Reset router.
8 - USB 1 green LED
9 - 2.4Ghz green LED
10 - Disabled / Enabled wl0 (Not sure how, but SSID disappears and reappears)
11 - 5Ghz blue LED
12 - Seems to "assist" gpio 10, enabling it makes the SSID appear more reliably?
39 - ? DISABLING LOSES LAN ACCESS
71 - ? DISABLING LOSES LAN ACCESS
Of note, the LED gpio switches work opposite of what's expected. Disabling the gpio turns on the LED and enabling turns it off.
39 and 71 aren't fully discovered, if they're disabled the SSH connection is lost and you need to restart the router. I tested gpio 0 - 99 using a simple shell script, the only LED I couldn't control was the USB 2 LED. The LEDs for LAN connection 1-4 and WAN seem to be uncontrollable via GPIO and they illuminate when there is an active link on their respective port.
I think that is about it what is missing from sysinit to get the 5ghz working.. I will check more later..
-Fractal
For these changes I am modifying the following two files, dd-wrt/src/router/services/sysinit/sysinit.c & dd-wrt/src/router/services/sysinit/sysinit-broadcom.c
However on this portion of things I want to make sure that I understand it correctly before I start testing the new build...
I am assuming the values given above are to be stored in the NVRAM by the init binary compiled from the above modified sources. If that's the case, then I should be able to test these values on the WNDR4500 as it is by issuing a "nvram set <name>=<value>". I noticed in the sysinit-broadcom.c file that the other netgear models prepend "pci/1/1/" to the nvram names (IE; "pa2gw1a1" becomes "pci/1/1/pa2gw1a1") In some cases there is a "sb/1/" for other parameters.
Few thoughts and questions about the above...
1.) The WNDR4500 has 2 individual radios in it and I think the 5ghz radio might be located at pci/2/1/.
2.) None of the values Fractal mentioned are currently set in the nvram by default aside from "vlan2ports" which is "4 8" (Instead of "4 8u")
3.) I'm unsure of where to use pci/1/1/ vs sb/1/ and I'm unsure if the "5g" parameters should be applied to pci/1/1/ or pci/2/1/
4.) I tried setting ALL of the above values using nvram set. For example, to try to set "maxp5gla0" I tried "pci/1/1/maxp5gla0=0x60", "pci/2/1/maxp5gla0=0x60", "sb/1/maxp5gla0=0x60", and "maxp5gla0=0x60". After setting all of these values from the command line, commiting and rebooting they made little change on the 5Ghz radio performance.
Anyone have any thoughts or advice on this? After I've got some clarification and I know I'm moving in the right direction, I'll post up my source changes to sysinit.c and whatever else needs to be changed.
I think that is about it what is missing from sysinit to get the 5ghz working.. I will check more later..
-Fractal
For these changes I am modifying the following two files, dd-wrt/src/router/services/sysinit/sysinit.c & dd-wrt/src/router/services/sysinit/sysinit-broadcom.c
However on this portion of things I want to make sure that I understand it correctly before I start testing the new build...
I am assuming the values given above are to be stored in the NVRAM by the init binary compiled from the above modified sources. If that's the case, then I should be able to test these values on the WNDR4500 as it is by issuing a "nvram set <name>=<value>". I noticed in the sysinit-broadcom.c file that the other netgear models prepend "pci/1/1/" to the nvram names (IE; "pa2gw1a1" becomes "pci/1/1/pa2gw1a1") In some cases there is a "sb/1/" for other parameters.
Few thoughts and questions about the above...
1.) The WNDR4500 has 2 individual radios in it and I think the 5ghz radio might be located at pci/2/1/.
2.) None of the values Fractal mentioned are currently set in the nvram by default aside from "vlan2ports" which is "4 8" (Instead of "4 8u")
3.) I'm unsure of where to use pci/1/1/ vs sb/1/ and I'm unsure if the "5g" parameters should be applied to pci/1/1/ or pci/2/1/
4.) I tried setting ALL of the above values using nvram set. For example, to try to set "maxp5gla0" I tried "pci/1/1/maxp5gla0=0x60", "pci/2/1/maxp5gla0=0x60", "sb/1/maxp5gla0=0x60", and "maxp5gla0=0x60". After setting all of these values from the command line, commiting and rebooting they made little change on the 5Ghz radio performance.
Anyone have any thoughts or advice on this? After I've got some clarification and I know I'm moving in the right direction, I'll post up my source changes to sysinit.c and whatever else needs to be changed.
Any update?
Can you please share your changes with us?
There's no update really to give yet, I haven't compiled a new build at this point. I was looking for some feedback on changing the sysinit source files before I try loading a new build onto my WNDR4500.
One of the reasons I was waiting is because the changes Fractal mentioned looked like I could just set the proper values in NVRAM myself. (That appears to be all the sysinit binary is doing anyway) When I set all of those values (minus the gpio configuration) it made zero difference with my 5Ghz performance.
I think it may be best to start with updating the source branch that's being used currently. The source files I downloaded are most likely pretty far behind the repo at this point. When I check the wl ver I get "5.60 RC127.4", and looking at the R6300 thread it looks like I should see something in the 6.x range if it was current.
Anyway, is there anything I'm missing here? I'd be happy to provide a built binary with the changes in there if someone wants to test it. I don't have a serial cable ready to go at all here so if I brick mine it will take me a few to recover from it...
I'm still happy to continue on helping where I can though and am more then willing to work on getting a functioning build.
Looks like the 5Ghz band is a bit of a pain on many routers with ddWRT so I'm not expecting a 1 or 2 line fix.
installed the latest version on my 4500.
Sometimes it reacts slow at commands but this is not so problematic.
I'm just wondering that the tx power of the wl1 is set to 1496. Regarding the hints beside this is absolutly too high.
Also the setting for tx power is always reset to 1496 after reboot of the router.
That's great! Is this firmware a result of collaboration between you and Fractal? Just curious as I was poking around the N6300 thread a little bit and saw that he might be helping out with this chipset a bit.
Anyway, I loaded it up and I can confirm this is a well working build of dd-wrt for the WNDR4500. I loaded it on top of the previous build you had and while it did reset the config data, everything is working upon configuring manually. LEDs on the front light up properly according to what wireless radio is active, power light turns green upon boot, etc.
I haven't tested the reset button on it out yet, I'll do that later and report back the findings. So far I'm just very happy to see that 5ghz looks like it's finally working correctly.
Thanks tathagata! Did you base this build off a newer rev of dd-wrt base code? Any chance I could get a copy of the source to update my VM with? (And so I can compare the changes you made and turn this into a learning experience for me)
installed the latest version on my 4500.
Sometimes it reacts slow at commands but this is not so problematic.
I'm just wondering that the tx power of the wl1 is set to 1496. Regarding the hints beside this is absolutly too high.
Also the setting for tx power is always reset to 1496 after reboot of the router.
Can anybody confirm?
Best regards Micha
Netgear stock firmware is also using same 1496 value. That is why I put that value.
That's great! Is this firmware a result of collaboration between you and Fractal? Just curious as I was poking around the N6300 thread a little bit and saw that he might be helping out with this chipset a bit.
Anyway, I loaded it up and I can confirm this is a well working build of dd-wrt for the WNDR4500. I loaded it on top of the previous build you had and while it did reset the config data, everything is working upon configuring manually. LEDs on the front light up properly according to what wireless radio is active, power light turns green upon boot, etc.
I haven't tested the reset button on it out yet, I'll do that later and report back the findings. So far I'm just very happy to see that 5ghz looks like it's finally working correctly.
Thanks tathagata! Did you base this build off a newer rev of dd-wrt base code? Any chance I could get a copy of the source to update my VM with? (And so I can compare the changes you made and turn this into a learning experience for me)
I was not being able to compile all latest features in latest SVN code. So I used older stable revision.
This is not a joint effort of me and Fractal.
Maybe in the meantime I'll get my build environment settled and get some more background knowledge on it all.