Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2014 14:53 Post subject: Buffalo WHR-600D
I have ordered a new Buffalo WHR-600D router because I found one for $30 online. I have been trying to gather information on this device, as it appears to be pretty new. It looks like it is very similar to WHR-300HP2, but adds the 5GHz channel.
What's unique is that it uses a MediaTek processor, which appears to invalidate most of the generic instructions.
I have a few questions:
- Is /others/eko/BrainSlayer-V24-preSP2/ the same as /beta/ ?
- What is the purpose of the buffalo_whr_****-webflash.bin files? How does it differ from firmware-us.bin?
- Is it better to use the minimum supported version, or the latest version?
I am also very interested to hear feedback from anyone with one of these new Buffalo routers; are there any bugs or limitations besides the 5GHz wireless bridge?
Interestingly, this site has a Downloads page with a DD-WRT "professional" firmware, though they say it's not fully supported. It is dated July 23, 2014. I wonder if this would be compatible with the US model?
Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2014 3:33 Post subject: Good results with 23503
I installed the minimum recommended version from the Supported Devices wiki page, build 23503, on my WHR-600D. I used the firmware-us.bin file.
No "kill" firmware is required. I did a 30/30/30 reset after the flash. I am using both 2.4ghz and 5ghz wireless bands using WPA2 / AES security, and configured several Netmask Priority QOS rules.
QOS works very well, with the following comments:
- Manual Priority ends up at the same priority as Premium (prio 4), at least with the bandwidth settings I chose.
- Default traffic gets the same priority as Express. This was surprising to me, so I created a Netmask Priority rule at the end of the list for my entire subnet, setting to Standard priority for all unclassified traffic.
- The MAC Priority web UI does not work in the Opera browser, but works fine in Firefox.
Overall, it has been quite stable, with two android phones, an ipad, a laptop, two roku tv devices, and a desktop on the LAN. The only problems I've encountered seem to be from the web interface. The QOS screen is very picky, and you can't create more than one rule at a time without saving.
At some points, applying changes seemed to hang the router, or at least the web interface, for a period of a minute or two. Eventually it would start responding again, though I sometimes just rebooted the router. These issues seem to be related to applying changes, and once everything was setup, I have not had problems.
The QOS was my main motivation for getting a new wireless router with DD-WRT compatibility, and I am quite pleased with the results. I appreciate the various statistics when monitoring the LAN and WAN activity, and the bandwidth monitoring is pretty nice to have.
I am using build 23503 for my whr-600D US version, it's pretty stable but I wonder, how is the Buffalo DD-WRT "professional" firmware version? Did you get your hands on it or have any inforamtion about it? I tried to download it but I need a european 600D serial number to have access to it...
let me know if you know a place I can get my hand on that firmware!
Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 12:29 Post subject: Webflash Image
Guys did you just flash the us bin through the buffalo firmware interface? I thought you were supposed to install the webflash version first before you installed that or am I out to lunch. I would like to flash mine just want to be sure of method before I do, thanks for any help on this.
Has anyone gotten the professional fw that requires the serial number?
None of the Brainslayer builds work correctly for me. I can only enable wireless encryption for one band at a time, not both.
I can't revert to fw 1.50, so I thought I'd try their professional (dd-wrt) firmware.
Unless anyone has figure out a way to revert to stock? _________________ I am far from a guru, I'm barely a novice.
Hmmm, I believe I read that in EU, the EU wifi router firmware limit some 5ghz channels to not be able to used, since they are not allowed legally to use, whereas in the US those channels are allowed are not locked by the firmware. I don't know if the buffalo-EU developed dd-wrt professional firmware developed for the EU version of the router open those restricted EU 5ghz channels, if not, maybe better to use just the normal brainslayer dd-wrt firmware. Anyone can confirm this?
Thought I'd write up my experience with the WHR-600D, since every question in this thread went unanswered:
I downloaded build 24461 (after seeing that 23503 was the "minimum"). The router is plugged into the secondary NIC on my desktop.
Spent a fruitless hour or two trying to flash it using the TFTP method.
Finally out of frustration I just threw it in the default firmware's 'upgrade' utility, which worked. "Worked", rather. Once I've started setting up my config, HTTPD locks up after about ten minutes or the first reboot.
Network connections and telnet still work fine (until I power cycle the router, and then as far as I can tell, nothing comes back up). Once it's powered down, 30-30-30 is the only way to get it working again.
I think I've narrowed it down to having HTTPS admin enabled :\
EDIT:
Been using this as my main router since I posted. It's stable without HTTPS, although I have the same hang problem fedoracooper mentioned.
I wanted to chime in here as well - be careful using the method @protospork used. I tried to upload the dd-wrt firmware using the default firmware's upload firmware mechanism. After rebooting I am unable to get back into any router interface. I was unable to recover the router after 30 minutes last night - I'll try some more this weekend.
Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2014 3:10 Post subject: Bricked WHR-600D
<Sigh>.. well, after 3 short months, my WHR-600D is essentially bricked.
It was working flawlessly for the whole time, running build 23503. Out of the blue, it just stopped working a few days ago. Wireless connections weren't working, and wired connections were intermittent. I looked at the box and it appeared to be in a reboot loop based on the lights. It would boot up, and might stay up for 20-30 seconds, then it would reboot again.
The really weird part was that the Web UI was screwed up, when I was able to connect at all. The HTML styles were messed up, buttons were missing, all the top-level navigation buttons looked like blank squares with no text. I could not see enough buttons to submit any pages or doing anything useful.
So I finally gave up and used the reset button at the back of the router. This clearly reset my settings, as was visible by the new DHCP settings. However, the behavior was no better. Usually the web UI was unavailable (could not connect to port 80 or 443), though sometimes I would see the page for setting the password.
Even this page was screwed up, with most HTML styles missing. I could try to type in a password and click the button, but nothing would happen. So this is my current state: the router will boot up in a half-baked state on default settings. It does not seem to be in a reboot loop anymore, and responds consistently to pings; it also seems to work with the Internet.
Unfortunately, it is useless in its current state, because I cannot customize the settings to do anything useful. I have tried desperately to get TFTP working to restore it to true factory state, but it really does not seem to support it. I focused mostly on setting my computer to 192.168.11.2, and trying to ping or TFTP to 192.168.11.1 during the boot cycle or after a reset. I have never gotten a ping response from 192.168.11.1 during the boot cycle, so either they shutoff TFTP from this model, or there is some special process or IP address needed to access it.
If anyone has any more ideas on TFTP, please let me know. I also tried calling Buffalo technical support; they kept telling me to install the latest firmware, but I cannot do that without the web UI. Finally they told me it is unsupported as it runs DD-WRT, and I would have to seek help on these forums.
So it's a kind of soft brick. It would appear that there has been some sort of corruption of the Flash ROM, which has screwed up essential parts of the Web UI among other things. Either this was due to some random hardware glitch, or DD-WRT somehow caused the Flash corruption. It was not due to a power surge, as my computer was still running fine. Since I got this for under $40, I can't complain too much. Nonetheless, I think my next purchase will be of a device that supports TFTP in case the flash ROM gets messed up.
Ugh. That sucks! I actually seem to have gotten mine working. It seemed to do really wierd things especially around hard resets. I think it stores a lot in temporary memory - I had an issue where dhcp was jacked up too. The solution that fixed the weirdness was to unplug the thing for 10-15 min after doing the hard reset (30-30-30).