Linksys WRT300N v1/v1.1 DD-WRT Firmware Installation Guide

General Information

(As of September, 2009) WRT300N version 2 is NOT supported. (See this post.)

Linksys WRT300N Version 1 & 1.1

Hardware Defaults (with Linksys firmware)

• LAN IP Address: 192.168.1.1
• Web GUI Username: <blank>
• Web GUI Password: admin

DD-WRT Defaults (dd-wrt.v24 beta)

• LAN IP Address: 192.168.1.1
• Web GUI Username: root
• Web GUI Password: admin

Installation Procedure

See Where do I download firmware? for links.

WRT300N v.1

1. Download DD-WRT v24 Mini from: broadcom/dd-wrt.v24_mini_wrt300n.bin
2. Read the peacock announcement found here: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=51486
3. Open your web browser to 192.168.1.1
4. Log-in and find any settings you might want to keep and copy them down or cut and paste them to notepad or another editor. (e.g. MAC addresses for MAC filtering, SSID, pass-phrase, static DHCP entries, etc)
5. Do a proper HARD reset on your router. (30-30-30 Reset)
6. Set your computer to a static IP address of 192.168.1.7 Subnet mask to 255.255.255.0
7. Plug a LAN cable from your computer to a LAN port on the router. Disable any wireless on your computer.
8. Log back into the router (router should have defaulted back to 192.168.1.1 user/pass admin).
9. Go to Administration, Firmware upgrade, in the Linksys web GUI.
10. Browse to the dd-wrt.v24_mini_wrt300n.bin you downloaded, and hit upgrade.
11. Wait until you can access the DD-WRT web GUI at 192.168.1.1.
12. Power cycle the router.
13. Wait until you can access the DD-WRT web GUI at 192.168.1.1.
14. Do ANOTHER hard reset on the router.
15. Go in and set your user name and password by carefully typing each of them in.
16. Set your computer to auto IP and auto DNS.

WRT300N v.1.1

1. Download DD-WRT v24 Mini from: /broadcom/dd-wrt.v24_mini_wrt300nv11.bin
2. Read the peacock announcement found here: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=51486
3. Open your web browser to 192.168.1.1
4. Log-in and find any settings you might want to keep and copy them down or cut and paste them to notepad or another editor. (e.g. MAC addresses for MAC filtering, SSID, pass-phrase, static DHCP entries, etc)
5. Do a proper HARD reset on your router. (30-30-30 Reset)
6. Set your computer to a static IP address of 192.168.1.7 Subnet mask to 255.255.255.0
7. Plug a LAN cable from your computer to a LAN port on the router. Disable any wireless on your computer.
8. Log back into the router (router should have defaulted back to 192.168.1.1 user/pass admin).
9. Go to Administration, Firmware upgrade, in the Linksys web GUI.
10. Browse to the dd-wrt.v24_mini_wrt300nv11.bin you downloaded, and hit upgrade.
11. Wait until you can access the DD-WRT web GUI at 192.168.1.1.
12. Power cycle the router.
13. Wait until you can access the DD-WRT web GUI at 192.168.1.1.
14. Do ANOTHER hard reset on the router.
15. Go in and set your user name and password by carefully typing each of them in.
16. Set your computer to auto IP and auto DNS.

Note: TreborG2 19:02, 13 November 2011 (CET) edited to move the "hard reset" step to *after* you've copied any settings you wanted to save, because once you do a hard reset the router should have lost those settings, right? ;)

Debricking Information

Here is a thread which contains a JTAG method for debricking your WRT300N v1 and v1.1 model.

For further information about JTAG please see the wiki entry entitled JTAG.

Post-Installation

Once you have completed all of the steps above, your router is already set and ready to be used, configured, etc.

Known Issues

• The security LED will not light up after flashing on version 1.1. To fix this, go to Administration > Commands, type in the following and then click Save Startup:

  while sleep 1; do if [ `nvram get wl0_security_mode` = "disabled" ]; then gpio enable 3; else gpio disable 3; fi; done &

• Versions 1.0 and 2.0 of this router have 4MB flash, so JFFS will not work with the standard distros. Version 1.1 has 8MB of flash so may (untested) work with JFFS.
• I use static DHCP for my network and found that this page had strange errors (incorrect labels, missing radio buttons). To fix this, navigate to Administration > Factory Defaults and then restore the factory defaults to the router. Relatively same issue with MAC filtering where the word "error" replaced labels.
• When editing settings on the Administration page for the first time (after flash or hard reset), make sure that you change the interface language dropdown to Simplified Chinese, then back to English. Otherwise the router will end up in Simplified Chinese until you either change it, or hard reset the router.
• If you did not hard reset the router before you installed DD-WRT, then the login information is as follows:
  • Username: root
  • Password: Whatever your password was
  Hard reset the router if you cannot figure out the login information. Refer here for the default login information.
• Occasionally after changing a setting, the router will lose its connection to the internet. All you need to do to restore the connection is navigate to the Administration page and scroll to the bottom and hit the Reboot Router button. I recommend that you change all the settings you want to change then reboot the router regardless.