Wi-Fi access point - TRENDnet TEW-818DRU - Part 2: Software
Monday, May 8. 2017
In my previous post, I un-boxed my new Wi-Fi access point. This is the part for running something in it.
For this to happen, the obvious prerequisite is DD-WRT binary image built specifically for TEW-818DRU. DD-WRT supported devices -list doesn't say much. Little bit of poking around results in build 23720 back in the 2014 for this one. It is at: https://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/other-downloads?path=betas%2F2014%2F03-13-2014-r23720%2Ftrendnet-818DRU%2F. As I wanted something newer, I went for November 2016 build 30880 at: ftp://ftp.dd-wrt.com/betas/2016/11-14-2016-r30880/trendnet-818DRU/.
My typical approach for flashing new firmware is to stay connected with a wire. In practice that means, that I'll hook up an ethernet cable to my laptop and the other end to the access point's LAN-switch. Then I'll configure a static IP-address at the laptop's operating system. This makes sure, that I'm 100% connected whenever the box is running. Doing this over wireless connection and/or using dynamicly assigned IP-address may or may not work. As these boxes are expensive enough, I didn't push my luck. The downside of this approach is, that I'll need to know what the actual management IP-address will be.
Ok, let's start!
On out-of-box-experience the web GUI is at 192.168.10.1:
After login, there is a nice setup-wizard. Which of course, we'll just skip by acknowleding the alert:
Now we're at the normal administrator environment:
For me, the word "advanced" is like honey to a grizzly bear 
. I'll always home towards it, I know that all the goodies are stored there:
And also this time I was right, firmware upload/upgrade has its own menu item. Its clear, that this device is 100% designed by engineers, they cannot even seem to be able to agree on a single terminology. Menu has "upload", page title has "upgrade". Any self-respecting user experience designer would yell "You're confusing the user with that!", but I guess this stuff is for nerds only, and they don't care.
After selecting the trendnet-818dru-webflash.bin file to be uploaded, there is yet again a nice warning:
It will take couple minutes for the flashing to complete:
There is very little indication, that the process completed. I didn't notice any lights blinking or something like that. It just completed, rebooted and stayed silent.
Now the IP-addess will change. DD-WRT is 192.168.1.1 at out-of-box-experience:
And that's pretty much it for firmware upgrade. At this point I did my wireless access point -setup including:
- Admin username and password
- AP's LAN IP-address, my LAN isnt' at 192.168.1/24
- Enable SSH-service
- Enable GUI-access for HTTPS and SSH
- Wireless network setup for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, WPA2 Personal with pre-shared key as security
DD-WRT is for knowledgeable administrators, no setup wizards or mumbo-jumbo. Just the settings.
Btw. configuration docs can be found at: https://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Configuration_HOWTOs
