Hacking the O2 Wireless Box II
After finally getting my hands on the now famous Linksys WRT54GL router, and flashing it with DD-WRT, I was left with a small problem: I had ADSL, not Cable, and I didn’t have an ADSL modem to hand, not even under my bed. No problem I thought, I’d just use my Netgear DG834G flashed with the DGTeam firmware and use that in bridge/modem mode, and so I did. At this point clouds started forming over head and my worst fears were confirmed, the Gods truly where conspiring against me, for the DG834G was only sync’ing at 18Mbps/812Kbps. [/drama]
Using the O2 Wireless Box II (if I ever have to mention the model number of a router again it will be too soon) I had previously achieved 22Mbps/1.2Mbps – and for any self-respecting geek that 4Mbps matters; a shortfall of that magnitude could do serious damage to my reputation on the touring circuit. After some quick research it was confirmed: the supposed ‘ADSL2+’ compatible chipset in the Netgear isn’t up to the task.
So I had only one option left – hack the O2 box. After half an hour or so of digging, I finally found an article that detailed the process (without the use of an .ini file, which I was hoping to avoid), and documented it well. I’ll run through the steps here in case that forum or that particular post ever goes ‘bye-bye’.