A recent article that the firmware in the LinkSys WRT54G wireless cable router was causing problems at DynDNS prompted me to update the firmware on mine, which was woefully out of date. Firmware flashing is not something to be done lightly, as it could corrupt the machine, the new firmware could have “unanticipated side-effects” – bugs to us users – or not be fully tested. However, this one seemed severe enough to update.
If you own one, I’d suggest you grab all of your existing settings before flashing the unit. A few screens in the web-based configuration allow you to save off files to disk. A neat way to save all of the others is to print out each page – I save all of mine to PDF for reference, but paper might be less volatile. While many settings seem to have been preserved, my WEP 128-bit encryption key is gone, as is the list of MAC addresses.
UPDATE: No, the settings were saved, but WEP and MAC filtering were disabled. RE-enabling the settings brought back the display of the WEP key and the MAC addresses. Nothing to type back in – whew!