[SOLVED] DDWRT x64 VMWare

[fastcompany2]

Ya I don't know if this is the right section but I wanted to try out ddwrt on a VM just to check it out. I have a ddwrt capable router (wrt3200acm) but its working great right now under factory firmware and I can't risk not having internet here with the wife and kids and all the electronics that come with that. Ultimately I would like to deploy this at my work either using a flashed router or possibly an old pc after I see how it works. Right now I'm trying to configure a VM using VMWare workstation player 15. I found a few how to articles that say I need 2 nics one private and one public. Maybe I can do this on workstation but I have no idea how. Whenever I try to boot the vm I get errors with no network found. I do have a line on a free server (unknown make and model) that a autoparts store owner is giving me since they updated their hardware. I could run a full hypervisor on it and maybe have better luck but thats new territory for me as well. So anyone have any how to's on setting this up. I have multiple VMs all windows to work with if I need to start first inside an OS.

Thanks in advance

 

[bill001g]

My knowledge of VM is very limited so I can't really comment on that. The issue I see unless you are going to compile your own image I can't see how you can get it to load. The images are very tightly tied to processors in the routers. That is why you have to dig through massive lists to find the correct image. I will assume you are ignoring the wifi part since you would need multiple wifi nics also.

The days of third party firmware are quickly coming to a end I fear. The problem is how fast people internet connection have become. To get high speed most routers have moved the NAT function off the CPU chip to a hardware accelerator. Last I heard they have not released the software that enables this to the public domain so third party firmware has issue using it. Even if they did the problem then becomes the CPU bottleneck. To use most fancy features on the router the traffic must pass through the CPU chip. You now can no longer take advantage of the NAT offloading so even without using very cpu intensive features you limit your top speed on the router.

My asus does not even display the utilization traffic correctly since the traffic is bypassing the app running on the CPU.

Pretty much until the cpu get faster in routers you have to choose between high speed transfers and the extra features.

If you really want to do stuff like this I would look at pfsense and use a actual PC. If your internet connection is less than say 250mbps then you can use third party router firmware but I still don't know how you are going to get it to run on a VM. You would need something that simulates the router CPU instruction sets.

 

[fastcompany2]

so ddwrt offers a x86 and x64 vga image for pc install. i guess if you make a donation within the os you get full features which include wifi. so its something that should be able to be done. I considered pfsense and i'm considering it more now I just thought ddwrt might provide a more simple solution. I believe the internet connection is actually 250 from verizon at the shop. The issue is I am not an IT professional. I am a race car mechanic at an independent shop. I also take classes at a community college for IT. I am the youngest tech savvy guy there so i'm responsible for keeping our systems going. we simply have that cheap pos verizon fios router now and it does a very poor job even with our small network. I am deploying a new machine to be setup as our server at some point and was considering using the old hp machine thats getting replaced as our new router with 2 access points or using 2 wrt3200acm routers and setting one up as an access point and the main running ddwrt. regardless I will need 2 wifi access points in the shop. So does anyone have any opinions on setting up a pfsense VM. like i said I need to check out whatever I'm doing before deploying it. When I tear into the network I have a small window that I can work on it without slowing down my own work on cars.

 

[bill001g]

I guess I never worried about running dd-wrt on a pc. The problem I always had was there is no standard version of dd-wrt. Some features only run on certain router models. Just because something runs on your PC version does not mean the router can support that. Mostly this is hardware or wifi related things. I can't remember the exact feature but I had it running on a asus and was going to use a newer faster netgear and found the wifi chips on that box no longer supported the requests that had worked on the asus.

I guess it all depends on why you need dd-wrt in the first place.

Do you plan do things like vlans or some kind of fancy guest network or something else. Generally if you do not know why you need dd-wrt then you don't need it.

Many of the more common features you used to load dd-wrt for like vpn or firewall stuff are now in many of the factory images from companies like tplink or asus.

Now if you just want to learn and mess around with the router images that is different. In many cases the features (like actual routing protocols) are only use at enterprise size companies and they use commercial equipment instead.

 

[fastcompany2]

you pretty much nailed it there. Its a good chance I don't need ddwrt or pfsense. More of a learning experience with an excuse to want to learn them. So regardless I still want to try and spool something up in a VM. even if the features are changed it should still give me a decent understanding of the product. eventually if i get my server setup I can spool up enough vms to make a virtual office setting and start playing around with the network.

 

[bill001g]

If you just want to mess with routing simulator cisco packet tracer is one of the best. If is suppose to be only for class use but it is easily available. It emulates networks of cisco commercial routers. It is generally used by beginners in the network field. Although it is cisco commands and configuration all the theory is the same and can be used on things like dd-wrt.

 

[fastcompany2]

didn't think about that. Before I started taking classes I was sure I wanted to get into networking. I installed packet tracer a while ago. I'll go back into it to start playing around. I just thought setting up a virtual environment with vms would be the closest to real world situations.

 

[fastcompany2]

by the way you have made me less concerned with the virtual machine and offered some great advice. like I said still would like a vm but if by tomorrow no one has any insight to making that happen I'll go ahead and pick your answer as the solution.
Thanks