Hello,

I have a Linksys BEFSR41 ver. 2 router. I also have a domain name registered with dyndsn.org attached to the external IP of the router. I need to access my router from "outside" so I can change some port forwarding stuff. I can access a linux computer behind the router via ssh (I already have that port forwarded). Does anybody know how I can do this?

Thanks,
~Justin

Well, I guess the answer is that it depends.

What OS is the router running, the default firmware out of the box, or are you running linux on the router?

Assuming that you are running stock firmware, most of the linksys routers do have an option to allow remote administration, but this is generally turned off by default due to the obvious security concerns.

If you can access a box on the network, you may want to try to use that box to reach the internal interface for the router and make your changes this way. If this router were running linux it would be easier to access the interface via a ssh command line, but if you can establish a X forwarding session with you server you should be able to run a browser which you can in turn use to access the web interface on the internal port for the router.

Happy hunting,

I thought about an tunneling an X server session, but I'm forced to work off of a Windows machine at work, so this is really out of the issue (they wouldn't like me installying Cygwin). I assumed the router would have remote admin disabled by default for security purposes, but I wasn't sure.

Kind of on a different topic, but how hard would it be to install Linux on the router? How do you even go about doing this (sorry, I haven't Googled this yet, so if there is an obvious answer then feel free to ream me for it).

Thanks,
~Justin

The process of installing Linux on a router does vary by the router in question, but in most cases it is fairly easy.

In the project that I am involved in (PacketProtector) we work with wireless routers that have USB ports on them and we install a Linux distro (OpenWRT) complete with a full set of security tools (such as Firewall, IDS, IPS, VPN).

As you can likely imagine, there are a lot of options to choose from, and if you wish to experiment with the hardware that you already have Google will likely lead you to some possibilities. If you are interested in acquiring hardware for the purpose of experimentation, I would suggest something like the Linksys WRTSL54GS which is a popular piece of hardware amongst those that like to experiment with alternate OS and projects.

Good Luck,

Thanks for your help.

~Justin