The Buffalo WYR-G54 is a wireless router which eBuyer (probably others too) are selling really cheaply at the moment. Something many people (myself included) like to do with wireless networks is disable SSID broadcasts; this makes the network more difficult for people to detect unless they already know the SSID (no, security through obscurity is never the answer, but it helps).
In the manual there is a screenshot showing an “enable SSID broadcast” option. This option actually doesn’t exist either in the original firmware I got with my router or in the latest firmware. However, it is still possible to disable SSID broadcasts with a bit of effort:
- Use the web interface to save the router settings to a file
- Open the file (admcfg.cfg) and look for the ‘[533004:Broadcast SSID]‘ option (near the bottom)
- Simply change ‘yes’ to ‘no’
- Use the web interface to restore the settings from the file you just edited
- The router reboots and that’s it: no more SSID broadcast
Quite why Buffalo felt the need to remove the option from the web interface I can’t imagine…
While I’m moaning about Buffalo, I’ll also mention the fact that the web server on the device can’t cope with browsers that implement HTTP pipelining (this includes Mozilla & Firefox at least). While it basically works, pages take AGES to load, you end up with the server serving files other than the ones requested and you have to re-start the browser after you’ve done a form POST before the server will talk to you again. I dream of the day that people who only test their products with IE will get what’s coming to them…
But for £29.34 I guess I shouldn’t really complain too loudly…
