[PLUG] WRT54G Config.bin

[Richard C. Steffens]

Over the past few weeks I've found my machines unable to access the 
Internet first thing in the morning. At first I thought it was the cable 
modem. So I followed the method of pulling the plug on the modem, 
waiting a few seconds, and then plugging it back in. Since I have done 
this over the years I learned that sometimes my router would need to be 
reset as well, so I usually pull the power plug out of it before 
plugging the modem back in. I'd then wait for all the lights on the 
modem to turn green before plugging the router back in.

But then I tried plugging a machine directly into the modem and it had 
no problem getting out. That led me to believe it might be the router. 
The next time I experienced the problem I just power cycled the router 
and things worked as they normally do. This leads me to suspect my 
WRT54G might be wearing out. I have a spare, so I'm more or less 
prepared to swap them. I started thinking about how much documenting I'd 
need to do to gather all the settings on the current router and started 
looking through the pdf version of the manual and found that there is 
the ability to backup the configuration to a file, Config.bin. I have 
done this and will try setting up the backup router with the 
configuration of the current one.

I'd like to see what's inside that config file, but I find that it is 
indeed a binary file. Less will display it, but what it shows is mostly 
useless. Is there some way to view the contents of that file in a human 
readable way? I'm just curious to see if there's a way to create a 
document to help me if both routers go south and I need to set up a 
third one some day. I could always step through each page of the 
router's administration tool, but that would be a mite tedious -- but 
doable if that's the only way.

-- 
Regards,

Dick Steffens