DD-WRT possible brick on tplink-wa901nd v2, any advice?

Question

I flashed some firmware (direct link here) onto a brand new TP-LINK TL-WA901ND v2, and now it doesn't look very good.

The power LED is on, and the LAN LED lights up when I attach the cable to my computer but the WLAN and SYSTEM are now always off.

When I attach the cable to my computer, I cannot access http://192.168.1.1. I haven't much experience on bricks, but this looks like one.

Doing a netscan on my network I see:

network router  Router  192.168.1.1 MAC-ADDRESS 
network router  Router  224.0.0.1   MAC-ADDRESS 
unidentified device hidden  224.0.0.251 MAC-ADDRESS

I tried to telnet and ssh 192.168.1.1 with no luck.

Any advice?

UPDATE

I tried to do the 30/30/30 reset, and nothing changed.

I tried the tftp transfer using the original firmware from TP-Link; this is the output:

tftp> connect 192.168.1.1 
tftp> binary
tftp> rexmt 1
tftp> timeout 60
tftp> put wa901nv2_en_3_12_16_up(120224).bin
Transfer timed out.

Basically, it's not answering to tftp (and timing out).

I tried also immediately after a reset, during boot time, but had no luck.

Solution 1

It seems the DD-WRT firmware for the TP-Link WA901ND disables the LAN port. Refer to posts here: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=71721&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=180

My experience with this device is the same.

The good news is that you should be able to connect to the wireless interface. The default wireless SSID is dd-wrt, no security (no passphrase) and uses an IP Address of 192.168.1.1.

I was successfully able to connect to the access point this way and see the DD-WRT firmware had installed. I tried playing with it to enable the LAN port again, but it seems the firmware is no yet ready for production. Without a LAN port, it is fairly useless!

You can also re-flash it back to stock TP-Link firmware through the web interface over wireless. Just download the webrevert firmware from DD-WRT and you should be able to access it again on the default settings (192.168.1.254) over the LAN port.

Solution 2

Since I had the same problem, the actual solution was:

1. hard reset 30/30/30: dd-wrt hard reset guide
2. change arp mac address of wireless connection, follow this guide
3. connect to web interface via 192.168.1.1

Update: the only working dd-wrt firmware with enabled LAN port is this one:

DD-WRT v24-sp2 (01/24/13) std - build 20548 

Comments

[David Schwartz]

You can't brick these routers without overwriting the CFE. If you just flashed the firmware, it's recoverable. You have to push a new firmware at it using tftp right as it's booting up. The process is explained here.

[David Schwartz]

It won't respond to pings and it won't respond to a port scan. The only thing you can do is push a tftp to it. It will, however, respond to ARP requests, so you can confirm that it's working that way.

[Luigi R. Viggiano]

first of all, thank you for the help. I tried the tftp, it tells me "Tranfer timed out".

[Luigi R. Viggiano]

Yesterday night I tried during the boot time, I also tried after doing a reset and a 30sec reset; still no luck.

[Luigi R. Viggiano]

Thanks, I didn't notice the SSID was available. I have the dd-wrt wifi SSID but after connected the IP 192.168.1.1 doesn't respond to any port (ssh, http, telnet, ping). I see the IP 192.168.1.1 is assigned to the router, but I can't connect in any way. I tried to port scan it, but no results.