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SVECWLAP

Before you start

Increasing the power level of your SVEC WLAP (WAP11) to 100mW is generally considered to be a very bad idea, because the quality of the signal is significantly reduced. To illustrate:

WAP11 at 30mW power
WAP11 at 30mW power

WAP11 after 100mW hack
WAP11 after 100mW hack

In short, do not increase the power level of your WAP11 device to 100mW.

Here is some info and experimentation results on the SVEC WLAP.
(JMoir) SVEC have renamed this FD1811.

As things currently stand, there appears to be very little info on these beasts. Even google comes up with almost no info on them, which means they're either very new, or not widely available.

Here are my (FennBailey's) findings/info:

The SVEC WLAP is an ATMEL based AP, essentially (but not exactly) the same as the Linksys WAP11, DLink 900AP, SMC MC2655W and the Netgear ME102.

There are two models floating around (V2 and V3), both essentially the same on the inside (afaik), but the V2 having RP-SMA connectors externally, and the V3 having "permenantly" attached diversity antennas.

(JMoir) There should be V3 units with detachable antenna connectors early May.

Both these (and all similar APs) can have either diversity antennas turned on or off individually AND can have one assigned to send and the other to receive.


The question I can hear you all asking is "Does the 100mW hack work?".

The answer:

Yes (though whether this hack is a good thing or not is a separate issue).

(Aside: I am pretty sure this is a bad idea. See External link whys and wherefores, but briefly and in summary, you create significant out of band (as in out of the ISM band, not just the specific channel) noise, making the device illegal. There is also the issue of power versus antennas. Always use a better antenna before you mess with the power. On the other hand, REDUCING the power to contain your range (for security or noise mitigation - be nice to your neighbour) is a legitimate use for this hack (IMHO): Paul van den Bergen)

The instructions contained on External linkWap11Hack essentially work with a few important differences.

1) Don't use the ATMEL SNMP manager software linked off the seattlewireless site - It doesn't work with the SVEC APs. However, the SNMP manager supplied on the SVEC CD is essentially the same piece of software (and it works). Simply apply the INI changes as described and voila! You'll get your magical hidden menus.

2) The power level numbering is different on the SVEC APs (and Netgears). 80 is not the highest value, but rather it is inverse with 7F being the lowest output and 00 being the highest.

You can see this demonstrated via this this External linklarge screenshot

One other thing tested was flashing an SVEC WLAP to WAP11 firmware, to make it more compatible with the other various tools around (also, SVEC seem to have very sparse support).

At time of writing, here's a friendly warning:

DON'T DO THIS


It appears to (mostly) kill the AP. The SVEC flashes beautifully (I used the Tellus TFTP client uploader and Linksys 1.41j firmware) and reboots, but then fails to work.

It still responds via USB (the ethernet port turns off), but not properly to either the Linksys, SVEC, DLink or ATMEL configuration tools.

Because the ethernet port is dead, it makes it difficult to TFTP up different firmware, however, I found that Linksys provides a USB firmware flasher that successfully re-writes the firmware.

I believe I will be able to recover the AP by uploading the original SVEC firmware, which unfortunately is not available on the SVEC site.

The plan is to TFTP it off a working SVEC and re-flash the AP that way. From my initial hacking at the TFTP flash client, I have determined it tries to TFTP PUT a file called atbrfirm.bin.

If someone has a working one, it would be most appreciated if the firmware could be got, to do this, you should be able to just (from a windows prompt) do a:

C:\tftp -i <ip_of_your_ap> GET atbrfirm.bin

I don't know if this will definitely work (I don't even know if the TFTP server on the AP implements the GET command), but it's worth a try.

And so concludes my testing of the SVEC WLAP (as of now anyway).

Probably the best value for money AP out there.

(djm) - Has anyone successfully found a firmware for this? I managed to kill mine with the WAP11 firmware before I found this useful warning

--

not sure who to reply to so ill just paste this here, hope it's not naughty :/

C:\>tftp -i 192.168.0.10 GET atbrfirm.bin
Timeout occurred

girlsgerms - colin@restecp.com


====================================

Seems the hack also kills the AP when in client mode with WEP,

Trap received @ 3:36:8 from host 192.168.3.8
Access Point Client is in join state.

====================================

Trap received @ 3:36:8 from host 192.168.3.8
Access Point Client is authenticating with the AP. BSSID : 004005B1356D

====================================

(keeps saying this over and over and refuses to connect)
however if you dont use the 00 value in CR21 and use the rest the signal seems to be ok and client mode works again
... any ideas ?


Configuration Under Linux


(GlennMcKechnie) The latest development release External linkap-utils-1.3.3 of External linkap-utils now fully supports the ATMEL12350, which is the chipset used in the SVEC FD1811.

ap-utils-1.3.3 is now an old version so a more recent release may have better support again?

To communicate with the AP via ethernet when it's in the default state, use the following settings...

fixed IP 192.168.168.10

password public

and then change the password ;)

External linkTerm Papers


External linkResearch Papers


External linkTerm Paper


External linkResearch Paper


Version 11 (current) modified Mon, 26 Jul 2021 12:49:29 +0000
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