Netgear DG834PN external antenna mod

I am a happy owner of the DG834PN router from Netgear.
It is a little old but I am satisfied from its speed and wifi coverage.

However, I always felt I had to hack this router. The router by default does not support an external antenna. This is fine, since it covers every corner of my appartment. But I had to add an external anntenna connector anyway…

So here it is:

I bought male-female rp-sma cable and cut it in the middle.

I soldered the female part on the internal antenna circuit and used some tape to keep the cable from moving.

Here is the first soldering point:

…and the other one:
*Your can use your multimeter to search for soldering points.

Drilled a hole on the backpanel and glued the connector.

Closed the router case carefully and connected it to power!
Everything works fine! (I need to clean that deskTongue out.)

I do not have a way to measure if the signal was improved inside the house, since it was maximum anyway. But I will try around the house and keep you updated!

Transfering files from Netgear DG834xx

After one month of absence, I have something interesting that will save you some time if you decide to play with alternative firmware, modifications and Netgear routers.

It’s really quick. If you need to transfer files from the router to your pc or elsewhere:

1) Login to the router via telnet or ssh connection
2) Start a new mini_httpd server on port 81 and on /tmp directory (the only writable directory, it’s the ramdisk)

./usr/sbin/mini_httpd -p 81 -d /tmp -t 1

3) Copy files from other directories to the /tmp folder
4) Give http://192.168.0.1:81/filename to your browser and save the file to your local disk.

I tested it only on a DG834pn but it should work with any router with a telnet/ssh interface and mini_httpd.

Some references:
1. http://www2.research.att.com/sw/download/man/man8U/mini_httpd.html
2. http://ss64.com/bash/