Recently had issues of Hanging on the LinkSys EA3500 router.. going to the router and doing power reset was not a option which I fancied. LinkSys Insist that using the smart wifi firmware and using the app on the iPhone, I would reset the router.. but when the router is hanged ie it was no longer routing to the WAN, there is no way the app worked.

I either had to buy a new router and gift this EA3500 to a good friend or find a work around to access the router through Telnet or SSH but…

1. This Router cannot be Modified using dd-wrt or any other third party software due to Marvell 88F6W01 instead of Broadcom chipset.

2.  Googled for a solution; found Hacking Linksys E4200v2 firmware looked good but had too much of info for me to digest.. but also in mention was blog by Dan Walters

3.  Dan had found a security hole, — “packages” directory off the root on the USB Drive and The contents of this directory are automatically linked to /opt, and anything in the /opt/etc/registration.d directory is executed, init script style, to extend the functionality of the stock firmware —

4.  Because Dan has provided the “Dropbear Binaries And Corresponding Init Script“, I unzipped the archive to a spare usb stick.. “packages” folder on the USB stick. and inserted this stick in the router..

5.  WOW “SSH” access was available > ssh root@ipaddr password: same password of admin.

Once SSH Access was enabled, I just wrote a python Script to SSH and reboot the Router whenever the www.google.com was not reachable. detailed the Script in the next post