Coats Sez

Ok. So I recently screwed up my BEFSR41 router. I downloaded the most recent firmware and used my Firefox browser to try to do the upgrade and you guessed it, it didn’t work. After waiting around for several minutes I ended up with a router with a flashing power light which never quit flashing and I could no longer bring my router up thru my browser. Uh oh, what do I do now?

I tried to log on to my router with tfpt, which is a standard program that’s on most Linux distros. I kept trying over and over but I couldn’t get in because the router wanted a password and tfpt does not deliver passwords! So, I disconnected my router and hooked up to the internet directly thru my cable modem and searched around some for a solution. After much reading of pages I finally came to the page that gave me the solution to my dilemma. The page is http://redsand.net/ and the owner of the website has created a utility which was the solution to the Cisco(Linksys) tftp login problem.It is a tftp client which allows you to enter a password so you can get in to your router. This little utility saved me. There is a link on the page to Linksys-tftp Client 1.2.1 which you can download and compile and then get your router back in business. Thanks, Redsand Networks!

I don’t know why I had to do this. Cisco should know that the tftp client on Linux will not let you enter a password. Are you reading this, Cisco? Please fix this so thousands of users don’t get stumped about what to do when their firmware upgrade fails.

Hmmm. Further study of this issue shows me that simply getting rid of the router password before you start to do the firmware upgrade should make things go easier. I wish I would have known this before I started. Live and learn, I guess. I haven’t tried this yet, however. The router is working now so I’m going to leave it alone.

Terry Coats