You must have read or heard a lot about customizing your device mostly after android phones hit mainstream markets. From a long time now, custom firmwares exist for Routers that you use in your home. They help you do things that give you the best ROI like Overclocking, support for NAS, Extending the WiFi Range, Access Control, QoS, Filtering etc. among many things not possible with the original firmwares.

If you have a Dlink DIR 615 and tried to enable Access Control, you must have observed it simply doesn’t work. Enter DD WRT for DIR. Note that Access Control works only when DDWRT is operating in Router mode with WAN interface enabled. Usually we do not operate the device in router mode but just as a Switch to extend the LAN as a Wireless Access Point (WAP).

Here we will be setting up DDWRT as a router that connects to another router UT300R2U (BSNL). Both of them will be on different LAN’s each with their own DHCP server. Separating the LAN’s give better control on setting up the access control feature and enabling QoS restrictions.

Step 1: Install on your Dlink router . Plenty of install instructions are available on that site. It a very simple process, Download the firmware bin and upgrade it from the existing old UI itself. Wait for the router to boot up and you should be up and running with DD-WRT.

Note: The default IP address will now change to 192.168.1.1 from 192.168.0.1. We need to change that immediately as we are having two routers with the same IP address.

a. Here we are enabling the WAN connection and setting it to Auto. This activates the WAN/Internet port on the DLink Router. Set STP to enable.

b. Under Network Setup, Observe that the subnet is changed to 2.x and the DHCP server is also in 2.1. So all clients will get the address from the 2.x DHCP server. Set the DNS to 192.168.1.1 the actual WAN router connected to the Internet.

Step 2: Navigate to Advanced Routing Tab. Change the Operating mode to Gateway and setup a static route to the main router hosting your internet connection.

Step 3: Make sure your bridging tables are configured as below. Here ath0 and eth0 are bridged to indicate LAN interface and Wireless interface are bridged. So, they are on the same sub-network.

Step 4: Setup the Access Control

That’s it. Reboot the routers once and your connections and blocks should be up and running.