MindSuburbia

A couple of months ago my Fonera 2200 gave up her job
It was an original Fonera in her v.0.7.2r3 firmware, no ssh enabled, nothing else added: just a Fontenna.
It all started with a loss of signal: the Fonera was active just for a couple of seconds a minute, like it was auto rebooting.
I tried a couple of reboot and I also tried to switch to the original little white antenna: nothing changed.
Then, after a lot of trying, i noticed this behaviour: the Fonera was working all right only without antenna! The signal strength was very low, but stable and working. So there must have been something in the amplifying signal circuit that short circuited the antenna. I can’t believe it’s something due to software.
Opening the Fonera case, the antenna cable and connector were perfectly fixed and soldered.
So i did the most obvious things:

• Wrote to the FON support, after checking the knowledge base
• Started searching around if someone noticed the same behaviour

After a couple of days i got no answer from FON (they claim to answer within 24hrs) and found noone with the same story, so I just gave up and selected my Fonera for my test expendable device

I documented a bit on the DD-WRT project, so to be prepared on what i could obtain, and I actually found the the Fonera has two antennas and they are operational!
One may just solder to a connector to the second antenna contact, like shown in the image.

Unfortunately the FON firmware can’t see that and will never use a second antenna, so the only choice is to install an alternative firmware: DD-WRT.

So i begun this Zonera Zombie project:

• I studied the second circuit and it seemed straightforward
• I desoldered the antenna from the ant2 contact
• Resoldered the antenna cable to the ant1 contact
• Hard reset the Fonera to the original firmware (v.0.7.1r1) pressing the reset button at the bottom of the case for 20 seconds (less tha 15 seconds and the reset wouldn’t stard and more than 25 seconds will just soft reset the fonera)
• Enabled SSH with the HTML injection trick
• Enabled redboot
• Installed DD-WRT v24SP1
• Enabled diversity, which lets you choose which antenna use for TX and which for RX, then selected the second antenna for both RX and TX

And that was it! When i connected the external antenna it started working like a charm!
You might want to install the thinclient software for letting FON see the fonera online and that’s it!

So why write now?!?
Well you know, I got another not-working fonera a couple of days ago and, guess what? It has the exact same behaviour.
Why the heck nobody ever tried to use the Fonera without the antenna and notice the behaviour?

I did the same Zombie revival and it worked!
“Ahahah, it lives, it lives!!!”

Hey, I know a lot of ppl with a not working Fonera and suggest you try that on yours!