Linksys WRT160N V2 Router Firmware Downgrade

to v2.0.02 build 008 Aug 6, 2008

If you have a new Linksys WRT160N V2 router with firmware v2.0.02 build 011 October 2, 2008, and you have DNS problems and the router gets a lot of 404, page not found errors, this is the patch you need to downgrade to the last known working version. This is documented in this thread on the linksys wireless forums .

First of all you will need to download the old firmware file. You can get it by clicking the link below.

Right Click and choose "save target as", WRT160Nv2_v2.0.02_008_US_code.bin, 3 mb

After you have saved the file to your computer, you need to flash the router. This is completed by opening an internet browser and typing 192.168.1.1 in the address bar. This will open the control panel for the router. You will need to know the password for the router if you assigned one to it. Once it is open, you will see the following screen:



Click on the "Adminstration" tab and then the "Firmware Upgrade" tab. Use the browse button to find the WRT160Nv2_v2.0.02_008_US_code.bin file. Then click "Start to Upgrade" button.



DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING ON THE COMPUTER OR ROUTER WHILE UPGRADING!



It takes about 30-45 seconds to upgrade. Then the router will automatically restart. You can verify the older version of software by going to the "Status" tab and "Router" as shown below. This shows the old version of the firmware being installed. The following are recommendations from at least one user who spoke to Linksys:

  1. Downgrading to rev 8 should work fine.
  2. I'd recommend resetting to Factory defaults once you upgrade/downgrade
  3. Also, I was warned that rev 8 contains a DNS vulnerability (fixed in rev11, most likely the fix caused the bugs we experienced) so I was told to use OpenDNS servers basically until a new firmware is released. This should help you against the vulnerbility which sounded pretty bad.
  4. A fix should be in the works, but we'll have to wait. This is better than running rev11.
In order to change to OpenDNS, see the following screen shot below, which is the initial control panel page. Change the "Static DNS 1:" and "Static DNS 2:" to the values shown in the image below.



Hope this helps!!