The PK5000 DSL Modem

As of July, 2010, this is the recommended DSL Modem offered by Qwest. It supports ADSL2/2+ at download speeds up to 24.0 Mbit/second, and includes a wireless access point (802.11g) as well as a 4 port ethernet switch. As of May, 2013 it is still going "strong", and as I poke around inside it, I find that I am liking it better all the time. There does not seem to be any publicly available technical manual for this thing, which is mud in the eye for Qwest, but don't get me started.

This modem runs linux down deep inside.
One fellow did this on his actiontec: 

# cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.4.17_mvl21-malta-mips_fp_le (root@localhost.localdomain) (gcc version 2.95.3 20010315 (release/MontaVista)) #9 Mon May 9 17:10:02 PDT 2011
A search for "custom firmware" reveals that the GPL source code for this product is available on the actiontec website, as it should be. A quick look at this source code shows that (among other things) it is the source for a linux 2.4.17 kernel (corresponding with the output above) and the processor architecture is MIPS.

The Actiontec datasheet claims this thing has 32M of flash and 64M of DRAM. It is an ADSL2+ modem, capable of 24 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream.

Using telnet

This device comes configured with one user: "admin".

Even though I had set up an admin password for the GUI interface, I could not use the same password to gain access via telnet. What I did to fix this was to enable remote telnet, set the telnet password, then disable remote telnet. After this, the local telnet worked.

Once logged in as admin (with uid 0), a world of things open up to someone familiar with linux. 

# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor               : 0
cpu model               : MIPS 4KEc V4.8
BogoMIPS                : 211.35
This confirms what I had suspected looking at the GPL source code. 
# cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.4.17_mvl21-malta-mips_fp_le (root@localhost.localdomain) (gcc version 2.95.3 20010315 (release/MontaVista)) #9 Mon May 9 17:10:02 PDT 2011
Also, on the web GUI I see: 
Firmware Version: 	QAP002-3.60.3.0.9.9-PK5000
One way to discover the outside world (WAN) IP address is: 
# ifconfig ppp0
ppp0      Link encap:Point-Point Protocol  
          inet addr:188.99.19.298  P-t-P:75.160.240.193  Mask:255.255.255.255
          UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST  MTU:1492  Metric:1  ASYMMTU:1500
          RX packets:16377 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:14015 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100 
          RX bytes:11680338 (11.1 Mb)  TX bytes:1295126 (1.2 Mb)

There is no evidence of sshd, so port forwarding to port 22 on the router causes no conflict.

Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Computer Info / tom@mmto.org