Experiments in Firmware Hacking

I got a new ethernet-ready printer today, and wanted to add it to my existing wireless network. This is not the usual home wireless network use case - most people want to share an upstream connection with a bunch of wireless clients. I wanted to connect a wired device to a wireless network. I first tried using a spare Airport Express. That worked perfectly. Then, I decided to try getting my Linksys WRT54G v2 to work. When I realized that the stock firmware was definitely not up to the task, I grabbed Tomato. It claims to be solid, fast, and AJAX-y with realtime, SVG charts. How could I resist. However, the settings that I needed weren't obvious at first. After some fiddling, I think I've made it work. I'll share them here in case they're useful to somebody.

The most important setting is Wireless Mode (under Basic/Network). Here's my current best understanding of these modes:

Access Point	This is what the Linksys router would do with the default firmware. It allows wireless clients to connect to it in infrastructure mode, and will route packets between the wireless network, the LAN network, and the WAN network (with NAT).
Access Point + WDS	I think this may work like the Airport Express' WDS Remote mode. That would mean that it can accept wireless clients and simultaneously connect to a WDS network.
Wireless Client	This mode appeared to work like the Wireless Ethernet Bridge mode, except with NAT. It appeared that the router will can run a DHCP server on the LAN interfaces. It also requires that the WAN port be configured, which seems very strange to me.
Wireless Ethernet Bridge	This is the one that ended up doing what I need. As far as I can tell, the WAN port is disabled. The device connects to an existing wireless network. It will then route packets between the wired and wireless network without NAT. Furthermore, contrary to other reports, it appears that you can connect devices to more than one of the LAN ports. I had both my printer and my laptop connected to LAN ports, and things still seemed to be working.
WDS	I think this may be similar to the Airport Express' "WDS Relay" mode.

It might be fun to pick up a WRT54GL. (The 54G has been simplified and will no longer work with most custom firmware. The 54GL restores the missing features. It appears to have been created specifically so that people can continue to use alternative firmware.)