Slashdot Mirror

Did the horses each had their own power lines?

Don't know if they sell in the US but Fritz!boxes have easy mesh addons that you just put in power sockets around the house^h^h^h^h^hbarn.

https://en.avm.de/mesh-network...

Never heard of them, and with good reason as they dont have an american or canadian distributor. Or really any distribution in north america or south america at all by the looks of it...

https://en.avm.de/service/dist...

I'm not sure i want auto updating routers that everyone owns though. Seems ripe for mass outages. I know that the wireless frequencies will be different in different areas of the world, maybe they dont have any licensing here?

Here i think 60% of people use the wifi router provided by the ISP and about 38% of people blindly purchase another AP when the first one has a channel conflict or something that simple configuration or placement would solve.

And I knew it was a good idea to go for AVM's Fritz!Box-es...

(regular updates even for old models, no market segmentation where models only differ by firmware, trying to cram as much feature in one model as possible instead of launching 20 subtly different models, etc.)

How can you expect a specific answer when the question is so vague? The best household router? Worthy successor to the WRT54G? That should leave a couple dozen on the list. What you really want depends on what you're going to use it for.

IMHO the best household router is an AVM Fritzbox. The high end 7490 has dual-band and AC wireless networking (with separate "internet only" guest network) and a built-in 4-port gigabit switch (but can reduce the speed to save power). It serves media files from USB hard disks and connects USB printers via the network (LAN and Wifi). It is also a VoIP host and client for at least 10 accounts and connects DECT phones and wired phones (2 a/b ports and one ISDN S0 bus). The builtin PBX can receive faxes and record voice messages via VoIP, POTS or ISDN, store them locally and/or send them by email. The Fritzbox is a VPN host and supports IPv6 (native and several tunnel protocols). It can be used on a DSL line, behind a cable modem or with a 3G modem. See the web site for the full feature list. It all works out of the box. AVM supports the routers with updates and new features for years.

If you're looking for a router which can be flashed with OpenWRT, then look at the table of hardware on the OpenWRT site. Many chapters of the Freifunk project have lists of recommended routers. They mostly use TP-Link devices, because they're well supported by OpenWRT, relatively cheap and widely available. If you're going to use the router for mesh networking, look for a router with detachable antennas. Again, what you're going to do with it decides your choice of router.

My 5 year old FRITZ!Box keeps traffic statistics for the current day, last day, last week, and current and previous months, with the stock firmware. It did so when it ran as a DSL modem, and it does so now it's configured as a WLAN router connected to the cable modem. I kinda assumed that level of features was standard...

Apart from Apple, AVM also has a handfull of ADSL modems with IPv6 support. I'm actually running native IPv6 on my ADSL line on one of those. Works line a charm, but apart from AVM I don't know any other manufacturer of (consumer) ADSL modems which support IPv6. That really has to change before IPv6 will catch on. I'm not a fan of market regulation, but this is one of those things where it would really help if the government should steps in and forces proper IPv6 support. It could be something fairly simple like not being allowed to call something an 'Internet Connection' if it doesn't come with IPv6.

Most home routers don't handle ip6 (apple is a notable exception here)

I've never seen an apple router. But I know avm , one of the big home router producers here in germany does support IPv6. Sadly since my ISP does not I couldn't actually test it.

Not a single distributor in the USA. Question: know an EU retailer who will ship to USA?

Also the external power supply will need replaced with a 110V USA power supply; but those are easy enough to find.

Well then Fritz!Box 7390: http://www.avm.de/en/press/announcements/2010/2010_03_02_5.php3 It has 802.11n (2.4 GHz or 5 GHz), two USB 2.0 ports, gigabit Ethernet, VDSL and ADSL, print and media server, internal storage - also acts as a DECT base for cordless phones.

http://www.avm.de/en/Produkte/FRITZBox/FRITZ_Box_Fon_WLAN_7270/index.php

Best piece of electronics I've owned, bar none. Sip telephony, answering machine, nas, print server, fax, dsl modem, dect base station, wireless N 300 mbps with triple antennas, usb port for 3g modem fall back connectivity, vpn server, firewall, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some features here.

Runs linux, and hacker community has extended firmware to run p2p daemon for example.

Yes, the AVM routers are damn nice. If you can live without having a DECT base station, there is also a cheaper version of this router (ca. 100 euro) http://www.avm.de/de/Produkte/FRITZBox/FRITZ_Box_WLAN_3270/index.php - although I can find that one only on the German version of their website. Using the community firmware and some attached USB storage, this is one extremely versatile piece of hardware.

http://www.avm.de/en/Produkte/FRITZBox/FRITZ_Box_Fon_WLAN_7270/index.php

Best piece of electronics I've owned, bar none. Sip telephony, answering machine, nas, print server, fax, dsl modem, dect base station, wireless N 300 mbps with triple antennas, usb port for 3g modem fall back connectivity, vpn server, firewall, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some features here.

Runs linux, and hacker community has extended firmware to run p2p daemon for example.

Yes, the AVM routers are damn nice. If you can live without having a DECT base station, there is also a cheaper version of this router (ca. 100 euro) http://www.avm.de/de/Produkte/FRITZBox/FRITZ_Box_WLAN_3270/index.php - although I can find that one only on the German version of their website. Using the community firmware and some attached USB storage, this is one extremely versatile piece of hardware.

http://www.avm.de/en/Produkte/FRITZBox/FRITZ_Box_Fon_WLAN_7270/index.php

Best piece of electronics I've owned, bar none. Sip telephony, answering machine, nas, print server, fax, dsl modem, dect base station, wireless N 300 mbps with triple antennas, usb port for 3g modem fall back connectivity, vpn server, firewall, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some features here.

Runs linux, and hacker community has extended firmware to run p2p daemon for example.

Check out AVM http://www.avm.de/en/Produkte/FRITZBox/index.html I have 7270 working just fine here in the US (ordered in Germany) with Verizon DSL. Built-in. SIP adapter. Has the ability for custom firmware (freetz.org) add-ons with proper firewall and other (dd-wrt-like) stuff. The 7390 model has gigabit but there is no custom firmware for it yet. HTH

I can see that developers are getting round to the idea, but every engineer should always also optimize for energy effeciency. For the Fritzbox router that I have http://www.avm.de/de/Service/Service-Portale/Service-Portal/index.php?portal=FRITZ!Box_Fon_WLAN_7170 you can get a beta firmware that has savings features enabled, I think that's a great idea.

Seriously, I'm sure the processor in that router is strong enough to handle Skype. Just put a radio transmitter on it and bundle two wireless handsets , and you get what lots of people wish for: Skype without a running computer! (Maybe it should also plug into a regular phone socket so you can use your old phones.)

You don't need a fancy radio transmiter. The device has three USB 2.0 ports on it, so you could just plug in a Bluetooth dongle and a use a normal Bluetooth headset for your phone calls. It is already possible to do this with Linux so it would be rather a matter of doing the necessary changes/additions to the firmware.

For one thing, everyone's router is always on, so there is nothing extra in the house sucking power. Maybe more relevant: The router, when Skype is being used, can be set to automatically throttle back the up/down bandwith that it's passing to connected computers (or using for its own bittorrent). This helps prevent degradation of Skype quality. And third, this would be totally simple - just plug in the router, tell it your Skype login/pass, and all your contacts are imported (Skype itself stores those things).

Actually, many companies are already offering routers with support for at least SIP calls (no Skype as far as I know.) This product, for example, supports most of the features you're mentioning. Maybe it is even possible to hack it for Skype.

Well, I *always* liked France, now I might have one more reason to move there besides good food, good wine, wonderful landscapes, fast trains, Leticia Casta...

To be serious: I live in Germany, my DSL is a nominal 6000/640. The downstream is in fact a little slower (~5400kbit) because my ISDN box/ADSL router/modem/VoIP adapter (http://www.avm.de/en/Produkte/FRITZBox/FRITZ_Box_ Fon_WLAN/index.html) doesn't sync as good as the free dsl modem I received.

You can't usually buy DSL alone, except for some regions where competitors have set up their own DSL equipment and decided to NOT cash in on a bundled ISDN line.

I bought DSL/ISDN combined, I pay EUR 49.90 (incl. 16% tax).

But quite frankly, I don't see any reason right now to upgrade to ADSL2 here, since my provider does not yet offer the services that might make the added bandwidth worth the money. I hope the French offer better services (VOD for example - I have it, but it's overpriced, the movies suck (you wonder where they get this crap), and the server download speed does not require more than 1MBit/sec on my side.)

I'm using the VoIP provider Sipgate for 2 month now almost exclusively for all non-mobile fone calls. It works like a charm and is dirt cheap. With the fritz!box fon i can even use my old analog fon which really is very comfortable. It's so simple that even my mother in law uses VoIP in her home. I'm urging every i know to switch to VoIP.

Links:
Fritz!Box Fon
Sipgate

Telefax over ISDN already works on Linux (well, I haven't tried it myself yet), at least with ISDN cards from AVM. They offer Linux drivers for their Fritz! Card series which implement CAPI 2.0, so the cards can be used by Hylafax.

AFAIK, it also works with active ISDN cards because they do the signal processing in hardware, but those cards are quite expansive.