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Musenki's Linux-Based AP Ships To Beta Customers

Posted by timothy on from the small-cute-wireless dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Austin, TX based Musenki ('musenki' means 'small wireless gadget' in Japanese) is poised to ship beta units of its first product -- the M-1 wireless access point that uses Linux. Pretty cool device that has open architecture and can be modified to accomodate growing 802.11 standards. Says they could have not have done it without open source community."

7 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Can it be? by CmdrTaco+(editor) · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Can it be? Is this company really attributing some of its success to the open source community? While this is not like a company like Intel or HP saying they couldn't have done something without the help of the open source community, it is definitely a step in the right direction. Once we get the proper recognition, we will be on our way to attaining mainstream popularity.

    1. Re:Can it be? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Or maybe they are just taking advantage of the fact that linux is free. I doubt that if linux cost them as much another system they would of used it. And how will this make linux mainstream? It won't. "Whoa linux is powering my access point? I must use that to use a wanna be word processor and browser!"

  2. handheld. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    In the proper context it alone means 'small wireless gadget'

    According to the search below, musenki just means wireless.
    http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/c giwrap/jwb/ wwwjdic?1E

  3. Palo Alto Freenet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    This Linux AP technology is allowing communities to finally build out their own wireless communications systems without the help of Ma' Bell or Cable.

    Keep building these solutions!

    Palo Alto Freenet

  4. Re:Price seems high... by ediron2 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Um, I'll admit that Cisco sells you better drivers, better utilities, etc., and I'll even bend anyone's ear about my own Linksys problems, but it still has to be said really loud, if you got modded up for that remark:

    'Better (802.11b) security' is an oxymoron.

    Hell, I had to make a 4-homed firewall at my home just to give me peace of mind while running wireless: Ext/Int/DMZ/WLAN. All because of design-by-committee screwups on the security. Bruce Schneier says "Good encryption isn't easy" and recommends LOTS of public scrutiny on any encryption algorithms. As happens way too often, the protocol's designer's wrongly chose otherwise.

  5. Re:By the way... by ethereal · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What's funny is that I pay more attention to topics that I consider threatening - for example, Microsoft, infringements on civil liberties, etc. Whether or not open source is really a danger to you, do you really think burying your head in the sand is the appropriate response? Besides, you might learn something :)

    --

    Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and

  6. Support is going to be a challenge by elflet · · Score: 3, Insightful
    They reasoned that there would soon be a significant opportunity to supply devices to public access "hot-spot" providers, wireless ISP/infrastructure providers (WISPs), and various value added resellers (VARs).

    I love that they've done this on a shoestring, but the demands of deploying and supporting an end-user-device-cum-platform can crush a company. At a minimum, they'll need to issue patches in a form that can be installed without comprimising uptime, and VARs will demand "development kits" which are workable, documented, and supported.

    Both of these are crucial. If even a few devices are hacked, you can kiss commercial adoption goodbye. If development requires too much time, the VARs will look for other platforms -- they tend to be small outfits without much time for puzzling out the source code. (I used to build development kits for well-funded OEMs, and even they rode us mercilessly for better documentation, support, and frequent updates.)

    I hope they find a stable funding source and the best people they can. This is a worthy idea that deserves to work.