Creating A Super-Router (For Free)

Aaron writes "Kind of an interesting discussion and story over at Broadband Reports about the flurry of vendors releasing modified Linux based firmware updates for the Linksys WRT54G router. The updates bring a whole new level of functionality Linksys couldn't be bothered to incorporate. Among a long list of free improvements is the incorporation of bandwidth management, allowing users to end the days of choppy VoIP conversations without swapping out hardware."

Comments

For the do it yourselfer

[yebb]

Want to hack your Linksys WRT54G Router yourself?

Here's a detailed guide on how to do just that.

Re:For the do it yourselfer

[Anonymous Coward]

This won't bode well for people who want to stake some claims in the US Patent Office. Using Linux would impede their land grab and make them unhappy.

Re:For the do it yourselfer

[winse]

somebody have a mirror, or text of the seattle wirless link. I think we killed 'em. I kind of feel bad about being a part of their servers demise, but in a satisfying way.

Re:For the do it yourselfer

[epiphani]

And for the lazyass:

This guy has packaged firmware flashes that incorporate the most popular expansions. All I wanted was some basic SNMP, and it provided - along with some other handy features.

Re:For the do it yourselfer

[Sloppy]

Want to hack your Linksys WRT54G Router yourself?

Here's a detailed guide on how to do just that.

How strange the world has become, when following someone else's detailed guide, is referred to as "hacking." ;-)

Re:For the do it yourselfer

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Use an axe to chop something to bits.
2) ???
3) Profit!

Follow this & I'd say you were "hacking" -- wouldn't you?

Re:For the do it yourselfer

[RebelWithoutAClue]

Really, if you wanted to "hack" on some oss project, would it be considered any less hacking if someone wrote a guide to use, say, gcc, Or even use a patch someone else created, so you can focus on what you want to ?

Re:For the do it yourselfer

[Anonymous Coward]

hacking is relative.

some guy wrote his own linux kernel... he is hacking.

some guy took that other guys linux kernel, prepackages it for loading on linksys... he is hacking.

some guy took that other guys prepackaged linux kernel, rtfm, and loaded on his linksys. ...is he hacking?

you bet he is.

Re:For the do it yourselfer

[Recluse]

We call them "script kiddies" when the guide-following is malicious.

--

NOW they tell me

[unbiasedbystander]

It's wonderful to learn that I could have powered it up before I sold the piece of junk. *sigh* www.ebay.com

Re:NOW they tell me

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet! I hope you spelled the listing incorrectly; I'll be picking up my "Linkys wrt54g router" on the cheap!

Re:NOW they tell me

[Ath]

Someone should really mod this post up. If you don't know why, you're not a real Slashdot reader!

Wondershaper...

[garcia]

For those of you that don't know, and are interested, Wondershaper can be found HERE.

It is AMAZING.

Sample config:

DOWNLINK=6000
UPLINK=200
DEV=eth0

# low priority source ports
NOPRIOPORTSRC="6881 6882 6883 6884 6885 6886 6887 6888 6889 80"

Sets those ports to only use up 200k of my 256k upstream leaving me the rest for SSH etc. I never have any problems w/my remote connection speeds this way. It's fantastic.

I have only had a single problem, recently, with Debian unstable... It removed my libatm for some reason. I reinstalled that and all was well.

Highly recommended for everyone, not just users of this "hackable" router.

Re:Wondershaper...

[wizarddc]

Are you implying that your file sharing habits are infrgining on your ability to SSH? I mean, I like porn and mp3's as much as the next geek, but like Chris Rock said, put the dick down.

Re:Wondershaper...

[garcia]

BTW:

This runs as a simple shell script on the "router". If you want less bandwith for those ports just change the UPLINK and rerun the shell script. Changes are reflected immediately.

Honestly, when the libatm wasn't working with Debian unstable, I looked at other options but wondershaper was still the fastest and easiest!

Re:Wondershaper...

[garcia]

not necessarily, but they *could* be. Setting the bandwith there is easier than having to set --max_upload_rate X with btdownloadfcurses if I happen to be downloading any ISOs of Debian ;)

Re:Wondershaper...

[ic3p1ck]

Yes traffic shaping is great, but is still not up to ensuring stable pings times for latency sensitive online games (e.g. Q3 + mods). The problem is the packet sizes. A large packet of typical MTU (1500) takes 10s of millseconds to be uploaded (on adsl - 256Kb/s), holding up higher priority traffic.

Still, its much much better than not shaping :)

(Yes, I know the MSS can be reduced, however that messes up overall transfer rates).

Re:Wondershaper...

[pacman on prozac]

Sets those ports to only use up 200k of my 256k upstream leaving me the rest for SSH etc.

Not quite, you're shaping your entire uplink to 200kb and not using the extra at all. To quote the wondershaper source:

# shape everything at $UPLINK speed - this prevents huge queues in your
# DSL modem which destroy latency:
# main class

tc class add dev $DEV parent 1: classid 1:1 cbq rate ${UPLINK}kbit \
allot 1500 prio 5 bounded isolated

Thats the class all uploads are shaped through. If you read the script all the other traffic classes are set with parent 1:1 which is the classid of the above. With tc you have to run all traffic through the available classes otherwise it gets 0kb rather than any remaining bandwidth, I accidently broke a netcafe once by forgetting to put DNS traffic into any class. Wondershaper does actually assign all traffic to 3 classes within the above, each with differing priority.

The ports you mention are given lower priority but within that class, so within that bandwidth set in $UPLINK.

Re:Wondershaper...

[Peter Cooper]

Oh man, thanks for pointing this out. It solves a problem to which I've never bothered to seek an answer. We have a laptop running SuSE 8 which connects to the Internet via 56k modem, and then the whole family shares this. But if someone's downloading a file, my SSH becomes unusable. What I'd love to do is limit everyone else to, say, 90% of the bandwidth, and leave 10% 'spare' for SSH, etc.. looks like some time invested in learning this might pay off :-)

Re:Wondershaper...

[pacman on prozac]

Bit lame replying to myself but while we're on the subject:

You can mark packets from iptables rules and tc can read those marks and use them to classify traffic by using the mangle rules and --set-mark.

Sounds simple but that gives you incredible power to setup QoS on linux routers. You can provide QoS on any of the filters iptables uses, so for instance you could use the layer 7 protocol filters (experimental) and limit traffic by protocol even if it's running over non-standard ports.

Afaik no Cisco/Juniper/Foundary/Anything else can do this. Most seem only able to deal with classifying based on port or IP addresses, and sometimes with diffserv, which is also possible with iptables/tc (reading the TOS field).

Since VoIP and similar are getting more and more popular, QoS is going to become more of an issue, nice to see linux could be well out in front on that one.

Re:Wondershaper...

[drsmithy]

Sets those ports to only use up 200k of my 256k upstream leaving me the rest for SSH etc. I never have any problems w/my remote connection speeds this way. It's fantastic.

Others have already said that's not quite what it does, but even if it did I think you've got the idea back to front.

What you should do is prioritise SSH (and anything else you think is important) traffic higher than "everything else". That way, when you're using SSH you're guaranteed to have sufficient bandwidth, but the rest of the time all the other things running benefit from *all* the bandwidth, not just the bit you'left over after you've reserved X amount for SSH.

Re:Wondershaper...

[Shakrai]

Not quite, you're shaping your entire uplink to 200kb and not using the extra at all. To quote the wondershaper source:

Yeah, but isn't that intentional? I'm looking at Wondershaper right now myself (this is the first I've heard of it) because I want to be able to use SSH while running Bittorrents -- if I max out my upload (approx 390-400kbit -- Roadrunner) my ping times go to 700ms and any web surfing/downloads go to hell (not to mention ssh/telnet).

As I read the Wondershaper faq it seems to suggest that you need to limit your outgoing/incoming bandwidth to just under the max possible because of the queues within your cable/dsl modem. If I understand it correctly the idea is to make Linux handle all the queueing -- not the cable modem.

Is this logical or would it be better to hack up Wondershaper to not limit the speed at all but rather to just prioritize the ssh/ack packets so they go out first? Do most cable modems typically have their own queue? If they do it would seem to reason that the Wondershaper method is the only way to go -- but then I'm new to this so I might stand corrected :)

Re:Wondershaper...

[pacman on prozac]

Yep you're completely right, I was going for helpful/explaining but ended up coming off pedantic. Still I managed to confuse myself enough with iproute so good to see I can do it with others too :p

Running wondershaper here I also need to set the $UPLINK to a little less than my actual uplink value. I'm not entirely sure why. I think its something to do with the modem using its queue more when its getting near the lines capacity, as it assumes it may need the queue to act as a buffer soon (since it has no more line capacity to send over if the flow gets 10kbit bigger for example), but while its below this threshold it doesn't buffer the packets so much/at all.

Perhaps someone with a bit more clue could help out as I am guessing on that one.

Wondershaper does actually prioritise SSH and ACK packets according to the docs on the new version so you shouldn't need to alter it for that.

Cisco will try to stop this somehow

[Anonymous Coward]

Cisco only bought Linksys to prevent their routers from getting more advanced and competing with their expensive stuff.

Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow

[dasmegabyte]

There is a LOT of truth to this.

Last month, my company was looking for a replacement for the overly expensive, hard to manage firewall. Our favorite consultants (who seem think we are idiots and yet don't understand the words "packet filtering") tried to sell us on a Cisco firewall device that was something like $2000. I thought this was insane, seeing as all we needed was a nice interface to ipchains (nobody but me knows Linux here, so that wasn't an option). I look at LinkSys, but they didn't have anything which would do anything more advanced than direct NAT. This seemed strange to me, as at home I had a Linksys firewall router that allowed me to do pretty much whatever I liked when it came to mapping ports and setting up load balancing.

Dlink -- who used to be a direct competitor to Linksys in every segment of the market -- had an awesome device which rivalled the features of the Cisco router for only $300. I had a problem with the first one they sent out, got good support and they sent me a replacement. I had that one up and running in an afternoon without a problem (well, with one problem, but that was due to the Cisco cable router, not the Dlink). And we saved so much money, we could afford a nice spam filter and a new development server. And the new device has a nice, fairly unbuggy web interface that is way easier to use than plain ipchains/iptables with MOST of the functionality (it does bomb out after a certain number of NAT mappings, but since this thing is only 300 MHz I suppose that's for the best).

Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow

[leerpm]

The difference between the Cisco routers and the low-end DLink/NetGear are that the former are much more stable, and a lot of the routing logic is hardware based so they are able to scale & perform much better than the latter.

I don't know why they would want to hold back Linksys development though, especially for things such as IPv6. They are a smart company, so I cannot figure out why they think holding back development of Linksys is going to advance their cause of spreading the use of IPv6.

There are lots of people who use Linksys, but are not willing to spend a lot of extra cash just to get a Cisco box so they can do IPv6. And the more people that demand IPv6, the more ISPs are going to have to buy new Cisco hardware to upgrade their higher-end routers.

Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow

[benzapp]

Lets not forget Linksys is owned by Cisco these days. I hope they are not stupid enough to sell a router for $2000 under the cisco brand, but only $150 under Linksys.

Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow

[Anonymous Coward]

DLink rox for basic stuff. I turned our's on about 3 years ago and haven't touched it since (except opening/closing a port occasionally using a browser).

Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow

[dagnabit]

I have a friend who used to work at Cisco. After the Linksys acquisition, they put management barriers in place so that people from the Cisco side of the house would be blocked from "infiltrating" and/or influencing Linksys with anything Cisco-related.

Cisco (at the time anyway) wanted to keep them "as is"... dunno if that's still the case or not.

Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow

[NerveGas]

and a lot of the routing logic is hardware based so they are able to scale & perform much better than the latter

That's only true if you're not doing anything but routing. Start adding in any features that are remotely useful, and you've gone from CEF/fast switching to process switching. And that means you take a 5x to 10x performance hit.

You actually have to purchase a *VERY* expensive Cisco to get one that can't be out-performed by even a relatively modest PC.

And even on the high-end, there are PC's that will completely blow away any but the very largest offerings from Cisco.

There are, of course, several real advantages to using a Cisco router instead of a PC. First and foremost, if you have the money for it, you're going to be able to find a network interface for almost any type of network you can imagine. DSL to SONET, the interfaces are there for the buying. I'd *almost* say that they would "just work", but that's not always the case. I just had to upgrade the IOS versio on one of my Ciscos (a *paid* upgrade) to get nothing but support for an additional ethernet WIC.

Another large (perhaps HUGE) advantage is the fact that as long as you want to keep paying the money for it, there will always be someone there to back you up and make sure your problem gets resolved, even if you're not capable of fixing it yourself.

So, I'm not saying that there's no use for Cisco. I'm just saying that absolute performance (and especially price-for-performance) are not real advantages for them.

I don't know why they would want to hold back Linksys development though

You can't? Let's think about it: Do you think they'd rather sell a $200 Linksys router, or a $2,000+ Cisco router?

I know, it sounds cynical. Unfortunately, I've worked in enough corporations to know that is *exactly* how decisions are made on these things.

They'll keep the Linksys line around for the low-end market, the home users that don't demand much. But for anything above that, they're never going to let Linksys compete with their Cisco line. They're not stupid.

steve

Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow

[ebcdic1]

NAT != Security.
The 2K buys alot of things, not least of which is statefull packet INSPECTION (not filtering) as well DOS and Fragmentation (used in many attacks, but difficult to detect)protection.
Cisco makes a 501 (~200-300 bucks) that would have been much more appropriate for a corporate environment like yourself.
These Lynksys and NetGear are essentially just NAT devices with some stuff thrown on top.

Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow

[dasmegabyte]

Actually, this machine does in fact have packet inspection (at least as far as the functions we'd care about, such as hacked and masqueraded addresses), DOS detection and pretty much anything else you can do with said machine. But, you know, keep making assumptions.

We needed a gateway, and not so much a NAT device as something which did port level filtering and port forwarding with NAT for the email machine, so we could put 35 machines behind 4 IP addresses and do everything we needed to. This box did that great and as complicated as it seems, we were able to do our whole network with around 20 rules, in total. The PIX-501 is CLOSE to what we needed, but was missing a number of essential features.

Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow

[ebcdic1]

Just out of curiousity, what serivices were needed that the PIX did not support?
What type of logging facilites does this device provide?
What application layer protocols is it aware of (the website just says ISP inspection, pretty vague)?
I have nothing against the device, I just would not utilize one to protect a corporate infrastructure. They work great for the home user.

Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow

[humandoing]

I probably live in the dark ages, seeing as I don't remember reading anything about Cisco buying linksys, but still... Maybe they did it to stop linksys from making even more crappy products? Not trying to troll, but they have given me nothing but grief. The DHCP server in the Router I bought from them died, the Wireless USB adaper I bought for my wife is constantly flaking out, and the WAP11 I bought for wireless access doesn't seem to understand multicasting.

I'm still stuck with the two wireless products, but finally threw together a FreeBSD firwall that I use for my router now (200MHz pentium machine that cost me $40cdn, less than half the price of a linksys router dealy).

Check out ipcop, or smoothwall if you want alternative firewall/router solutions.

Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow

[walt-sjc]

Let's not forget that Cisco routers do a LOT more than any linksys model. T1, T3, OC3, FXS/FXO, ATM, X.25, frame relay, and ALL sorts of bizzare crap - and come with 24x7x365 support for those. And yes, you pay through the nose for it.

Anyone dealing with larger networks, some with legacy protocols (netware, SNA, etc.) knows what I'm talking about. You are not going to be replacing a BFR anytime soon with a linksys.

Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow

[Syrrh]

Linksys equipment won't be running Cisco's IOS, but that doesn't mean it's no good. Pretty common practice for Cisco, there are quite a few companies they've eaten just to cover a particular niche. The 675/678 DSL router sold around 1999-2002 was the same way. They took over the NetSpeed product line, and only changed the sticker on top of it.

Identical in every way, but it let them sell a budget box without dropping the price on anything that runs IOS, since this one ran a dumbed-down version called CBOS. Oh, and it let them eliminate a competitor before they could expand into a bigger threat.

Re:Cisco will try to stop this somehow

[dasmegabyte]

They do work greart for the home user...actually, they're great for any user who can work within the restriction that you can really only have 5 or so virtual servers before it starts to bog down. As for "corporate infrasctructures," this baby could have easily replaced the Big 5 unit we used at our corporate office in my last job.

It is, after all, little more than a front end to an embedded version of iptables. As such, it has all the great firewall features of a Linux box, without having to be a Linux admin. And when you don't have an IT department (we have an IT committee, which is me and three other guys who are already busy as hell), that's awesome.

Application protocols: there are about 70 or so set up by default, and you can write your own (set up based on internet protocol and port range). You can also group them, and treat the groups like an individual protocol, which speeds things up greatly. Rather than forward the 4 allowed "services" to my linux box on one screen and then set up policy information on another for each of the 4, i set up a single group called "Linux Box". Forward all connections hitting the ports set up in the "Linux Box" group on one external IP to my server, then set up a policy permitting "Linux Box" functions (and denying everything else) on that server. Adding a new outside accessible linux box to the network took me 2 minutes.

Logging: policy based, quite detailed, nicely printable, searchable over policies, policy groups, address groups, etc, savable to samba discs or emailable. A policy can be set up as granularly as per address per protocol...so if i wanted to permit AOL file transfers to just my machine, it'll let me do that, and log all the connections to it. It has built in support for email network intrusion attempt alerts and a statistics generator based off the same criteria as the logger.

Maybe the reason you wouldn't use one to protect the corporate infrastructure is that you assume a Linksys device repurposed with a Cisco label is inherently better than a device designed by linksys' primary competitor. It's not...in fact, they're about the same, except the DLink unit I got has support for a separate DMZ network (which allows you to set up a network in between your strictly intranet machines and machines that perform constant internet activities) as well as great support for service based mappings (which allow me to set up "virtual servers" which forward each port of an external IP address to a server, or bank of round robin load balanced servers on the intranet or DMZ networks). Performance on this stupid thing is better than it was with our old Novell machine. Yeah, maybe it is a top of the line Hyundai, but that Cisco device is some C-Class Benz. We get more leg room for the same pricetag.

The best firmware upgrade would be ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... some sort of filter to elimate sites like Goatse.cx or Tubgirl.com from being accessed from your internal network and updating the list of these sites in real-time.

Alternatively, the firmware update would also allow anyone who attempts to anonymously connect to your AP get re-routed to Goatse.cx automatically once they open their browser.

Re:The best firmware upgrade would be ...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you run your own DNS server and point the DHCP assigned DHCP server to it, you can set a wildcard record to tubgirl.

If you are real hardcore, you have two WAPs (one unauthenticated and one not) - the unauthenticated one only allows http connections to tubgirl.

Then warchalk your neighborhood to lead people to your vomitpot (honeypot doesn't sound right).

Hilarity ensues!

Re:The best firmware upgrade would be ...

[efutch]

The Netgear firmware incorporates a feature to do such a thing, based on keywords in the URL.

Re:The best firmware upgrade would be ...

[Lehk228]

route to nero online instead... it shows all of the pics and moves them around assuming jscript is enabled

Re:The best firmware upgrade would be ...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just brilliant in its evilness. I just hope the terrorists don't hear about this one.

Linksys isn't bad

[SpaceCadetTrav]

Linksys isn't bad at updating their firmware. I was able to update my cheap wireless router so that it supports WPA for free.

Re:Linksys isn't bad

[lullabud]

One thing I really dislike about linksys's firmwares is that they don't have any sort of recovery program. I've gone through 2 WAP11's because a firmware upgrade on their site somehow failed to do it's job. This would've been a minor software problem if they had a critical recovery problem, but instead I had to get a replacement. Another thing, replacing a linksys router requires (last few times I talked to tech support) that you have the receipt for the device, which is complete BS. If you own the device and it's broken they should replace it, regardless of where you bought it and for how much. This was infuriating since the lab that I work in has way too much hardware, and we're far too disorganized to save boxes and receipts for all of the products we purchase. Some comments in the aforementioned article make me think this is still a problem in the 54g device, though I don't have personal experience with that.

Re:Linksys isn't bad

[SpaceCadetTrav]

So if you flash a three-year-old router with the wrong image and it breaks, Linksys should give you a new one, no questions asked? If I crash my car, should the dealer give me a new one for free?

Re:Linksys isn't bad

[lullabud]

Well, this isn't a three year old router, and it wasn't the wrong image. This happened a year ago, two months after I'd bought the device. Even so, I've gotten 5 year warranties on networking devices through Netgear where I've had them replaced with only a few questions about the functionality and where I'd purchased the device. So, in essence, yes. And if you crash your car after the dealer recommends you upgrade your tires then provieds those tires for you, yes, they should accept responsibility.

Re:Linksys isn't bad

[SpaceCadetTrav]

Everyone knows that you're supposed to keep the receipt if you buy something that might break. Stop blaming other people for your problems. Learn to accept responsibility for your actions. Also, learn how to flash a router.

Re:Linksys isn't bad

[DA-MAN]

This is only the case on routers that sell well. Those assholes still haven't released an update for the router I bought, at the time for a premium because it does 802.11a.

My router, WRT51AB, doesn't support WPA, doesn't have the ability to disable SSID broadcasting, and has to be unplugged weekly or else it forgets how to renew an IP via dhcp.

Incidently, this device is a lot different than most of the WAP's from Linksys I have seen.

Starting nmap 3.48 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2004-02-04 20:09 PST
Interesting ports on 192.168.1.1:
(The 1656 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
PORT STATE SERVICE
80/tcp open http
Device type: WAP
Running: Apple embedded
OS details: Apple Airport Extreme Base Station (WAP)
Uptime 0.979 days (since Tue Feb 3 20:40:16 2004)

A feature I'd like to see added to my router...

[ThogScully]

While my router will update normal DynDNS addresses, it can't update Custom DNS, so my own domain name I have to update from a machine instide my network. I'd rather the router take care of that.

Regardless, my router's a Netgear, so I'm guessing this isn't really applicable here. Although it would be nice to see similar projects for other routers, if possible.
-N

Re:A feature I'd like to see added to my router...

[relrelrel]

couldn't you use one of these free programs to update to Custom DNS instead of wanting the router to do so?

Re:A feature I'd like to see added to my router...

[no longer myself]

Yeah... I have a Gigafast router, and if my IP address changes it's supposed to handle all that stuff automatically, but the damn thing goes on the blink until I reset it. Fortunately my IP address hasn't changed in about 5 months or better.

I'd switch over to running my own DNS, but I fear that the moment I do, my ISP will start changing my address every 3rd day.

I got a Custom DNS back when DynDNS was still offering their $30 lifetime deal... If it hadn't been for the built-in plug given by the router's "DynDNS feature" I probably would never have bothered with them in the first place. Especially since back in May they announced it was changing to an annual fee.

Let's see now... I've got annual fees for my domains... Monthly fee for my broadband ISP... OK- I'm outa cash. Better check out PowerDNS Express.

You know, actually the one question I'd like to know is why my internet connections go slower under Linux through the router. I take the router out, and it's practically precognitive! It never seemed to affect the MS Windows machines one bit, but then they were just slow no matter what...

Re:A feature I'd like to see added to my router...

[Milican]

You can also do a CNAME from your Custom DNS to your DynDNS domain. For example:

www.customdns.com -> thog.dyndns.org

The CNAME will always track your dyndns name that way :)

JOhn

Re:A feature I'd like to see added to my router...

[ThogScully]

Yes, and as I said, now I have to. But it would be nice if my router just took care of it, since then I don't need any programs on the machines behind the router. I consider the DNS part of my connection and want the router to take over the connection maintenance. If I'm switching machines around behind it, adding and removing machines, etc, I'd like something to continue updating.
-N

Re:A feature I'd like to see added to my router...

[ThogScully]

That's a great tip - thanks. Never thought of that.
-N

Re:A feature I'd like to see added to my router...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even worse inbound. I'd see up to a 10 second delay hitting my Apache box from outside the Linksys vs hitting my Win2k IIS box which was almost instantatious. Both are lightning fast on the intranet. Maybe one of these Linux running Linksys routers will solve this.

IMZombie (too lazy to login)

Re:A feature I'd like to see added to my router...

[Jack Hughes]

If your domain name is reasonably short you can overload the "hostname" option with the extra params needed for the customer option

hostname: example.com&system=custom

Obviously, example.com should be swapped for you own particular domain name.

How is this different?

[JediTrainer]

I currently own a BEFSR81, which is their 8-port wired version (no wireless) that I purchased a couple of years ago.

It's got built-in QoS, which can prioritize traffic. You can choose low or high priority based on either your IP port number, or one of the LAN ports (at least, the first four).

I've tried it out, and it worked pretty well when I needed to slow down BitTorrent so that my dad could use his web browser and email (otherwise, BitTorrent was eating *all* of my bandwidth).

It wasn't great for having fine control, but it worked well enough to solve the problem for me.

Re:How is this different?

[teh*fink]

you know you can throttle bittorrent's upload and download if you use it from the command line (btdownloadheadless.py specifically, available in the python source) and alternatively there is a mac client that has lots of nice features.

Re:How is this different?

[Wakkow]

Try Azureus. It's an open sourced bit torrent implementation written in Java that I like a lot more than the other ones I've tried. You can set the max upload rate among other useful settings.

Re:How is this different?

[SpamJunkie]

The problem with throttling at the client, such as bittorrent, is when you have more than one computer downloading, which many geeks do. The second computer might be the living room box, the girlfriend's or, more likely, the roommate's. You don't want to give each box half your desired max since usually only one machine will be downloading at a time.

The proper solution is to throttle in the router.

Re:How is this different?

[JediTrainer]

I already use Azureus. The issue is that I want to give Azureus maximum bandwidth while it's available. I don't want to limit Azureus per se, but rather I want to give priority to HTTP/POP3/SMTP instead. When nothing else is happening, I couldn't care less if BT eats up the whole pipe.

Not true

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

One of the problems with VoIP has been choppy communications when users are making heavy use of their broadband connection.

Tha t's abs olutel y n ot true.

-- Reg ards
Sanf ord Wall ace

Re:Not true

[Luyseyal]

Heh, sounds like Marketplace on NPR yesterday... a VoIP advocate was dialed into the studio via VoIP and his connection kept dropping out. It was pretty funny.

-l

Re:Not true

[Short Circuit]

I wouldn't say he was an advocate. He merely said he understood why wired companies were freaking out.

However, I definately noticed a drop in the sound quality when he switched back to VOIP. I also noticed he hadn't canceled his landline subscription yet. ;)

Re:Not true

[Luyseyal]

I just thought it was funny when he said something like "Looks like I lost you again" at the end of the segment.

-l

Re:Not true

[Delirium Tremens]

For those of you who missed it, there is a RealPlayer feed on marketplace.org.

Re:Not true

[Goldfinger7400]

For those of you who missed it, there is a RealPlayer feed on marketplace.org.

And how exactly are we to distinguish the VoIP dropoffs from the RealPlayer dropoffs?

Re:Not true

[Anonymous Coward]

Use SilentBob to save the stream to disk as a wav, then listen from the saved file.

Re:Not true

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked that part when he said the Kazaa people would want VOIP to be open source and free for everyone.

I almost swerved into a tree when I heard the copyright infringement == open source == communism train of thought.

For free?

[burgburgburg]

Is that free as in beer, free as in software, free as in "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose, Nothing, and that's all that Bobbie left me" or free as in "If you free me from these handcuffs now, I promise not to press charges". I always get them confused.

Re:For free?

[eclectro]

heh. Free as in "whateva-you-can-pull-outta-the-dumpsta-before-the -truck-comes" free.

Re:For free?

[ColaMan]

Free as in "whateva-you-can-pull-outta-the-dumpsta-before-the -truck-comes" free.

so, that's "free, but it stinks?"

Re:For free?

[eclectro]

so, that's "free, but it stinks?"

I really wanted to say that, but I knew if I did would get modded down.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I tossed a six-pack in the dumpster....

more hardware restrictions?

[kenny blakenship]

I'm all for open source - especially something like this. But how many hardware/firmware manufacturers are going to go through greater lengths to either obfuscate thier platform or exclude features alltogether that could one day be "exploited" for free?

IOW will Radeon switch their fab process? It currently saves them money - but not if enough people know about the exploits that allows them to get high-end performace from mid-range hardware platform/price - thus actually costing Radoen.

Or is it the software pirating rub - would the person actually buy the warez instead of just dl'ing it?

Re:more hardware restrictions?

[leerpm]

Why, would Linksys care if people are creating hacks to add features to their router? That just means more people are going to go out and buy THEIR router!

If Linksys could even go to the length of supporting a development community around their product, and they would have a bunch of extra features for free, since its all GPL. Plus they would entice those developers to buy Linksys, instead of Microsoft or Netgear.

Re:more hardware restrictions?

[Tassach]

Why would Linksys be upset about a thing like this? It does no damage whatsoever to their business model; in fact, it helps it. Linksys sells inexpensive networking gear for primarily the small business and home markets. They don't make any money selling updates or service contracts (At least, I can't find anything on their website that shows that they even sell service contracts). They make their money selling hardware, period. Any support they have to provide after the sale, including firmware updates, costs them money.

The fact that their hardware can be upgraded with an unauthorized firmware image actually helps their business. First off, the fact that their hardware is customizable helps sell more hardware to geeks (who in turn recommend their hardware to friends, family, and clients). Secondly, using an unauthorized firmware voids the warranty, which saves them money -- if you flash it and break it, you're screwed. If you flash it and a component fails for a totally unreleated reason, they don't have to give you a free replacement; you'll have to buy a new one, so they still come out ahead.

This is a very different situation than things like the Dakota Digital camera hack or the i-opener hack. In those cases, the companies involved were/are selling the hardware at a loss as an incentive to get you to use a paid service. In these cases, hacking the hardware eliminates the need to use the service, thereby disrupting their business plan and letting you use the subsidised hardware for an unintended purpose. Linksys sells their hardware for a profit. Hacking it does nothing to disrupt their business plan, because they already made all the money they planned to make when the wholesaler bought a truckload of their hardware.

hack for WAP54G - higher power output

[davids-world.com]

i'd like to recommend the Neo firmware hack, which boosts the Linksys WAP54G output. That solved some problems for me :)

Is that linux based system available for the WAP as well? (Dunno if it's got enough RAM & flash memory to run&store it...)

Re:hack for WAP54G - higher power output

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that hack remove the spoon from the system?

Re:hack for WAP54G - higher power output

[Anonymous Coward]

Be carefull by doing this you might be violation some FCC laws to use the device. If you read the lincense you will see that modifications might be a violation of federal laws.

Re:hack for WAP54G - higher power output

[dspyder]

As the AC said, this will violate the FCC type certification.

Also, I doubt that people have done much spectral analysis to see if it's dirty like the WAP11 hack (which actually wasn't as dirty as first thought). I've also heard rumors (I tend not to believe either side of an argument) that upping the power drives the power amp harder which could be bad to both it's life and heat spilling into other components could lessen their life too.

Currently people are testing the power-hack on the WRT54G... so far no immediate problems are noticeable.

--D

Re:hack for WAP54G - higher power output

[swfranklin]

Please, unless you live waaay out in the sticks.... the 2.4GHz band is getting crowded enough; cranking up your WAP output by 4 times just so you can use a laptop in the basement crapper can be a very un-neighborly thing to do. I'm having a hard time coming up with a channel that isn't being stomped on or stomping on someone else's nearby WLAN.

Re:hack for WAP54G - higher power output

[darkov]

which could be bad to both it's life and heat spilling into other components could lessen their life too

Which is a disaster for an $80 product which will be well and truly obsolete before it dies a natural death. Also, I think the FCC would have a hard time catching you and I can see them dragging you off to prison for it.

Re:hack for WAP54G - higher power output

[Anonymous Coward]

Sveasoft (a wifi provider, and one of the groups hacking the wrt54g) actually has a 6km link setup using a couple of the routers, and he has actually turned down the output of the routers a bit since they are so effective.

http://www.sveasoft.com/postt250.html

Re:hack for WAP54G - higher power output

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no! Will Howard Dean come to my door and start screamign at me?

Re:hack for WAP54G - higher power output

[tgd]

But its worth noting that 802.11* is in open frequency ranges, and if you have a amateur radio operators license, these power levels are perfectly legal. Max power at that range I can legally broadcast is 2500w, which will cook you from across the room in short order.

There's no good reason to, however. These use lousy transmitters, and S/N goes way downhill as you boost power levels. Quadrupling the power could end up cutting your speeds in half at the expense of a bit more distance.

Re:hack for WAP54G - higher power output

[punkass]

Also, I think the FCC would have a hard time catching you and I can see them dragging you off to prison for it.

I submit the following informational video for you to watch.

Re:hack for WAP54G - higher power output

[Hobophile]

I'm having a hard time coming up with a channel that isn't being stomped on or stomping on someone else's nearby WLAN.

802.11b and 802.11g only have three non-overlapping channels: 1, 6, and 11.

So your useful choices are fairly limited. You might have to coordinate with your neighbors to determine who picks what channel, but it should definitely be possible to get one that doesn't overlap.

Re:hack for WAP54G - higher power output

[Roofus]

Yes, but the FCC forbids Amateur Radio operators to broadcast any encrypted data. While anybody can transmit on the 2.4 GHz range, you are implicitly acting under the FCC Amateur Radio license regulations by upping the power beyond what the general public can do. That means technically you can't use SSH or HTTPS.

Just a thought.

Re:hack for WAP54G - higher power output

[MrBlue VT]

Not where I live, I can see about 15 different AP's from my access point. Lots of overlap.

Linksys + Broadband + Vonage = cheap phone

[Mysticalfruit]

Combine this with a good Broadband/DSL provider and Vonage and you've just freed yourself from the tyranny that is Verizon...

Re:Linksys + Broadband + Vonage = cheap phone

[eggoeater]

Unless the only good broadband available is DSL....
through your phone line...
which is provided by...
Verizon.
*SIGH*

Re:Linksys + Broadband + Vonage = cheap phone

[rthille]

Or SBC :-(

Re:Linksys + Broadband + Vonage = cheap phone

[Mysticalfruit]

So does SBC stand for Sucks to Be their Customer?

IPv6 support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they managed to get it to support IPv6 yet? It would be nice, to say the least.

Not entirely accurate...

[Anonymous Coward]

In order for this to be true, where is my free Linksys router?

Re:Not entirely accurate...

[kfg]

In your neighbor's house. Just remember to wear gloves and a ski mask.

KFG

Re:Not entirely accurate...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... until your neighbor sees the same wireless network but with a different password :)

Re:Not entirely accurate...

[kfg]

Even with the ski mask and a set of joke glasses on it?

KFG

Very important story

[Quixote]

There's a very important lesson hidden in here, which I hope the other hardware vendors will see and take note.

Linksys is a hardware company. They make money by selling hardware. By opening up the software (and making their hardware "hackable"), they will increase their hardware sales.

My hope is that other hardware companies (you name 'em: ATI, nVidia, Intel, Broadcom, Logitech, etc. etc.) will see this, and make their drivers (and associated software) open-source, thereby making their products "hackable" ==> increased sales.

I hope the "media" will take note of this, and put it out in plain words so that the PHBs who make the decisions will learn the lesson.

Re:Very important story

[Kishar]

Linksys is a hardware company.

Linksys is now owned by Cisco Systems, who considers themselves to be a software company.

Re:Very important story

[junkymailbox]

They also take an increase risk in people screwing their hardware up and damaging their reputation .. or arguably worse .. try to get a warranty / refund.

Re:Very important story

[nelsonal]

Cisco is very much a hardware company. Their hardware requires some software to operate, and they found software licensing terms quite useful when all the failed dotcom hardare was hitting the market cheap, but they are still in the hardware business. It's interesting that this would be so easy to add, and isn't probably because there is a Cisco VoIP router for enterprises that costs 10 times as much and does the same thing.

Re:Very important story

[Dalcius]

While I agree in point with what you're saying, the company only makes profit compared to their competitors if the software on the product has become a commodity, e.g. anyone can get it, investing lots of time and money into the software won't give you a large advantage over your competitor.

If there are highly features in this router software that nobody else has and Linksys releases it, they've just saved their competitors time. This analysis works even better when thinking about NVidia / ATI.

Cheers

Re:Very important story

[spitzak]

Oh yea, Dell's been hurt real bad because that MyDoom virus runs on their machines. People are suing them all over the place.

NOT!

Re:Very important story

[kiwimate]

From the posted story:

The updates bring a whole new level of functionality Linksys couldn't be bothered to incorporate.

From the parent post:

There's a very important lesson hidden in here, which I hope the other hardware vendors will see and take note.

Why would they, when the story gets picked up by the open source community (represented here by Slashdot) and is immediately regurgitated using phrasing which insults a company that is actually doing something we like? Perhaps other people see it differently, but if I were a Linksys person reading this, I'd be pretty bugged by the "couldn't be bothered" cheap shot. Especially for a product that is apparently under a hundred bucks.

Re:Very important story

[theghost]

I'm not sure i really want ATI and nVidia to open up. There's already so many cheats out there for various games; if the video drivers themselves were more open, wouldn't this make it worse?

What's the benefit? What would you like to be able to do that the current setup doesn't allow?

re: very important story

[ed.han]

i believe junkymailbox's point is that it's essentially the same problem manufacturers have w/ gray market chip modding on consoles: changes to the way a piece of hardware performs once it leaves the factory are very likely to void the warranty at least.

what i would hope is the result of this is a EULA disclaiming responsibility/liability for anybody performiing such customization (if one isn't already there).

watching which way they go will be very, very interesting.

ed

Re:Very important story

[orn]

I'd like to add Canon to this list. I'd really really like to be able to increase the functionality of my 300D Rebel.

Most of the cameras all use the same internal processing system that they've been touting so highly. It seems like in one fell swoop you could cover lots of the different hardware models.

Re:Very important story

[Kishar]

While it is my opinion as well that they are a hardware company (in fact, I used to work for a maufacturer of their hardware), it remains that if you ask Cisco, they'll reply that thy are a software company.

Re:Very important story

[dspyder]

Valid point (even with all the comments below). Look at Archos MP3 players... with Rockbox firmware, the hardware suddenly becomes a lot more attractive. Hell, older models with less features are selling for higher prices because they offer better functionality under Rockbox.

Generally, I don't put a lot of faith in Open Source projects, but Rockbox is a great example of OSS done right.

--D

Re:Very important story

[Karl Cocknozzle]

I'm not sure i really want ATI and nVidia to open up. There's already so many cheats out there for various games; if the video drivers themselves were more open, wouldn't this make it worse?

Not unless the game was REALLY badly written... For instance, if some part of the game's competitive logic relied on an anticipated response from the video driver, which would be, well, retarded... The game would have to know how to anticipate every conceivable video card in creation to work right, or they could only support one or two and limit their sales to people who own those cards.

Re:Very important story

[Anonymous Coward]

Linksys is a marketing company, they order a spec from a company that will also manufacture it, buys the software too, from the same or another company and then go on to market the end product under some cryptic Linksys name.

There is very little investment that they do themselves, they have no hardware or software department that I'm aware of. They'll simply fling a bunch of requirements to some taiwanesse hardware developer who will bring forward the hardware, slap some software on it (for which Linux is good, it's ready made mostly) and ship it.

There is though quite a bit of work to be done to put a proper software product for this tiny units, a lot of integration and writing to do. The hardware also probably requires quite a bit of work, but the whole point is that Linksys does nothing actually but being a well known brand name with marketing power.

Re:Very important story

[Kaishaku255]

While products that allow this style of moding might get broken by said mods and void the warranty, this represents no bad reputation for the company who manufactures as anyone who mods it runs the risk on their own. If, on the other hand, the mods are successful, the very same people will pass on the 'virtues' of said product. The companies who make hardware that can be moded in this way just need to be smart and recommend against it. Also, they are likely to make additional money on broken or moded equipment. Some people are going to want a moded version and a "clean" version, while others are going to break theirs beyond their ability to repair it.

I know a few people who own more than one X-box because they had to mod it. Of course, this example would be better if Microsoft didn't lose money on the X-box, but it is still valid.

As for "Warranty" returns, people play this type of game all the time. Retailers, distributors, and manufacturers have all come to accept these games as part of the price of business (if they are successful that is) and usually have a policy or solution. It's a constant headache that will never go away, but, you are right, an increase in this area would quickly turn a company away from this type of product model.

Re:Very important story

[walt-sjc]

I've been recomending Linksys for quite some time for soho use. I was Officemax the other day and some noob was there asking about wireless and routers. The salesdroid was spewing about how great belkin is. I couldn't help it - I had to mention the belkin random redirection to advertizing fiasco. I also mentioned that it was too bad officemax didn't carry linksys which is a better product for the same money, but Staples down the road does.

Salesdroid none too happy. :-)

Re:Very important story

[kinzillah]

I'm pretty sure he means things like transparent wall hacks.

Re:Very important story

[justins]

There's a very important lesson hidden in here, which I hope the other hardware vendors will see and take note.

Linksys is a hardware company. They make money by selling hardware. By opening up the software (and making their hardware "hackable"), they will increase their hardware sales.

I imagine other hardware vendors will also take note of all the GPL brouhaha Linksys has had to face, and weigh the revenue potential of the Linux hacker crowd against their occasional rabid obnoxiousness. For all we know Linksys might have already said "fuck it, it's not worth the trouble or the potential liability" when it comes to using Linux in its stuff.

Linksys

[FrostedWheat]

I wonder how many of these routers Linksys have sold simply because it runs Linux and is hackable (in the good sense). They were originally very resistant to the idea of letting people do this. Infact it all started because of a bug in there old firmware!

Now, if only Linksys could release proper Linux drivers for there other wireless goods. At the moment they are all useless to Linux users.

Re:Linksys

[angusr]

I wonder how many of these routers Linksys have sold simply because it runs Linux and is hackable

If that number is X, it's now X+1 - I just ordered one to replace my Belkin wireless router, which replaced the Netgear router that started giving off "the Brown Smell" before dying completely.

Why? The Belkin is a nice piece of kit, but it doesn't have the features I need. The Netgear had most of the features, and was actually pretty okay. The Linksys doesn't have the features I need, but looking at the hacked firmware versions available it'll be soup and nuts to give it those features, and the price is right.

Someone said that they may be hurting sales of their more expensive products which have the advanced features these hacks are adding. I don't believe that's true. People who need those features badly (from a business sense) will still buy the expensive kit; they need the support. Cheap-ass hobbyists like myself will buy the cheaper kit and hack it. So all they're doing is persuading me to buy their cheap kit over someone else's cheap kit, and sales are sales...

Re:Linksys

[__aafutm5472]

At the moment they are all useless to Linux users.

Really? I regulary connect up to my network using a Linksys WFC11 PC Card in my IBM Thinkpad 600E running Red Hat 8.0.

Just because Linksys doesn't release the driver, doesn't mean there isn't one out there. It's just a Prism2 card underneath, afterall.

Re:Linksys

[JYavner]

I regulary connect up to my network using a Linksys WFC11 PC Card in my IBM Thinkpad 600E running Red Hat 8.0.

Yeeagh! I use NetGear MA401 + 600E + RH8! We should form a club. Oh wait...

Linux on Thinkpads

Re:Linksys

[FrostedWheat]

I regulary connect up to my network using a Linksys WFC11 PC Card

I think you mean the WPC11? Linksys have changed the chipset. Newer WPC11's are a competly different card than earlier ones and have no good support under Linux.

Re:Linksys

[__aafutm5472]

That's the one! It's not handy (dang job), so I couldn't confirm.

It's interesting that they switched chipsets. Is that a result of Cisco purchasing them? I have a version 3 card (uh-oh...here I go with the specifics of the card without it nearby) that is the same chipset as the older one I have.

Thanks for the correction.

Re:Linksys

[FrostedWheat]

Don't ya just hate jobs ;-)

Not sure if it was because of the Cisco buyout. They switched to the Broadcom chipset from version 4. I did read that Broadcom have had a Linux driver working for quite a while for all there chipsets (including 802.11g) but won't release it.

*shrugs* Who knows why!

Comcast Users:

[Pirogoeth]

Once Comcast lets you in on what your unlimited bandwidth limits really are, you could use this to meter your access to help keep you under the unlimited limit...

Re:Comcast Users:

[Anonymous Coward]

First you need to find out what the unlimited limit is. Comcast ain't telling

Couldn't be bothered to incorporate?

[Anonymous Coward]

The updates bring a whole new level of functionality Linksys couldn't be bothered to incorporate.

Thanks for the link to the modifications you couldn't be bothered to make for me, Aaron. I guess I'll have to go buy a Linksys, since you couldn't be bothered with buying one for me.

Nice little anti-corporate jab there. Linksys builds good solid stuff for a reasonable price, and all you can do is complain that it doesn't do everything.

Re:Couldn't be bothered to incorporate?

[krogoth]

Linksys routers are good solid stuff like Windows 95 is a good solid enterprise mainframe operating system, in my 2.5 years of experience.

Different routers?

[t0ny]

Is there any way to improve Netgear routers? Their firmware pretty much sucks, and you can only manage it via thier browser-based tool (no telnet or tftp).

Or is there just something inherently more hackable about that Linksys router?

Re:Different routers?

[Alephcat]

I would quite like to know the answer to this as well, I have an old netgear which I am playing arround with atm but some better firmware would really help.

Re:Different routers?

[kbahey]

Not true.

I have a Netgear RT314, and it can be managed via telnet, no problems.

Re:Different routers?

[destiny_uk]

I think the linksys is more hackable because it runs linux, and the netgear which I have at least, doesn't.

Re:Different routers?

[amias]

I use a Netgear DG834G which appears to run linux 2.4.17 on its MIPS malta processor.

You can download a bundle of the packages it uses from netgear but they are not configured so its
hard to patch or hack with it cos you'd have to
redo their work.

This seems at odds with the GPL , on the grounds
that if you use GPL'ed code you must publish not
just the original source but your modifications as well . or am i wrong ?

The firmware upgrade patch is easily dissasembled and i've managed to hack the file system (cramfs) out of the firmware . So there is a possiblilty
that modifying the filesystem might open up safer
modification by making telnet accessable. but i'm
too much of a chicken to try it and i expect the
checksum would fail.

Re:Different routers?

[xneilj]

Interesting. Would be useful if you could post what you have somewhere on the web.

By the way, Netgear recently released a tool which allows you to recover from a bad firmware flash (since a lot of people were killing their boxes with the 1.03 update).

You can download a copy of the tool from this forum (see attached file on third post). No guarantees that it'd help you recover from a bad 'homebrew' flash, but it might!

Re:Different routers?

[Flamingcheeze]

I'd like to find some resources on tweaking my MR814 router in XP. I just bought it because it was dirt cheap...

Re:Different routers?

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone else has mentioned please post your findings somewhere. I'm seriously considering this device. It has been a tossup between this and the billion 7500G which supposedly has a more powerful processor but if the dg834g can be modified in any way, it's a clear winner in my eyes.

Re:Different routers?

[t0ny]

Not true.

I have a Netgear RT314, and it can be managed via telnet, no problems.

Well I dont, and it cant.

So it is true.

i'd like to know

[Anonymous Coward]

from someone that knows this issue very well: is cisco one big overrated company, sort of like how Dell has a ridiculous marketshare (and growing) but their computers are mostly POS-material? i think some high schools are having their teachers become "cisco certified" so they can teach their cisco students about "cisco networking". from the general perspective of a person that is more open source orientated, is cisco just some lame monopoly or what?

Re:i'd like to know

[grub]

Cisco products are expensive but pretty damn stable.

Your "open source" comment is stupid, Cisco uses ASICs and other hardware level goop for much of their routing. Unless you're going to open a chip fab plant and start open sourcing your chips... need I say more? (There are some exeptions, ala the Cisco PIX 525 firewall, basically a PC motherboard with some custom stuff for failover etc.)

"Open Source cures cancer!" blah blah blah Use the right tool for the job, you won't paint yourself into a corner and you leave your options open, lad.

Re:i'd like to know

[Anonymous Coward]

"Open Source cures cancer!"

What, you were expecting big business to produce (and provide for a fee anywhere near reasonable) the cure instead of the open scientific process?

Re:i'd like to know

[walt-sjc]

You can get hardware accelerated VPN stuff on the pixs now... There are linux supported VPN accelearator cards too, but the cisco stuff works out of the box, has an easy config (if you are familiar with it) and has pretty damn good support.

The modern boxes ARE basically PC's, but so what? It's the software and support that matter.

Re:i'd like to know

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you dirty hippy.

NPR has many stations around the county. I'm sure you already know that.

Re:i'd like to know

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Soekris VPN1201 in my OpenBSD firewall. Works like a champ and the CPU doesn't flinch.

Re:i'd like to know

[bani]

"Cisco uses ASICs and other hardware level goop for much of their routing"

only the most expensive ones do. Anything less than $10k does everything in software and cpu.

Re:i'd like to know

[Anonymous Coward]

the 3550's for instance have routing in hardware and they are as cheap as about $2200.
Granted they are sold as "switches" but they do have hardware IP routing.

Re:i'd like to know

[Anonymous Coward]

There's still Juniper and Extremenetworks. All three have enterprise and carrier grade gear. I have most of my hands on experience with Cisco, but if you know what you're doing with one product it is just a matter of acclimating to the other manufacturer's user interface. Juniper kicks some ass........

Re:i'd like to know

[Anonymous Coward]

You got it right chief.

Cisco is the Micro$oft of the networking industry. They have a killer marketing department and a sales department willing to do almost anything required to make a sale, reguarless of the requirements.

There are a whole slew of companies that term themselves "ABCs", for Always Beating Cisco. They offer better products for less money, but the marketing machine that is Cisco wins out.

The worst thing is that they typically make their solutions a little underpowered so that you have to invest more $$ when you actually start using all of your bandwidth or capactiy (cite the guy above that just wanted to add an extra ethernet interface to his router and he had to buy new software). Think about it this way, if your ISP and your ISP's service provider didn't specifically OVERSIZE their equiptment and they use Cisco gear, you are probably getting RIPPED OFF beacuse the equiptment generally has less performance than the numbder of interfaces in the box, especially after turning on dozens of features implemented in SOFTWARE instead of HARDWARE.

It is true that they are the only major networking company to have a complete product line, but that's because their closest competitor (Nortel/Bay) dropped the ball on several occasions. It just makes me sick beacuse people are duped into believeing that Cisco is the only game in town. They are the most overpriced, underperforming, poorly done game in town that is marketed the best.

This is really going to piss some people off:
To all CCIEs in this world who got their CCIE because Cisco is cool or because they think they are going to make a lot of money, GO HOME. Leave the networking to the people that know what the %@#$%! they are doing. If the first thing you do when you are goint to spec a new network is call your Cisco rep for help, go get another dammed job.

What about 6to4 tunneling?

[Phil Karn]

It's really great to see people finally enhancing these boxes. These routers have ideal form factors compared to, say, a dedicated router PC running Linux, but their default firmware has always been very poor.

I didn't see one feature mentioned that I'd really, really like to see added to these boxes: an IPv6 6to4 tunnel. This is an ideal way to penetrate a NAT so you can establish direct TCP connections (and speak UDP) to any servers on your LAN from the outside. IPv6 support has been in all of the major operating systems for some time now, including Windows XP, Linux and Mac OS X, and while not every application is IPv6 ready, the important ones (like SSH) already are.

If 6to4 tunneling could be added to these consumer routers alongside IPv4 NAT, IPv6 stands to really take off without any help whatsoever from the ISPs. In fact, I almost prefer that my ISP not implement native IPv6. I like the fact that they now carry my encapsulated IPv6 packets without any ingress filtering, port blocking or other end-to-end-wrecking nonsense, and that they are oblivious to (much less control) the IPv6 address space. If or when the ISPs do implement native IPv6, you can bet that they'll exercise the same degree of arbitrary control that they now do over IPv4.

Re:What about 6to4 tunneling?

[sadler121]

That is a facenating Idea. In my apartment they stick us behind NAT, so we are automaticly assigned a private IPv4 address. This limits what I can and can not do over the internet. Is there something. Is there a way to impliment 6to4 tunneling with out having access to the router that my apartment uses? How would I go about doing this?

Re:What about 6to4 tunneling?

[NotoriousQ]

6to4 is your friend. For linux please refer to the Linux IPv6 HOWTO

For windows, go to your network configuration. Find your lan, and enable their IPv6 driver. XP only.(SP1 only?) I believe it self configures to use anycast, so that should be it.

Mac....do not know. I assume something along the lines of what linux does will work.

Good luck.

Re:What about 6to4 tunneling?

[leerpm]

Yes, thank you!

This is exactly what the world needs to get on board IPv6. Somebody needs to create a stable version of the firmware, with good support for IPv6, and easy to install & configure. i.e. You run a program on your desktop, and it automatically upgrades & configures the router for the new firmware.

Re:What about 6to4 tunneling?

[Wesley Felter]

If you're behind a NAT you need Teredo (until you kill your ISP).

Re:What about 6to4 tunneling?

[sadler121]

Thanks for the link. It is all fascinating. From a cursory reading it looks like no matter what type of NAT your ISP puts you behind, if you run this software, then u can still access the IPv6 Internet. Two Questions: 1)Is this software available for Linux? 2)Can one run an IPv6 server this way (despite the fact the ISP most likely would NOT like this ;-) )???

Re:What about 6to4 tunneling?

[ari_j]

Are there any routers that will do this? How hard would it be to get a Debian or FreeBSD box to serve this very purpose? Also, how hard is it really to get connected to the wide world of IPv6? I've been wanting to for a while but the potential benefits don't seem that great until IPv6 is ubiquitous.

Re:What about 6to4 tunneling?

[Phil Karn]

The only real drawback to 6to4 is that the 6to4 gateway must have at least one globally routable IPv4 address, not a RFC1918 address (e.g. 192.168.xxx.yy or 10.xxx.yyy.zzz). This is not a problem with most cable modem and DSL services, but if you're already behind somebody else's NAT you can't use 6to4. This is a problem with that DSL service in hotel rooms as well as many 802.11 hotspots.

There is an alternative IPv6 tunneling scheme called Teredo that's designed to run IPv6 through a NAT, but I don't know much about it. If at all possible, I would try to get whoever runs your router to implement 6to4.

That's why it would be a truly wonderful thing if the commodity router vendors were to implement 6to4 tunnels.

Re:What about 6to4 tunneling?

[Phil Karn]

None of the usual consumer-grade routers (e.g., by D-link, Netgear, Linksys, etc) currently implement 6to4 tunneling, to my knowledge. It would be truly wonderful if they did.

Linux supports 6to4 tunneling very well. It coexists very nicely on the same box that provides a whole bunch of other services to my home network: IPv4 NAT routing, incoming and outgoing mail relay, IMAP, web proxy caching, etc. So if you already have a Linux box running 7/24, it's trivial to add 6to4 functionality. But for the many who aren't willing to leave PCs on all the time, adding this function to consumer-grade routers would be a big win.

It's a major myth that you have to wait for the carriers and ISPs to adopt IPv6 before it can become useful to you. All that matters is that your own computers support it, and Windows XP, Linux and Mac OS X all do. I already find IPv6 extremely useful for remotely accessing my own machines even though all my ISPs are completely ignorant of IPv6.

I predict that 6to4 tunneling alongside IPv4 NAT will become a very popular configuration for home routers. IPv4 through NATs will continue to work just fine for all of the things you already do on the net, such as running email and web clients. IPv6 will be primarily useful in running multiple servers that you want to make accessible to the outside world when you're otherwise stuck behind a NAT with a single IP address. This includes VoIP and many other peer-to-peer services of the kind that the Internet was originally designed to support.

In short, IPv6, implemented in the near term with 6to4 tunneling, is the best hope we have of restoring the transparent end-to-end architecture that originally made the Internet great.

Re:What about 6to4 tunneling?

[Wesley Felter]

I have not seen Teredo for Linux yet.

Since Teredo (or 6to4) gives you a global IPv6 address, you can run servers. This blows a giant hole in the "I'm behind NAT so I'm safe" theory.

Re:What about 6to4 tunneling?

[Creepy]

IPv6 is configured by default on macos X. Type ifconfig from a command prompt and you should get something like this:

lo0: flags=8049 mtu 16384
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
gif0: flags=8010 mtu 1280
stf0: flags=0 mtu 1280
en0: flags=8863 mtu 1500
inet6 fe80::250:94af:feb1:aaad%en0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x5
inet 192.168.1.10 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
ether 00:5a:cd:bc:44:ac
media: autoselect (100baseTX ) status: active
supported media: none autoselect 10baseT/UTP 10baseT/UTP 100baseTX 100baseTX

(yes, IPs/MACs were modified, so if one/all don't add up, it's 'cause I changed them for privacy).

The inet6 line for en0 is the IPv6 IP.

You may need to make some changes to the default kernel and IP table settings using sysctl to do tunneling, I don't know (haven't done much with IPv6 myself - I mainly know about chunks of it from messing around with raccoon and IPSec)

OS X uses the KAME IPv6 distribution, so follow the faqs on that site for tunneling - it should be there somewhere.

Re:What about 6to4 tunneling?

[dave420-2]

Mac OSX has v6 running out of the box :)

you can get there from hear?

[Anonymous Coward]

but there's only won way?

OpenBSD

[vcbumg2]

I use OPENBSD for any type of routing http://www.republicvoices.com

Re:OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are a wild eyed leftist or just a fan of verbal abuse please message me

What are you going to do if we are, shout at us? How effective do you think that would be?

Let me spell it out for you, since its probable that your ignorance results from stupidity, not inexperience: This medium (message boards, email, instant messaging) is fundamentally a written one, hence it is not verbal... and so isn't subject to 'verbal abuse'.

Maybe you should change your sig so as to stop embarassing yourself here. On second thought, keep it as it is, many of us will get a chuckle out of it.

This will certainly ...

[HawkPilot]

This will certainly move a lot a hardware for linksys. Look at the Rockbox mods for Archos for another example. Those who think that you can't make money off the GPL are wrong, at least in the case of hardware makers GPL'ing their firmware. (Although they didn't have a choice since they used linux as the firmware.)

Their was a story awhile back here on slashdot that discussed that Intel didn't want to release open source drivers for Centrino. They should. Open source drivers and firmware can be a boon to hardware makers.

Re:This will certainly ...

[SuiteSisterMary]

I'm seriously considering buying a Hauppage PVR-350 to build a mythTV box. I'd not even have to consider it if they were actively releasing their specs and what not.

Re:This will certainly ...

[bryan314]

I wish some of the hardware manufacturers would implement something like the Archos/Rockboxx model, but on purpose. Put together a decent set of hardware, a nominal software/firmware package, and release the source and docs. If it's a decent bit of hardware and picked up by a set of developers you should get a rock solid, feature rich firmware in a few short months. Incorporate the code back into your product for the next release and bam instant added value for the company. Just look at what the Rockboxx people have done with no documentation.

Bryan

Re:This will certainly ...

[mabhatter654]

Intel's problem with Centrino drivers was that the full radio control was in CPU software! That means that the radio could be reprogrammed illegally for any purpose...hacking networks, boosting power, snooping other nearby protected bands, etc. Frankly, it was a design/marketing error on Intel's part. The Centrino Wi-fi cards are basicly the same as winmodems! The smart thing would have been for them to forsee Linux use from the start and design the hardware with built in control circuitry to always be properly in FCC compliance...but the market-roids took the cheap MS-only way out and now have a mess of broken hardware to clean up.

Re:This will certainly ...

[globalar]

The only reason I have a Linksys router is for its small size, low power consumption (compared to older hardware), low heat output, simple interface, and support. I rarely touch the interface and only use the support for upgrades (maybe 1-2 times a year). I basically bought the router for the hardware.

Linksys is BAD hardware wise

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Linksys cable modem that keeps losing connection, requiring a reset. The thing LACKS a button on it, requiring me several times daily to yank the power cable out of the back and plug it back in in order to reset the thing.

Talk about a major design blunder.

BEFW11S4

[thenumberone]

Now that this has been done, I wonder if it will lead to hacking/modding other Linksys routers. I have a BEFW11S4 (4port with 802.11B) which I've been wanted to add a few extra features to for a while.
Since they are both Linksys, I wonder how close their design, code, chipset are.

Re:BEFW11S4

[erroneus]

I don't know but I have the same hope! There are problems I would like to see resolved.

Re:BEFW11S4

[DrEasy]

No kidding! I spent a couple of days trying to get it to play nice with my new iBook's wireless card. Apple's customer support didn't know what the prob was either. At some point during my various manipulations I knocked the router over by accident, the front cover came off, and guess what, it started working!!!

You got it wrong

[missing000]

It's not Bobbie, it's "Free, as in free boobie"

See the superbowl halftime show for details.

Not quite

[binaryDigit]

Linksys is a hardware company. They make money by selling hardware. By opening up the software (and making their hardware "hackable"), they will increase their hardware sales.

That's a very simplistic view of the world and one that only works if the hardware manufacturer only sells a single product or has large jumps in capabilities between products within a family. Suppose Linksys intended to supply many of these features in a more expensive (i.e. more profitable) version of the router. They're now hosed as it is now possible for users to upgrade their firmware for free. So sure, they sell more of the cheaper routers, but this is not what they want. This problem will occur anywhere hardware manufacturers try to take advantage of hardware commonality and differentiating similar products through software based features.

Another potential issue is fighting "cloners". If Taiwanese company CloneCo now has easy access to the software feature set, they "merely" have to develop a clone architecture to run the now readily available software.

Re:Not quite

[leerpm]

That's a very simplistic view of the world and one that only works if the hardware manufacturer only sells a single product or has large jumps in capabilities between products within a family. Suppose Linksys intended to supply many of these features in a more expensive (i.e. more profitable) version of the router. They're now hosed as it is now possible for users to upgrade their firmware for free. So sure, they sell more of the cheaper routers, but this is not what they want. This problem will occur anywhere hardware manufacturers try to take advantage of hardware commonality and differentiating similar products through software based features.

But they have not. All the evidence so far has pointed to the contrary. The only features that Linksys continues to add are hardware features like 802.11g instead of 802.11b, or adding extra ports. So by opening up their software, they reduce the need to do their own R&D in that area, can concentrate more on hardware based R&D and sell even more routers with newer hardware.

If people want more advanced software capabilities, then Cisco does not want people to buy more cheap low-end Linksys products, they want them to upgrade to expensive Cisco-branded products.

Re:Not quite

[LostCluster]

Cisco now has three very distinct product lines...

- "Network Everywhere" which is now being called "Network Everywhere by Linksys"... which is for generic-level parts such as basic NIC cards and dumb hubs. You'll find this line at Wal*Mart, and it's Cisco's entry into the low-end market.
- "Linksys" is aimed at the advanced home consumer. The trademark here is the "blue box" which is stackable, but not directly rackable. (There are a few rack-mount Linksys products, those are exceptions to the rule because they're too cheap to be Cisco.) Some pretty advanced hardware with easy to use software is found here.
- "Cisco" is the business line, for those looking for full control and full support contracts. This is the top of the line stuff.

Now, what's basically being discovered is that it's possible to get Cisco-level features out of the Linksys hardware by hacking the software. However, if you mess with the software, you've just voided the warranty. So, Cisco doesn't really need to be scared of businesses using hacked Linksys equipment in place of full-fare Cisco-branded equipment... businesses are going to want warranty-backed hardware. But, for a home user, this is perfect... it costs Linksys nothing, and in fact just might drive more home sales.

Re:Not quite

[VivianC]

Suppose Linksys intended to supply many of these features in a more expensive (i.e. more profitable) version of the router. They're now hosed as it is now possible for users to upgrade their firmware for free.

The changes in the firmware are GPL'ed, right? Nothing is stoping Linksys from picking the enhanced features they want, putting them into one tested and supported package, and selling it in a box at Best Buy. More and more people are able to upgrade their firmware, but the majority would still rather have it just work out of the box with a nice 800 number to call if they can't figure it out. Plus, this saves development time and cost for Linksys that they can spend on other improvements

Re:Not quite

[Anonymous Coward]

If a cloner was going to go to the troule of copying the architecture then they could just rip the rom or flash from a store bought unit. But why would they want to go to any more trouble than they have to in copying the case and packaging?

Re:Not quite

[beanlover]

WHO CARES what a company wants? It is the company's responsibility to find out what the customer wants and give it to them. When companies do just that they strike gold and win loyal customers.

Consumers are not SUPPOSED to be restricted in their use of anything they buy (please read that statement in context...I am not talking about guns here...just computer hardware/software).

If I buy/rent a DVD and I want to watch it backwards...why can't I? I couln't care less if the director wants me to watch it from beginning to end...I own that copy and I will do with it what I please within the limits of the law. Now I know that isn't exactly the same thing but the principle is the same.

B

Re:Not quite

[DeHar]

Is the "network everywhere" stuff able to use the same firmware?

Re:Not quite

[LostCluster]

No. "Network Everywhere" devices have little to no firmware, because by definition they're either a simple 10/100 NIC card or a dumb hub... they are what they are in hardware. If it's smart enough to have firmware that can be changed, it has the "Linksys" label... "Network Everywhere" stuff really is that cheap.

Better feature would be WPA

[jgercken]

Why are manufacturers still using WEP? Oh, wait, could it be so companies who NEED it pay for the higher priced models?

Re:Better feature would be WPA

[normal_guy]

It's been released for the WAP54g and WRT54g in the most recent firmware updates. I believe it's something to do with 'testing'.

Thats pretty cool and all, but

[steak]

I like my ClarkConnect box better. All it cost me was a pile of old parts that were headed for the dumpster and a ~300 MB download.

Re:Thats pretty cool and all, but

[Flabby Boohoo]

Can't VPN with the free version...

Re:Thats pretty cool and all, but

[hacker]

It's still a PC, and that means moving parts.

Sorry, while still "cool", this is nothing at all like a dedicated, solid-state hardware router.

Re:Thats pretty cool and all, but

[phildog]

All it costs you is the hunk of old parts and probably $5/mo in extra electricity charges.

The linksys would pay for itself in less than a year.

This of course puts a $0 value on all the other stuff you get from ClarkConnect, but I'm not sure what else you are using.

Re:Thats pretty cool and all, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Use big passive heatsink and lower-speed or underclocked CPU, use a power supply with the fan switched by temperature of the heatsinks, and use a solid-state boot disk (eg. a CompactFlash-to-IDE adapter). Voila - no moving parts.

OPENWRT!

[Anonymous Coward]

OPENWRT!

http://openwrt.sourceforge.net/

Not correct

[binaryDigit]

and you can only manage it via thier browser-based tool (no telnet or tftp).

Totally untrue. I have or had 4 routers (RT311/314 and the MR314 and one other whose model# escapes me now) and they were all accessable via Telnet AND serial (nice since you don't have to reset the unit just in case you totally muck up the ip address). Now if by telnet you mean you can't just be plopped into a shell, then you're sorta right (though you do have access to the command line from the admin menu).

Re:Not correct

[Yeechang Lee]

While my Netgear MR114 wired router is telnetable (and ftpable, for that matter), my newer WGR614 (which I use as a mere access point to the MR114) is not, alas. That's a pity because the MR114 telnet access allows much more flexible access to the router's settings.

Re:Not correct

[t0ny]

Well, than I must be a total dumb shit, because here I was under the assumption that my FM114P wasnt accessible via tftp or telnet. at least, I was never able to connect to it that way, and there is absolutely nothing in the manual, forums, or support site...

But you say my statement is totally untrue (not just incorrect in some cases, but TOTALLY untrue!), so please do me a favor and let me know how to do it. I always thought using telnet and trying to connect to that ip address was all there was to it...

Source for netgear is here:

[threeturn]

Netgear's support web site contains the source for some of their routers (eg the DG834 series). Cool idea for people to be able to add their own features.

Works great

[prator]

I replaced my WET11 with a second WRT54G with modified firmware which allows me to set it to client mode like a WET device. I use this to connect to my TiVo and Xbox.

The newer revs of firmware will have WDS which allows the routers to bridge to each other and client devices to connect to them. However, I think it does half the throughput.

I just got Vonage, and I plan using Wondershaper once these firmwares mature a little bit more.

-prator

Re:Works great

[milkman_matt]

I replaced my WET11 with a second WRT54G with modified firmware which allows me to set it to client mode like a WET device. I use this to connect to my TiVo and Xbox.

No shit? I've got a WRT54G and Cisco told me that you can NOT connect 2 of them wirelessly.. I'm currently running wires to my neighbor's apartments to share the line (and network our xboxes, and systems, etc) Is this the latest LINKSYS firmware that allowed you to set it as a client? If not, what did you use? This could be -extremely- helpful to me.

-matt

Re:Works great

[DamnYankee]

There are two ways to link WRT54G's using the Sveasoft firmware. The simplest is to set one WRT54G to client mode and use the other WRT54G's IP address as the client mode gateway. This turns the WRT54G into a WET54G or WET11 equivalent.

The second method is to use WDS and link two AP mode WRT54G's point-to-point.

Please do a search on the Sveasoft forums for more info (http://www.sveasoft.com/forums.html).

Re:Works great

[Jibber]

Hi,

I replaced my WET11 with a second WRT54G with *modified firmware*. The Sveasoft Linksys build allows the router to run in AP or Client mode. Haven't tested it yet but I'll be giving it a shot later.

Jib

Re:Works great

[prator]

I was waiting to make sure the guy who does the firmware, James, was aware that he was about to /.ed. I see that someone else already posted a link to his site so it's a moot point now.

I'm using Sveasoft's version of the firmware. He's done some cool stuff, and he is very helpful. His code supports client mode, WDS, bandwidth management, etc. I currently use one of his older revs on my client device because it lets me specify a different subnet for the LAN side of my client mode box (8.3 is the version that lets you do this). I'm going to start experimenting with WDS when the next release comes out.

If you ended up buying a WET, go sell it on eBay. I ended up getting $70 for my WET11 and only had to pay another $10 to get a WRT54G.

-prator

Not so much, actually

[Sycraft-fu]

Linksys is Cisco, perhaps you hadn't heard (wasn't hugely publicised) but Cisco bought them up. Now Cisco is a hardware AND sofware company. Some of their hardware, like their Pix 535s, are little more than a PC with a special flash card to boot off of. The price is not for the hardware, it's for the software and support.

Soooo, Cisco actually has an intrest in seeing that the stuff they sell as Linksys does not start to compete with their bigger stuff they sell as tehmselves. Often the difference is mainly software, sometimes completely.

Like take a cable modem I bought from them (a Cisco one, this was before the buyout). As shipped to me it was a basic cable modem. It would hook up to a DOCSIS provider and do waht cable modems do. However the thing ran IOS, and, had I paid for it, they had a version of the code with a firewall, VPN, IPSEC, and a ton of other things.

So just because they sell rocking hardware, doesn't mean they don't also have an intrest in certian software restrictions.

WRT55AG

[Sir Pallas]

Is anyone working on the WRT55AG, the dual-band (a/b/g) cousin of the 54G? I've got one of those and it actually has a lot of problems. (I haven't gotten the source code on Linksys's site to work properly yet.)

Re:WRT55AG

[jaltman]

I would be interested in finding out about hacks to the WRT55AG as well. In my building there are so many apartments with 802.11b networks and cordless phones in the same frequency range that at times it is hardly usable. No one has 802.11a yet so I am hoping to jump to a quieter frequency range.

How much different is the firmware between the two boxes?

Perhaps the hacks to the WRT55G can be applied to the WRT55AG without too much difficulty.

New Industry?

[WC as Kato]

How come there isn't a whole industry around this? I imagine there is a whole slew of firmware that could be 3rd party modified to incorporate new features. For example, there are many old laptops that could incorporate newer hardware if only the firmware recognized it. I understand that the laptop manufacture wants you to buy a new laptop, but sometimes the only reason why a newer processor can't be used is because the firmware won't recognize it so it won't boot. Argh!!!

Re:New Industry?

[mabhatter654]

Because generally the company DMCAs you because you crack some proprietary sauce added for just that purpose!!! LinkSys really can't presue hackers because their source is mostly Linux & GPL'd. That was a business choice they made up front that management can't simply take back whenever they want.

On a side note there are third party drivers for many things: Bios, Video cards, Sound cards, etc. It's not a big market now, but with Win98 going away and Linux rapidly rising to take it's place there may be some serious growth to come!!!

how about mesh routing?

[itzdandy]

what are the chances of someone modding some wireless router to the linux mesh router project. this would make an inexpensive AP for all your wireless mesh routing needs.

Re:how about mesh routing?

[leerpm]

I think somebody needs to organize a development community around this. Creating a good stable version of Linux that can be easily installed onto the router. Of course this would require some sort of installer program, that could fetch updates & upgrade the firmware more easily too.

Then it would be much easier to create all these advanced features, instead of having everyone adding their own single extra features, and never getting the exposure neccesary to stabilize the feature.

Re:how about mesh routing?

[MbM]

I think somebody needs to organize a development community around this. Creating a good stable version of Linux that can be easily installed onto the router. Of course this would require some sort of installer program, that could fetch updates & upgrade the firmware more easily too.

We're trying to address some of these issues with openwrt. Openwrt provides a minimal firmware image with support for add-on packages via a writable filesystem; essentially a linux distro. The idea is two fold, it allows developers to focus on specific pieces rather than an entire firmware and end users to free up precious resources and customize the firmware by adding or removing features.

Mesh routing is on the list of things to do with some progress being made in that direction already.

Re:how about mesh routing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm currently working on implementing mesh on the OpenWRT platform and have made some significant progress...

Doing AODV mesh stuff (what's currently available on most existing mesh routers) is easy. But it's not the best approach. It's opportunistic routing and it has too much overhead on busy networks (but it is good in situations with moving clients/hubs - which is why I'm still working on it).

So as an alternative I'm looking at implementing MIT's Roofnet platform on OpenWRT. This is much more complicated but it would be very nice to have running! MIT's protocol is fabulous...

If folks are interested please let me know - I hope to have my own boxes running soon (any day now) and would love to have a large install to test things on.

Re:how about mesh routing?

[kpw10]

I'm currently working on implementing mesh on the OpenWRT platform and have made some significant progress... Doing AODV mesh stuff (what's currently available on most existing mesh routers) is easy. But it's not the best approach. It's opportunistic routing and it has too much overhead on busy networks (but it is good in situations with moving clients/hubs - which is why I'm still working on it). So as an alternative I'm looking at implementing MIT's Roofnet platform on OpenWRT. This is much more complicated but it would be very nice to have running! MIT's protocol is fabulous... If folks are interested please let me know - I hope to have my own boxes running soon (any day now) and would love to have a large install to test things on. (email me: info at jump9.com if you're interested!)

Re:Only on slashdot....

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, you really deserve a +5 Funny for that one. ;-)

Free dns provider!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using zoneedit.com for all my dns my "custom dns" needs. they have free accounts that will handle 5 domains. It comes with email forwarding and page redirection. Might want to check that out. =)

Finally, I can watch Star Trek

[el_gregorio]

Great! Now I can finally watch all my old Star Trek episodes without having to suffer through that choppy William Shatner dialogue!

XP

[BenBenBen]

This is fantastic - I have a 54G and never knew (other than an nmmap guess) that it was eve Linux, let alone GPLd.

Now, do any of these excellent firmwares solve the problem whereby the damn thing won't have an XP box plugged into it (Network Cable Unplugged) unless there's a hub/switch in-between? Drives me to distraction, and Linksys say it's not faulty...

Worked/s fine first time with my powerbook, obviously.

Re:XP

[poobie]

buy (or build) a crossover cable. the mac has an autosensing capability, and does it itself, when necessary.

Re:XP

[BenBenBen]

How exactly is a crossover cable going to help me connect my PC to my router/switch?

The mac uses 802.11g.

IPv6 adoption

[Tassach]

IMHO, widespread IPv6 adoption isn't going to come from customers forcing it on ISPs, it will come from ISPs forcing it on customers. IPv6 benefits the people in charge of managing really large networks, which isn't end users. Right now, ISPs can keep going using NAT, DHCP, and private networks to avoid switching over, but eventually they'll switch to IPv6 when the pain of the switchover is less than the pain of maintaining the system.

Re:IPv6 adoption

[wolrahnaes]

widespread IPv6 adoption isn't going to come from customers forcing it on ISPs

Exactly. Every time I hear that the reason IPv6 will succeed is that "the consumers will want all their devices internet connected" I think of how the original justification for home computing was having recipes it it.

The consumers generally don't even know or care what IPv6 can do. They just want things to work. The network operators will then implement IPv6 out of having no choice to deliver the services their customers want.

I guess you could say this is the customer forcing it in a kinda roundabout way. Ah well, I forgot what point i wanted to make.

Re:IPv6 adoption

[Tassach]

The network operators will then implement IPv6 out of having no choice to deliver the services their customers want

Again, I disagree. Network operators will eventually have to adopt IPv6 to control the costs of managing their own infrastructure; the customer will get it whether they want it or not because it will (eventually) be the most cost-effective way for the network provider to offer service. Call it supply-side network economics.

Stupid confusing English language!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does English need three different words/spellings (there, their and they're) for what is only a single concept? Wouldn't it be much more efficient just to adopt a single spelling, "ther"? As in:

"Ther eating ther lunch ther".

Works for me!

Re:Stupid confusing English language!

[Anonymous Coward]

Three different concepts, idiot.

Re:Stupid confusing English language!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmmm, there's three different concepts, three different words, three different spellings, and they all happen to sound the same.

WRT54G router only?

[Anonymous Coward]

WIll this firmware work for older versions such as the wired BEFSR41

WiFi box seems not to adhere to GPL

[northwind]

Even as WiFi box is usig GPL source they haven't released their source as they are obliged to accordingly to GPL.
Interesting point which also brings up some concern about built-in backdoors etc...

Re:WiFi box seems not to adhere to GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

That's true. It was discussed with a bit of heated debate here.

New Business Model

[mariox19]

All kidding aside, here's the business model for 2004:

1. Develop a Linux-based product that, while operable, lacks everything but bare bones functionality
2. Wait for the hacker community to rush to outdo one another adding functionality -- and hence, value -- to your product
3. Profit!!!

Re:New Business Model

[jdavidb]

That's unlike any other business model I've ever seen. I'm not entirely sure what's different, but it seems like it must be something about step 2...

Re:New Business Model

[mabhatter654]

Intel and AMD seem to have done quite nicely with that model for years now!!! For that matter so has MS.[well not the Linux part]

One of the CPU CEOs stated "only real men have fabs" and that's a fact. Software is cheap and easy to distribute...banking on any money beyond servicing somebody's immediate need is simply silly any more...the days of MS-type riches are over. But producing electronic hardware takes hard work, engineering talent and lots of money. Even if intel published all the blueprints for the latest P4 plus the specs for fabrication, it would take billions of dollars to attempt to duplicate it...Plus, you have to pay for workers, material, and utilities to crank out real things. They can never be free!

Linux simply adds icing to the cake. let's face it we only NEED new hardware every 5-10 years for most things [TV, PHONE, printer, monitor, radio, CD...] Business are starting to see the benifit of Linux in decoupling software features from expensive hardware upgrades...

Re:Not true, either

[tntguy]

Did we listen to the same show? He was comparing his VoIP phone to a landline. The ringing was him switching phones and calling them back.

Re:But only BSD has super-babes!

[Anonymous Coward]

She's still young and the demon suit is already bulging at the seams. She isn't fat now, but I guarantee you she'll weigh in around 300lbs+ by age 25.

She's what, 14 now? You sicko.

WRT54G Mesh is on it's way!

[DamnYankee]

Sveasoft is working on a mesh firmware for the Linksys WRT54G. We hope to have a preliminary release sometime in late March.

Re:WRT54G Mesh is on it's way!

[Dastardly]

Suggestion... Port the locust world MeshAP stuff over rather than rewriting from scratch?

http://www.locustworld.net/

Re:But only BSD has super-babes!

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK she's 23 or 24.

Perhaps you're more into this kind of stuff.

And by the way, I'm only 19 myself. But sure, I'm the sicko allright...

Super Router

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly a Linksys-related issue here but I appreciate the anti-Cisco environment :)

1ghz AMD box - $500.
4 Ebay'd Adaptec Quartet NIC's - $200.

16 port router of goodness for under $1000

Re:Super Router

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a nice box but not a really practical one unless you're trying to route 16 different IP networks through the one box. If you're just looking at connectivity a switch would perform so much better.

Those quartet NICs also look nifty, I'll have to keep them in mind for my next border router (which requires 3 Ethernet interfaces)

Re:But only BSD has super-babes!

[Anonymous Coward]

She (Cerene) was 32 when the pics were taken.

WRT54G and wireless dropouts

[essell]

As I read this Slashdot post, it was in response to testing network connectivity on my Linksys WRT54G. Not because it is great, but because it keeps consistantly dropping my wireless connection since I have updated to the Sveasoft firmware. I also use VoIP and it was important for me to prioritize bandwidth in order to make phone calls.

I have tested the configuration using 2 laptops with wireless cards. It seems as if both units will drop out at roughly the same time, and are able to see other Wireless APs in the area, but not the Linksys. Has anyone else experienced a similar problem with te WRT54G? I am wondering if maybe I just have a bunk unit, or if this is a common issue.

On an unrelated matter, 2.4 GHz cordless phones wreak complete havok on the wireless network. Are there any techniques, channels, etc. that can be used to avoid overlapping frequency utilization?

Re:WRT54G and wireless dropouts

[AGTiny]

I get dropouts every once in a while on the standard Linksys firmware. I have to go and power off the access point for a few seconds and then it will come back online. This just reminded me I need to go look for some new firmware. :)

Re:WRT54G and wireless dropouts

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean you can't have more than one device speaking it's own proprietary language on the same frequency?

You don't say.

Re:WRT54G and wireless dropouts

[essell]

2.4GHz encompasses several different frequency ranges in the 2.4 proximity. IE, you can change your wireless channel to operate on frequencies which do not conflict with other wireless APs that might be in your area.

I was just curious to know how I might avoid a particular conflict with a cordless phone which may or may not be able to be tuned to frequencies further apart but in the "2.4 GHz" frequency spectrum

Re:WRT54G and wireless dropouts

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you seem to have answered your own question.

For the Hispanic people

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a really interesting link for the Hispanic community: ValenciaWireless on the WRT54G

Re:Not true, either

[Luyseyal]

You didn't listen to the entire segment. His inbound packets get dropped a couple of times, towards the end of the segment. You can tell because he says, roughly, "David, I lost you".

-l

Re:Only on slashdot....

[Anonymous Coward]

They're sorta like your mom ^H^H^H the food preparer. Except younger. And cute.

Re:Not true, either

[tntguy]

I could've swore I heard the whole thing, but I guess not. I humbly submit myself to public ridicule.

Open wireless nets

[elgaard]

I would like to see a firmware that would

1. Limit bandwidth from unauthorized users to a fraction of the connection the owner is paying for (eg xDSL)

2. Route all traffic from unauthorized users through the gateway (eg xDSL router)

3. Block unauthorized access to port 25 to avoid spam from people on the street.

That way we could all share our internet connections and read our email when travelling without the hassle of commercial hotspots.
Guest visiting us could use our networks without exchange of keys and passwords.

Re:Open wireless nets

[Anonymous Coward]

...until someone start wanking off to kiddie porn on your WiFi link. Sure, in the Canadian case, they found the guy in his car first, so they didn't hold the WAP owner responsible.

Imagine, however, it was traced the other way around via the IP address. Then the WAP owner is trying to explain to the judge that someone else must have used his link to download the stuff. It would be a very difficult argument to have, since it is nearly impossible to have a rational discussion about child pornography. It is one of those crimes where "innocent until proven guilty" is seldom the case in public opinion. At best, you would be held partially responsible for aiding the downloader unknowningly, and at worst, they pin the whole thing on you and tell you to mumble your excuse to your cellmates who will exact vigilante justice on you.

Do YOU want to be reviled by your entire community and potentially listed on sex offender lists for the rest of your life, just for running an open access point? (Note, I personally would like to have public WAPs run in just the way you describe, but the legal implications of being responsible for what unknown third parties are download is pretty scary.)

Re:Open wireless nets

[elgaard]

That is why it would be good if a large part of wireless networks were open. I would be listed on webpages as an open network, I could get plenty of witnesses testifying that they had been using my network, maybe the judge would occasionally have used his PDA on open wireless networks.

I would be in the same position as the commercial, free hotspots are today.

No source code - OPENWRT

[DamnYankee]

Where is this "open" project's source code?

Re:No source code - OPENWRT

[Anonymous Coward]

Vaporware? Anyone?

Re:No source code - OPENWRT

[grozzie2]

The sourced for this 'open' project is sitting in my cvs. We were in the process of setting it up to be cvs accessible thru sourceforge when we ran into a technical snag. Sourceforge requires sources for the entire project as part of the package, and there is one binary only driver file in the original WRT54G source releases from the linksys website. We dont have sources for that, so it's kind of hard for us to release it in source form. The unit itself is kind of useless without the driver for the wireless.

At that point we decided to just secure another source of hosting for the cvs, one which would take the project where the driver in question comes in binary only form. At the same time we got a few folks to test the binaries produced by the build system, to ensure that indeed the firmware will install and operate correctly on 'virgin' units. the project was in good shape, and we were looking to a full release in early january.

Enter the picture a few gpl zealots, that started bombarding the developers working on this project with rants about how we cannot release a gpl project if we dont include sources for the entire project, wireless driver included. Well, that's beyond our control, and to be honest about it, it's not our issue, we took the existing sources as released by the original vendor, and started a fork from that point. Basically we kept thier kernel and drivers, threw out everything in userland, and started creating a 'real' router in the userland space. We also put a bunch of patches into the kernel to fix various and sundry issues.

None of us have the time nor the inclination to get involved in the gpl battle regarding if/how the original sources comply with or violate the gpl. Our intent was to fork the project in the released form, and create a real router out of it, not to get involved in debates that really dont concern us, and tend to tie up a lot of time/energy.

When we started this project, we expected that the community would appreciate a project that is a lean mean little linux based router, with all the trimmings, running on a very inexpensive piece of off the shelf cheap hardware. We added read/write file systems to the flash, cleaned up a lot of other little details, built up failsafe modes so that the router can be recovered from configuration 'ooops' that prevents it from booting properly. the list goes on.

What I actually got was what turned into a daily bombardment of folks hollering about gpl violations regarding sources for the drivers that we dont have. At one point a few folks claiming to be kernel contributors basically told me we have to release all of it, or none of it. Well, that doesn't leave much choice then does it, we cant release something that's not in the upstream project from which we forked. So, we are at this time considering options. An easy way to remain in full compliance is to release nothing. As long as I'm getting daily bomardments about how our project is in violation of gpl because we cant release sources to the wireless drivers, then, I will remain in compliance, and release nothing.

The bottom line is, we went to great effort to fix the kernel, and re-work the entire design of the installation on that platform, so that it is a 'ready to go linux from scratch' with plenty of space to add in modules for anything that suits your fancy. We have folks working on mesh system, we have vpn setups in place, and we have started on general purpose web interfaces. It's a great little unit, with a LOT of potential, and I'm going to continue to use it. The community is welcome to the project, we've been adamant about that from the onset, but, if the community is going to hold us responsible for gpl issues on the upstream project, well, that leaves us with no choice. We are in full compliance with the gpl if we release nothing to anybody.

If you are interested in an 'open' project that's as open as we can make it, with the limitations handed by the upstream project, feel free to join us on irc. #wrt54g

Re:No source code - OPENWRT

[Penis_Envy]

This seems a bit odd, as the madwifi project is up on sourceforge, and they have the same limitation of having a binary-only portion of their distribution. Perhaps there's something else going on, but it seems like that project is proof that you can use sf.net's services, even with binary-only portions.

Re:No source code - OPENWRT

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

There is nothing stopping you legally from working and distributing this project. The only licensing problems I can see is that linksys might try to sue you for distributing their binary-only driver. I have not read the license terms of that drivers, so I do not know if they allow re-distribution of it or not.

Worst case scenerio (for sourceforge), ship the sources without the binary driver. If you decide to not go with sourceforge, there is NOTHING IN THE GPL which REQUIRES you to distribute sources to linux kernel drivers that you distribute with your distribution. There are MANY linux distributions out there that distribute linux binary drivers without source. For instance, any distro which ships nvidia drivers (which is practically ALL of them). This is not a violation of the GPL, as it is legal for you to ship packages with seperate binary files provided they are not derrived from the GPL works. (which they are not.)

Anybody telling you otherwise has no idea what they are talking about. This has NOTHING to do with the GPL or copyright law, and EVERYTHING to do with GPL zealots who want free wireless drivers. I say to those people: if you want it, write it yourself or petition the copyright owner to release his sources.

BSD has already done this!

[piett134]

Figured i'd better point this out, but there are already some good solutions to fixing this problem with FBSD. Check out this software router project called M0n0wall. http://m0n0.ch/wall/index.php I currently use it on a old p1, 200mhz, 40Mb of ram to control up and downstream bandwidth, so my computers dont interfere with my Vonage phone service. Works like a champ! Must have taken a total of 30 minutes to setup.

Mobile computing

[thalakan]

I had a rather power hungry PC based wireless/3G/APRS/AX.25 router in my car for a while which I used to serve Internet at conventions and such. I recently replaced it with the WRT54G and the sveasoft firmware, which has several benefits:

- The WRT54G only uses a few watts, whereas the PC based router spiked at 300W during startup and consumed north of 60W at idle and south of 100W during load. I also lost between 10-30% of the power due to conversion losses from the DC-AC-DC conversion through the auto inverter, since I couldn't find a good ATX power supply that ran on DC that I could couple to the car's batteries...

- The WRT54G has dual antenna jacks that I don't need to buy delicate adapters or pigtails for. I couple them directly to the jacks on twin high gain 2.4GHz dipole magmounts on the roof of the car, which gives me way better reception than I was getting from the orinoco, a pigtail, and a single one of the same antennas.

- Speaking of reception, kismet has been ported to the WRT54G! I don't need to screw around with the orinoco patches or hack my prism2 cards to add an antenna jack; it just works. I currently feed wifi data from the WRT54G to another computer which actually merges the GPS data with the wifi data from the WRT54G, because the WRT54G only has 4MB flash and 32K NVRAM for persistent storage, and you have to solder a USB serial chipset to the WRT54G PCB to add a serial port to it (for reading GPS's NMEA output); it doesn't come with one.

- Now that sveasoft added dropbear to their latest firmware, you can ssh into the device and run wakeonlan to power up other devices on your network remotely. This is seriously cool shit; I park my car, it associates with my home AP in client mode and shows up on my home network. I can then ssh into the WRT54G to power up the other computers in the car using wakeonlan to transfer files to them (transfer rate is somewhere around 1 megabyte per second in my environment), start the car, use the TNC in the car's ham radio, etc. I had to turn off the PC based router I was using before because it would drain the deep cycle marine batteries I'm using to power the car computers in an hour or two at load, but now I can leave the WRT54G on for a few days before the batteries even get low.

- If I forget where I parked my car, the antennas I'm using for the WRT54G are +6dBi, so I can pull out something with 802.11{b,g} and warwalk the parking lot looking for a strong signal from the WRT54G :)

- It's only $80 brand new around here in the bay area, which is damn cheap for a low power 200MHz Linux box with 16MB of memory, FIVE ethernet jacks, your choice of DC or AC power, pretty lights, official vendor provided source code for the firmware, an active community hacking on it, and a 802.11g capable wifi chipset with diversity antennas in form factor half the size of the smallest mini-ITX machine you can possibly get. And they're on the used market for prices approaching numbers that make me want to say it's close to disposable pricing. Heh, disposable routers :)

Hacked firmware concerns

[jjwahl]

I've got a WRT54G that I tried to install for a client to connect with her corporate PPTP VPN. It didn't work with PPTP VPN - apparently it was dropping GRE packets.

...I then tried various versions of the Linksys firmware to no avail. Eventually I stumbled across http://h.vu.wifi-box.net and found a hacked firmware upgrade that fixed the problem but I have serious reservations about using this for my client!

I have no access to the source code so how do I know whether or not this hacked upgrade monitors outgoing connections and passes interesting bits of information on to the author?

Certainly I could sniff the wire and find out for sure but I don't have time for this!!! There's tremendous potential for a malicious third party to monitor traffic using this. It just makes me leery when there's no source code to preview. Even if there was, I don't have the time to review it!

Any similar thoughts/concerns?

Re:Hacked firmware concerns

[EllF]

What possible solution do you see? If you -did- have access to the source, do you really think that it wouldn't take nearly as much if not more time than simply sniffing the wire?

Part of doing things well is taking the time to do them right, after all.

Re:Hacked firmware concerns

[jjwahl]

It wouldn't take nearly as much time. It would be relatively easy when one diffed the hacked code against the original.

I would also feel much more comfortable knowing that the source is open and available for anyone to review (not just myself). That in itself will stop the vast majority of those that would code such hacks from doing so, being found out and effectively ostracized by the community. Maybe I wouldn't spot the malicious code, but surely one of the hundreds of others that review it would.

Re:Hacked firmware concerns

[bbdd]

it seems the author has submitted this project to sourceforge and is waiting to be set up.

Sheesh, Had to put spaces in this :)

[piett134]

Figured i'd better point this out, but there are already some good solutions to fixing this problem with FBSD. Check out this software router project called M0n0wall.

http://m0n0.ch/wall/index.php

I currently use it on a old p1, 200mhz, 40Mb of ram to control up and downstream bandwidth, so my computers dont interfere with my Vonage phone service. Works like a champ! Must have taken a total of 30 minutes to setup. Only a 5 MB download, no Harddrive required, just a CDROM and a floppy drive.

Donald Duck

[Anonymous Coward]

Donald Duck is going to have a SCREAMING ORGASM with all the new bandwidth he'll have with this new patch.

WIll any of this mods let iTunes sharing work?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have this router, but whatever I turn on in the router settings, iTunes sharing won't work. Any ideas?

Re:WIll any of this mods let iTunes sharing work?

[DamnYankee]

Don't use the WAN port. Plug your network connections directly into the LAN ports.

slash 22

[MisanthropeLifeform]

If it wasn't on slashdot, I wouldn't know about it. Because it is on slashdot, downloading it will be hell.

Debian has problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian is Slow, Worse, Expensive

Open source may be good, but there is one example that sticks out like a sore thumb as a problem with open source. Debian gnu/Linux. It is offically the Worst Linux Distribution ever made.

First of all, Debian has the most out of date software packages of any major mainstream distros. Even in the unstable version, is KDE 2.2 and Gnome 2.0, with Xfree86 4.1 (A version that really sucks). There are literally years that pass between each update of Debian.

Secondly, its a pain in the goatse to set up, first of all, you are forced to use Kernel 2.2, which is horribly hacked with "backports" to get any use on any modern machine (Read, made after 1999). Good luck memorizing all the *.ko files in /lib/modules, as you are going to need it.

Configuring XFree86 is hell! If you don't have a Thick X11 orilley book, and a list of your horizontal sync values from your monitor's intruction manual (if you even have one), BOOM! There goes your monitor.

Even then, good luck getting anything over 640x480@16 colours.

The most common response to help questions on the Debian mailing list is "n00b, READ THE FUCKING MANUAL, you idiot, go back to WINDOWS XP if you can't learn to use dselect", true too, search the archives if you think I'm lying. Other distros give you comprehensive PRINTED MANUALS, PHONE SUPPPORT and/or freindly forums where repling RTFM gets you banned!

Debians support for any decent hardware, including USB mice, scanners, Sound cards, heck even Serial devices struggle. If you can even get 80x25 text mode with PS/2 input devices you are really lucky.

Apt-get has many flaws. First of all it uses a non standard package format (the rest of the world uses RPM, deprecate the DEB format!), has broken respetories, and out of date software to install. All this combined with the kludgey dselect user interface make package management a nightmare.

And if you think I'm joking about this, find out why THOUSANDS of Debian users are switching to REAL distributions Debian is falling to pieces, if it is to survive any market share it will be through its superior forks (Xandros, Lindows, K/G-noppix) and unoffical package respetories.

Of course, while all this is going on, the only thing the Debian maintainers do is argue about politics on the mailing lists. The distribution decays while its creators argue over inane details like software licensing and the virtues of Marxism. Please! Spare me the political rhetoric and just give me a working distro!

Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, and I'm happily using distros such as Mandrake, SuSE, Gentoo and Fedora. But I'm sick to death of zealots that push obsolete Distros on me EVERY FREAKING TIME linux is mentioned. I'm speaking from real world experiance here.

Re:Debian has problems

[Sabalon]

So because there wasn't a flood of reviews on Linux web sites of Debian that users are switching like mad???

You have some points, but logic like that is not doing much for your arguments.

Re:Debian has problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Your right in a few points (like a few things being out of date) but really, if you wanted a user-friendly easy to use OS then why even bother trying something more powerful then your dumb-ass can handle? =) If you use gentoo, you will have the same problems with X as you do with debian. Use what you want and bag out the zealots all you want, but just because your not smart enough to pull some shit off dosnt mean you have the right to think your higher then those who can, thats just stupid shit

Re:Debian has problems

[Shads]

Actually using debian unstable fixes more than a few of those issues. Knowing how to use linux in general fixes the rest, I started with slackware way back in the day then moved to debian later and most recently to gentoo (which I am totally in love with.) In the meantime I used suse, redhat, mandrake, some craptacular ppc linux, and several other alternate architecture linux variants at work and I've personally found Debian to be one of the best. Obviously our technical backgrounds differ a bit, but I've never had a bit of trouble with debian. Shrug. For the technically competent these days I could only honestly recommend Gentoo however.

Re:Not true, either

[michrech]

Well, in THAT case, you and your horse of a mo(droped connection)...

show summary

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't listen to the show, but I'll summarize it for you anyway:

Homosexuals are wonderful, and the white man is evil. Shall we go to the theatre?

By the way, that is also the summary of every show NPR has produced for the last 10 years.

Re:show summary

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't watch FoxNews, but I'll summarize it for you anyway:

Homosexuals are evil, and the white man is God. Shall we watch some more TV?

By the way, that is also the summary of every FoxNews show produced since its inception.

Check your facts

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who think that you can't make money off the GPL are wrong, at least in the case of hardware makers GPL'ing their firmware.

And how does this prove that you can make money off the GPL? They are not making money off the software, they are making it off their hardware. I would appreciate it if you would keep your mouth shut when you don't know what you are talking about.

(Former Red Hat employee)

on sale at staples this week $79.94

[pookguy]

http://www.staples.com/products/SpotLights/040201/ 554372/Default.asp

Dlink DWL-900AP+ Power over Ethernet (POE) Hack

[npendleton]

Power over Ethernet hacks (PoE) are very cool.
Ralph Fowler PoE hacked Dlink DWL-900AP+. Tons of photos and some brave soldering.

MacOS refugee, paper MCSE, Linux Wanna-be

Any hacks for the lowly BEFW11S4?

[VoxBoston]

Is the BEFW11S4 even Linux? Bandwidth shaping on this widely used box would be a wonderful thing.

Re:Any hacks for the lowly BEFW11S4?

[Buelldozer]

Would be nice to find some wouldn't it? Unfortuneatly I've had no success tracking any down...

How-to Hack appliances/routers? e.g. D-Link DI-604

[npendleton]

I want to hack my D-Link DI-604 Router, but I cant find a How-to that will help me learn.
Can any point out a "how-to hack an appliance router"?
I spent a ton of time tweeking the settings with the nice but slow HTML interface, so I want to be able to upload ip and domain block rules as text files.
I want to tweak the from and subject strings on the logs emailed to me.
I want to learn if PoE works with my router.
I want consider changes and tweeks to the kernal. Or changes to the HTML interface.
Any one know where to start reading?

MacOS refugee, paper MCSE, Linux wanna-ba

What about the Belkin 54G ?

[farzadb82]

What about the Belkin 54G wireless gateway/router (M# F5D52314). From what I can tell (pulling apart the ROM) it too runs linux (like the linksys). In fact I would go so far as saying that the router itself is a rebatched linksys with a different web interface. Best part is that its usually on sale for $69 almost every 2 weeks!

Re:What about the Belkin 54G ?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's possible, too with that router, I own myself a Ravotek 54G Router but I use the Belkin software atm. because of failures in the firmware from Ravotek.
(Should be even more cheaper than the Belkin-Router, but seems to have the same ingredients.)

But therefore you have to recreate a firmware, or just a kernel-module, I didn't got the Linksys FW run until now, but that could be done by rewriting the header.

Take a look on the seattlewireless.com homepage, they have some posts about the belkin router.

antimac

Trojan

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee - would you trust those update from non linksys software image? what if those code has backdoor and allow hacker to get into your network? I guess that's why we buy expensive router/NAT firewall for that safety. Do I trust you because it is free

no hardware based routing in a $2k cisco im afraid

[bani]

"a lot of the routing logic is hardware based"

No it isnt. Not in a $2000 cisco.

You need a (starting at)$15k cisco for that.

The $2k ciscos are all bottom-end ciscos which do everything in CPU and software.

Hoping for over 10 years here welcome to the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't seem to be much headway.

But hey, I'm doing constructive stuff other than just hoping.

FCC might get upset

[TubeSteak]

Boosting power levels = bad. The FCC sets limits on this stuff for your good and mine. Once you start boosting power levels you create intereference, you can start snooping on other peoples signals and so on. Its only a matter of time before someone hacks some piece of hardware & they interefere with military or police frequencies... then you're going to have gov't mandated limits built into the hardware.

when hacking hardware, there's a fine line you have to walk. Go to far and you'll have big business interests coming down on you hard. E.G. Tivo (hackers who haven't crossed the line) vs Sat TV Geeks (hackers who did cross the line).

Re:FCC might get upset

[mabhatter654]

as far as power level hackers, they have that problem without software hackers. As far as LinkSys is concerned, they have done their part by using "non-standard" connections...so hackers have to deliberately cobble something that can't be Bought at a store.

I could see problems if the wi-fi drivers were put in software like the desktop versions are...that could cause problems with the radios using unlicensed bands...but this is a closed box, so the drivers for the radios are most likely burned into seperate rom for stability/ cost sake.

WRV54G - Any for this model?

[unsigned integer]

Can I use the WRT54G's firmware on this model? My current WRV54G locks up every 5 minutes, and since there are no newer firmware items available, I was hoping to try some other solution to turn my current paperweight back into the all-in-wonder it was supposed to be.

Re:WRV54G - Any for this model?

[fltsimbuff]

I had these same issues after upgrading from version the 2.03 that came with it, to 2.1... I went back to 2.03 as a result, which is available here.

NoCat.Net nocatauth/splash support

[gyp]

Anyone manage to get the captive portal running on one of these things? (Such as http://nocat.net/ 's splashd)

I've got a public location that would be great to dump yet another trashheap box on the network for a captive portal.

Public hotspots generally don't have much room for hardware.

Proxim makes an access point that has a captive portal bundled in (the ap2500), but it is cost prohibitive ($800'ish last time I checked) and if you want to customize it for your location and user policies, you've got to run a webserver that it redirects you to.

Bundling this in would make this (more) useful for many more people.

Thanks,

Gyp

Re:NoCat.Net nocatauth/splash support

[Anonymous Coward]

That feature is already being worked on, and will show up in a future version of the sveasoft firmware.

Improving the RT310/RT314

[Phantasmo]

The Netgear RT310/RT314 routers are actually just rebranded ZyXEL Prestige P310/P314 routers.

ZyXEL continued to update the firmware while Netgear did not. You can download patched ZyXEL firmware that can be used in the Netgear routers from netgear.org.

Also, read netgear.org for tips and tricks (such as tricking your router into ignoring ICMP pings).

The possibilities

[Jozer99]

And if you install the right firmware, you can turn it into a geForce FX 5950! Jozer99

D-Link bites my left one.

[StarKruzr]

The D-Link 614+ 802.11g router I have reboots itself randomly every 10 minutes or so, and every time you change a setting it has to reboot itself again and drop you off the network again. Firmware updates didn't solve this problem.

It SUCKS. That's all there is to it.

Re:D-Link bites my left one.

[mp3phish]

Does yours have dual antennas? If so, its the older version which overheats and is a known problem. Get in contact with phone support and they will replace it (they did for mine). They won't replace it over email support, you have to call their end user line and wait on hold... good luck.

WRT54G hacking group

[EverLurking]

Also a wealth of information is this WRT54G Hacking on Yahoo Groups where most of the ongoing discussions on hacking/customizing the WRT54G is going on.

DaveC

Re:But only BSD has super-babes!

[larry bagina]

she's good to whack off to!

Keyword blocking enabled

[Zelph]

With this firmware upgrade, you can drastically reduce your Ad-Aware objects identified. Enter in the keyword "doubleclick" and that will save your network from a bit of trouble.

IPv6 works great on Mac OS X Panther

[Phil Karn]

IPv6 works fine in Mac OS X Panther. You don't even have to turn it on; it "just works". If you have one or more IPv6 routers on your network issuing router advertisements, Panther will just pick them up and do all the right things.

My G5 is the machine I most often reach with IPv6 via 6to4 tunneling when I'm away, since my machines with direct external connections both run Linux and provide 6to4 tunnels. I have two separate IPv6 6to4 Linux gateways for redundancy, one on a TWC cable modem and the other on SBC DSL. My G5 picks up the IPv6 router advertisements for both and adds two IPv6 addresses to its interface list. If one service goes down I can still use the other. And because there's no ingress filtering in 6to4 tunneling I can easily set up asymmetric routes, e.g., going upstream on DSL and downstream on cable. (The cable modem is usually faster in both directions, though, so normally this doesn't make much sense.)

Panther also implements 6to4 tunnels. You have to set them up, but you can have a local 6to4 tunnel interface come up automatically whenever you get on the net with any of your interfaces. This comes in very handy on my G4 PowerBook, although its utility is limited by the prevalence of NATs in certain public Internet access services since 6to4 doesn't work through a NAT.

I'm still new to MacOS having only obtained our Macs just after Panther came out, so I don't know if these features are also present in Jaguar or earlier versions of Mac OS X.

Afraid to ask, but...

[Valdrax]

What do the computers in your car do?

Re:Afraid to ask, but...

[thalakan]

> What do the computers in your car do?

At the moment, the list looks like:

- D-Link DCS-2000 for video and audio monitoring (on loan from Joe of via.net while I write some stream decoders for it)

- Mini-ITX system for mass storage and system control

- Kenwood TM-D700A radio with integral TNC and APRS tx/rx

- Various microcontrollers to interface with the CAN network in the car, ignition, environment sensors, fire supression, booster rockets, weapon systems, etc

- GPS of the week

- A backup computer which is more power hungry than the mini-itx guy but is built like a tank; it serves as flight recorder in case a booster ignition event goes awry

- Whatever other computers I lugged out to the car (and bothered to plug in) this month because I couldn't find space for them anywhere else

Re:Afraid to ask, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

which I used to serve Internet at conventions and such.
What type of conventions? Outdoor? I noticed the ham references; if so how do you get the WAN to the AP?

Re:Afraid to ask, but...

[thalakan]

Verizon Express Network, Sprint Vision, TCP/IP over AX.25 to a regional gate, Ricochet (San Diego), a parabolic long shot to a nearby 802.11 gateway, and/or a modem.

Linksys: one of my worst support experiences.

[clymere]

Actually i disagree completely. I've owned a Linksys switch, two identical 5-port routers, and for a brief time I owned the wirelss 802.11B version of the 5-port router. We had the thing for a couple of weeks, and it never worked right. It would consistently drop network connections to every computer on the network for a second or two at a time, anywhere from 1 to maybe 30 times an hour. Looking on Linksys's site, I found that in fact a LOT of people were having this problem. More troubling was the fact that no Linksys representatives bothered to respond regarding the issue in THEIR OWN FORUMS, at any point in time. The forums were virtually swamped with complaints, and yet not a peep about how to fix it, or even that they were working on a solution. Calling them on the phone found me a representative who told me to upgrade the firmware...which I did, and the problem continued. I was told if the problem continued to purchase a new router with the upgraded firmware pre-installed. I was incredibly disappointed with the whole experience. We'd been buying Linksys equipment for years and years, used it to run our whole home network. Based on their horrible support, we haven't bought a single Linksys product since. We ultimately bought an MS router for the same price, which was 802.11G, and worked perfectly within 5-10 minutes of opening the box. I've got a very bad attitude towards MS and their policies, and products. It took a really bad situation to make me switch to them. The fact that their product actually works well is just that much more annoying. But hey, if a few people have written their own Linsys firmware that actually works, more power to you. Just don't ever expect any help from them if you have a legitimate problem. They're troublingly incompetant.

VoIP bandwidth management

[zerocircle]

'Course, there's no need to hack your router for VoIP bandwidth if the VoIP box handles it for you. The Motorola VT1000, the phone adapter currently being issued by Vonage, has a built-in one-port router with "Quality of Service" management. If you install it upstream from the rest of your network, it reserves adequate bandwidth for VoIP. At least in theory.

Does linux hanndle TCP ack priority yet..

[emj]

There is this an old slashdot story that recommende this article by an OpenBSD hacker about priotizing tcp ack packets. So the solution is to have enough bandwidth to send the ACKs back, and you will only have that if scheduler handles the bandwidth (Look at his graphs they show it crystal clear from peaks at 130kbps to an even 83kpbs upstream).

I don't know about wondershaper but with tc you can match ACK and give them priority..


tc filter add WhereEver
match u8 0x10 0xff at nexthdr+13

Here's how

[NicolaiBSD]

Actually enabling telnet access is trivial (/usr/bin/strings is your best friend).

curl -u admin http://[LAN ip adres DG834G]/setup.cgi?todo=debug

Enter your webinterface password, telnet to the device, and busybox greets you.
Firmware flashing is difficult, at the end of the file two bytes are some sort of CRC, if they are incorrect the webinterface refuses to flash your firmware. I'm still trying to find out what these two bytes mean.

Re:How-to Hack appliances/routers? e.g. D-Link DI-

[Teddy Caddy]

I have a dlink 704P. It has a parallel port for printer sharing and a serial port for dial up modem backup. Wouldn't that be cool to customize? It allowed me to ftp to it. I logged in as root. I dont have any permissions, though. What to do?