Slashdot Mirror
Linksys Adds Linux WRT54G Model Back
Glenn Fleishman writes "Last month, Slashdot and others wrote about how the Linksys WRT54G, a popular embedded Linux-based Wi-Fi gateway, had switched to VxWorks's OS for its v5 release. Because the WRT54G has become the standard as a cheap commodity device for building your own platform (like Sveasoft, Fon, and many others), this seemed like a big blow to hackers and developers. If you could still manage to flash the device--not sure if that was possible--it had half the RAM and flash of the v4 model. It turns out Linksys wasn't killing the Linux model. They've released it as the WRT54GL with v4.30.0(US) firmware and will sell it under that name for about $70 retail. It's already in stock and the new firmware is on their GPL software download page. Linux sales represent a few percentage points of their overall volume, based on the Linksys product director's remarks. The lesser quantity of RAM puts money back in their pockets on the mainstream model."
I have a WRT54GS and love having OpenWRT on it instead of their firmware! Having Linux on your router is very nice!
Are you sure this one runs Linux?
My WiFi router died so I started investigating the hackable WRT54G but learned that the new version was no longer Linux based. I'm glad I won't have to go digging for a used v4 somewhere.
I have a v3.3 sitting right beside me. What's the difference between v3.3 and v4?
Two words for you: power consumption. One more: noise.
MTA that doesn't go down when you shut your computer off at night. A nice ssh gateway between the outside and internal network and blah blah blah
I believe that this was stated in the comments of the previous slashdot post Linksys WRT54G drops Linux. I'm glad that the rumors have come true on this one.
What?
um... you are joking right? Having a linux kernel on the router is great. It means being able to write iptables processing rules for your packets.
It gives you alot of flexibility beyond just being a firewall and ip masquerader. Plus you can do great things if you care about security. Syslog to a loghost dropped packet logs maybe?
Admittedly your setup will work just as well, but this is sleak and can be easily deployed and maintained.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
better (likely) represented by the fact that
anyone who buys the more expensive model is 90% more likely to load their own firmware *since that is the market it's for*
and Linksys will be a whole lot less responsive to people making warranty claims when they fuckup the firmware flash.
calling tech support and saying "I dunno" what happened is not gonna cut it on these models.. void the warranty, no service for you...
that will undoubtedly keep a few bucks in their pockets from less repairs....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
It does make sense to have one "internet device" like this, with all the persistent stuff collected onto it, especially since it's expected to be running all the time.
The $10 crappy PC is cheap - but one faulty part and it'll be as expensive as the router again. And the router is small, it is quiet (no fan or harddrive), and you'll save enough on your electric bill compared to a whole PC that I really wonder if the PC is worth it at all.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I spent a lot of time working with SveaSoft's images. In general, if you have a old linksys floating around, it's a pretty good way to go. The time requirements for setting things up is non-trivial. This is especially true if you want to do anything sophisticated, ie, bridging, WDS or strange NAT tricks.
I am surprised CISCO doesn't do their own Linux adaptation for these boxes. I had no idea they were so popular that they actually would consider a different model for them.
Strangly QoS does not work very well with the latest versions from SveaSoft, as well as SveaSoft now locking downloads to a particular MAC address. I also had trouble getting the newer firmware (Talisman) to work cleanly with my box. I ended up buying a D-Link Gamer Wireless router and things just worked well. Having built in 1GBPS ethernet, QoS without the configuration headaches of OpenWRT and Linksys was cool. As with all opensource, it's only free if your time is worthless.
Linksys continues to impress. They had a bit of false start when they didn't get the GPL Code out there, but I would say they have really been trying to be good since then.
Re-releasing this marked as a Linux device should be commended. Not only are they selling something that they know people have the intent to modify (which is rare in this day and age), but they are also making it noticable that it runs Linux.
I wish more companies would sell things and be ok with people modifying what they paid money for (MS, Sony, Apple, MPAA,...)
Mentioning percentage of sales with Linux components sounds odd, since until now, their entire line of 54G/GS routers have been embedded Linux, and flash-capable with 3rd party firmware (at least as far back as I've been messing with them). The real numbers will start to show now that they've split the lines between 54G and 54GL...Guess we'll see. I've got three 54GS units running a WDS network (Talisman code) covering about 4 acres between my family members, and it's great. Planning on adding a 15db gain antenna and another unit hopefully very soon...Freedom to do what you want is golden. Hats off to Linksys for allowing it on their hardware.
One thing I've found is that the dedicated hardware firewall like a Linksys could pay for itself in electricity in less than a year over a repurposed desktop PC, assuming the Linksys was $40 USD, the PC was free (technically, it's a sunk cost, so I count it as zero) and that the PC consumed 30W more power than a Linksys.
Anyone know about the possibility of running other operating systems such as OpenBSD on these? Is there any other ports except Linux?
One of the reasons I've always used linux boxes instead of router devices, is because when something isn't right - it's rather easy to log on to the Linux box and run utilities to try and find out what's going on. It also allows allows more flexability on things like source based routing, custom DHCP, custom firewall/masquerading rules, load balancing, and traffic shaping.
This changes the rules, and is very exciting - I can alreay anticipate a whole new generation of hacks coming out that add everything from spam filtering to DNS servers.
Here at my work at an small local ISP we use small Soekris boards running Freebsd. Not only is this hardware rock solid but running a fully featured distro gives us the ability to easily remotely trouble shoot network connectivity issues or firewall rules, or routing tables from here in the office.
:)
We mount them in outdoor enclosures for use as access points or as small deployable routers/firewalls for fiber set ups.
However they are rather pricey (250 - 450 dollars a pop) so still a lot less than comparable cisco hardware, but still too expensive to drop on the porch of a customer.
The question I've had for a while is whether or not I can as a distributor legaly hack a linksys router and drop our own distro on it, and give those out to customers. At a much more affordable price.
I called linksys the other day but the lady I talked to had no idea and never called me back
~Anders
Most of us know that the WRT54GS had 16MB flash and 32RAM. This made it a powerfull device that could be outfitted with all the addons making it rival a 600$ router from CISCO (mother of Linksys) therefor killing higher product sales.
:S
We also know, that besides the flash and RAM size difference, there was no other difference between the G and GS versions.
Linksys(or Cisco) decided however in the GS v.4 to castrate it to half the RAM and flash and sell it at the same freaking price as previous versions !! So there was no advantage to buy the GS version instead of the G version ( 60$ instead of 100$).
So pple said, screw the GS, let's go for the G. Well well well, not so fast, since they crippled the G v5 to a puny amount of flash and ram : 8M RAM and 2M flash !! that is unusable with linux even if pple figure out a way to somehow flash linux on it !!
So what was linksys's next move ? release a GL version as the old G router and sell it for 20$ more !! Bastards, i tell you.
In conclusion, they're efectively selling 2 devices : the G and the GS with lower specks for both of them, and they are charging us MORE for the G(GL) and the same price for the GS but with HALF the RAM and HALF the flash.
In other words, WE GOT SCRWED and yet the slashdot editor, paints a rather positive spin on this !!
Way to go guys
Adi
I have a WRT54G and I originally purchased it because I heard it was so hackable. However, I haven't dared to touch the firmware, mostly because the thing likes to explode every few hours. This thing will lockup and refuse all traffic going in or out unless I hard reset it. If many people are connected (10 or 12) it drops connections every 2 to 3 minutes. I understand its a remarkable piece of hardware...if it would just do its job. I'm ashamed to say the D-LINK I had worked much better.
If you use a 500-600mhz PC with 2 Intel Gigabit NICs (important to use the Intel NICs, as they offload a lot of processing from the CPU to their own board), you can even have your firewall handle gigabit traffic (something a lot of devices are unable to do).
There were plenty of 11G routers on sale during Black Friday. You could get a router for $20 or a Router/Client combo for $30. You really need something special if you say you can't afford wireless these days.
On the other hand I can't live without 11a, so I fall into the latter group.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
It's not so much that it's Linux as the fact that you can get the source, modify it, and reload it. This allows you to do things with it that you can't with the "mainstream" one. For example I have several of them doing very complex routing with the Freeman firmware that you simply can't do with the defualt firmware. Not to mention if you want to use one as a WiFi bridge.
So any other OSS firmware would do. But you won't be able to hack the firmware on the new model.
While I'm not really happy with the price increase they are still dirt cheap (and I stocked up last weekend) and this way when you buy one you *know* you are getting one with hackable firmware.
All things considered I see this as a win.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
You're assuming I want to use it as a firewall.
Some of these things have miniPCI slots. It could be used for any number of useful things.
I'd like to have a cheap, low-power machine to run an Asterisk gateway personally.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I've always wanted to install Peer Guardian on my router so I don't have to filter it out on the local PC. Has anyone done this?
In the article Dhillon claims that they sell "hundreds of thousands per month" units per month. They expect to sell "about 10,000 Linux models per month [..] if lucky.
Let's assume "hundreds of thousands" means somewhere between 200,000 to 400,000 (if it was lower then it wouldn't be hundreds in pluralis, and if it was higher he would probably say "half a million" since that's more impressive marketing speak).
So the Linux sales as a percentage of total sales should be in the region of between 2.5% and 5%. That is pretty impressive and much more than I expected. I guess most of the guys "modding" their routers to run Linux are already Linux users. It is probably safe to assume that the modding Linux community is a subset of the total Linux community. That would in turn imply that the size of the Linux community is bigger than 2.5% - 5% of the total Internet community. Could that really be the case?
It's a good deal that Linksys is releasing the WRG54GL... I'm glad to hear it.
Do be careful to not get a WRT54Gv5 though without doing research as to it's current state..as it is, it is NOT just like a WRT54Gv1-4 with stock firmware. It looks the same both physically and in the web page config as the older WRT54G, but it sure doesn't act like it.. Maybe Linksys'll get VXworks running on it properly, but as it is the unit I got had 1.00.0 firmware (never a great sign..) It was unusably buggy.. like, certain config screens randomly "forget" settings, only like 2 out of the 4 wireless cards I have around would even associate with the AP, and the SES (an autoconfig thing to set the channel to a clear one, set a unique SSID, and set a secure WEP or WPA key for you) would just kick in when it feels like, wiping out the SSID and WEP settings already entered into the unit. The "disable SES" checkbox unchecks when going through the config menus and then it's easy to trigger SES by mistake, by either bumping the front button, or hitting the very large "SES" button on the one config page where "Apply" usually is..
I updated to 1.00.2 (current firmware) and it's got the same issues.. it allowed 1 non-working card to associate, but 1 that did work with 1.00.0 didn't connect with 1.00.2.. I returned it after waiting a bit for a 1.00.3 firmware and have a Netgear access point now.
I bought the WRT54G ver 1.1 because of its hackability, at the time I was using a Microsoft router (I got it for $10, so I used that) but I bought the Linksys because of the neato factor. Then, I ended up ditching the MS router, because the Linksys with updated firmware is just the bomb. I told all my friends, one, a consultant, began buying WRT54G's for his customers because he could remote SSH into them and open ports etc to maintain their systems. It gave all kinds of flexibility.
.22
:p
I reccomended this model to everyone I knew - we use them at work now, and employees at work have bought them now on my reccomendation. I sent linksys an email thanking them for the GPLed version, and letting Linksys know I was reccomending this model to people.
I was dissapointed with the recent story of the non-linux version, however, with the release of the GL version, I am very impressed by Linksys indeed. Yes, it will probably cost a little more due to the better ram, but hey, I WANT the better ram! (Still seriously considering the flashcard hack...)
For those who care, my router runs:
dd-wrt version
WRTBlog
Uses SMB to save information to one of my network machines
Uses SNMP and MRTG (on network machine) to monitor bandwith (on top of bwlog)
These are worthy additions to your WRT. I am considering purchasing another and running kismet on it for wardrivng.
-- So, thank you Linksys, for releasing the source, and maintaining the WRT line.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
What for? I mean, do you need Gbit NICs in your router? Do you have a Gbit internet connection?
I have had three Linksys wireless routers and had pretty good luck. However, the v5 I bought a month ago died in less than two days. Fortunately CompUSA exchanged it and the replacement has been working fine.
One nice feature (which unfortunatly didn't work with mine) is the 'Management Mode' It allows you to put the router in a special mode to re-flash, even if the existing firmware is corrupt. Has a bare-bones web interface to upload the file. Handy.
Too bad mainstream appears to also mean 'cheap, unreliable parts' too...
- Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
It was with clients using Intel's 2915ABG wireless cards. Installing custom firmware and updating the Intel drivers fixed the problem for me. I am currently running Firmware Version : v4.20.9 - HyperWRT 2.1b1+tofu7 on my version 3 WRT54G. I have uptimes of months now without any problems.
The link I meant to post for dd-wrt (IMO the best firmware for the WRT, mostly because of Sevasofts treatment of customers)
http://www.dd-wrt.com/
dd-wrt
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
We're actually using 10Gbps interface cards. We have three peering partners, and our aggregate bandwidth usage is upwards of 7Gbps (each of our providers gives us a 10Gbps handoff, but we don't use the entire 10Gbps from each one).
With 4 MB Flash and 16 MB RAM, this box exceeds the basic resources of many early GUI machines. What stops an enterprising hacker from writing a "Word Processor" for this thing? It could render the interface in HTML (perhaps with a bit of Javascript for highly interactive functions) and use something like a GMail account for persistent storage if one doesn't want to let the Linksys read/write to a PC's filesystem.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
An argueably better and entirely free alternative to Smoothwall is IPCop. Definitely a product worth checking out as there are no "limited" versions and it supports a lot of interesting add ons such as SquidGuard, a midnight commander clone and a time based billing system.
When I purchased the "new" WRT54G, version 5, I expected a router that would at least have better performance than my old, reliable Pentium-II firewall running Windows 2003 and Routing and Remote Services.
Boy was I wrong. Many sites, such as: http://www.tmobile.com/ http://www.realtor.com/ and http://www.gamespot.com/ all had great difficulty loading. It turns out a **LOT** of other people are having the same problem with the Version 5 WRT54G.
My longstanding issue was finally escalated to Linksys Customer Support (you will be escalated to Customer support after dealing with Technical support). At Customer Support, they RMA'd my v5 router, and replaced it with a v4 router. I demanded that they replace it with a v4 router, and I noted that a *LOT* of people on this bulletin board are having the EXACT same problem.
I have literally spent hours trying to solve this problem on the v5 router. As soon as I plugged the v4 router in, my problems were solved!
Of course, Linksys being a company that enjoys wasting their customers' time by not even admitting a problem, you will be forced to pay for shipping charges. No matter that the item is clearly flawed by engineering defects to begin with. I will never, ever, consider buying a Linksys in the future. What a mistake I made thinking they were a premium brand. The fact that they are going to sell a version that finally works as it should, under a different model number and at a higher price, rather than fix the WRT54G Version 5 tells me that they are not interested in providing a quality product. I hope their strategy blows up in their face!
Just how much do you think electricity costs? .. Let's say the PC did consume 30W more than the Linksys hardwre, well at a very conservative estimate of 11c/kwh (more likely less than this) that means it costs you 0.33c per hour over the PC which means per year it costs you $28.908... $30 $40...
Not to mention the original poster also put across "value add" with using a PC, in that it can do more for you.. That has to have a 'value' associated with it.
Can you run an MTA on it? An X server? And if you could, why? Doesn't that go against the "let the firewall be the firewall and not host a bunch of other crap on it"?
:)
.. throw in 2 NE2000 (or similar) ISA based NICs (you've probably thrown them away before .. I have). Then you have a very VERY useful firewall, that DOES a helluva lot more than these little failure prone Linksys devices.
:p
Fair point, but it is more than a firewall, it is ALSO a router. The stock version does not, for example support SNMP (yes, I know about the problems with SNMP) - and, as another poster pointed out, you can custom script IPTables on it. Heck, you can even run SNORT on it, and who knows, possibly HOGWASH.
But lets say you do use it for a mail server, or apache or something else. It consumes VERY little power compared to a PC. It has (at the very least) a 200 mhz MIPS processor. This is more than enough to compensate for light jobs - why pay the power bill on a large PC when you can have a much smaller device to boot? Have you noticed how much room this thing takes up compared to a PC? It also has no fans - it is silent. It lasts FOREVER if you put it on a UPS supply!
If you really wanted a good, cheap firewall, check out Smoothwall. Get a $10 crappy PC
The only failue I have had with one of these so far is that I left the office router on top of one of my CRT's and it started going haywire. I could not figure out why - until I realized being on top of the CRT I was causing it to overheat. The office router runs dd-wrt, and since we have 2 offices, and when the second office phones with problems, instead of running next door, I use SSH. (Sadly, it is usually someone accidentally tripping over the power cord...)
And yes, I used to love the Linksys hardware, but now I have a pile of dead ones from my clients and from personal use. Smoothwall is running and -ZERO- failures as of yet. as long as you dont let it overheat (or run something that is going to wear out the ram), I would guess that one of these would be just as reliable - if not moreso - than a smoothwall PC. (Zero moving parts)
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
The question I've had for a while is whether or not I can as a distributor legaly hack a linksys router and drop our own distro on it, and give those out to customers. At a much more affordable price.
If there is a EULA, then there is no certain legal answer to your question and you must decide whether it is worth the risk.
If there is not a EULA, then yes:
Copyright - You can resell the equipment to anyone thanks to the first sale doctrine.
Patent - You can resell the equipment to anyone thanks to rights exhaustion (essentially identical to first sale doctrine)
Trademark - You can resell the equipment to anyone so long as you do not advertise it as a LinkSys router thanks to a combination of rights exhaustion, referential use, and lack of consumer confusion so long as you, to be safe, add a sticker to the router that identifies it as equipment that has been modified by "XYZ Corp.".
Short of the EULA, trademark issues will be your biggest headache. If you run this project past a regular attorney, they will probably refuse to delve into the issue or they will hedge and haw until you are too scared to do anything. If you run this project past an IP attorney, preferably a trademark attorney, they will probably give you a more rational answer. You don't need to be particularly cautious, you just need to not be particularly stupid.
Just remember this little bit of reality: People sell used, repaired, modified, and customized cars that still bear the manufacturer's brand, model brand, and such all the time time, these are the among the most valuable and widely used trademarks in the world, and you don't see the pros on TV or your local pros/hobbiests begging for permission or getting sued into the dust. The rules do NOT change simply because this is a computer product.
You're seriously running that kind of bandwidth through commodity hardware in a critical environment? That's ballsy, I must say.
I just junked my WRT54G v2 for another manufacturer. The WRT54G has a habit of dying due to BitTorrent traffic.
but does it run Linux?
Best Free Utilities for Windows
Linksys - keep up the good philosophy, and I suspect you could become the IBM-PC-like-standard of consumer appliances that anyone's software can run on.
I have always wondered why people who buy the WRT54G to run customized firmwares don't show as much interest as in similar embedded platforms, which are in the same price range ($70 to $130), have a similar or superior hardware config [1], and allow a similar level of customization. So why the WRT54G interest you, but not those embedded platforms ?
[1] Actually those platforms even seem more attractive (faster CPU, more RAM, bluetooth, MMC, etc), the only downside is that, of course, they don't provide 5 ethernet ports, but only 1 or 2.Nice try, but this is about a small wireless home router replacement and not a Shasta or something. BTW: 500 MHz are really enough for Gbit traffic, but only for basic routing and not packet mangling - did some tests long ago.
You must be new here. *ducks*
but can it run linu-- oh wait..
This particular real-world test case tells us that you can get rid of Linux and cut your flash and SDRAM requirements in half. (And vxWorks is pretty bloated by comparison to other RTOSes, at that. Their old platform was bested not by the leanest commercial competitor, but the fattest.)
Even with Wind River's per-unit royalties and upfront charges, Linksys finds it necessary to avoid the "free" OS to reduce cost.
What we do with these units is to use custom firmware distro based on OpenWRT for our community wireless network. These units act as a captive portal, and when you login with your username and password, you get a defined level of access with that system.
s sRouterProject
It's all part of the Melbourne Wireless Router Project (MWRP) and is detailed more at:
http://melbourne.wireless.org.au/wiki/?MelbWirele
We currently use it in a number of places, and it can be used in both PC based systems, and the WRT54G APs. This is a great move for us by Linksys.
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
As a side note, most of our services (DNS, Mail, etc.) are run on commodity hardware, but it's all redundant. Don't knock commodity hardware. Run properly, you take the risk out of it. Kind of like how Google does it.
well, Linux or not the simple fact of the matter is, the linux version ones worked very well without mods, and the version 5 routers SUCK ASS, and I tell everyone to return them immediatly and demand a btter version.
They lock up like mad, buckle when you try to save config changes, refuse to do pppoe properly after a few hours of runtime, god, my list of complainst goes on.
I did not know this, but it sure as fuck explains a lot. I don't care if it runs linux or not, I just want it to run right, and the linux versions do so very well. So, the best reason to get all nutty over this, is because the alternative was a piece of crap.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Yeah, I'm mostly concerned about an EULA that I'm not aware of hiding somewhere and coming out to bite me in the ass. Or even the DMCA getting pulled. Really I'de also like to know what Linksys corporates feeling on this is. Would hate to deploy say 200 and then get wrapped up in a legal tangle, even if we were on the right side of the law.
~Anders
The question I've had for a while is whether or not I can as a distributor legaly hack a linksys router and drop our own distro on it, and give those out to customers. At a much more affordable price.
I dont see why NOT, once you own the router, you can back over it in your car if you want to. Just dont expect any kind of support from Linksys - but for your hardware dollar savings, the lack of warranty support will likely be worth it.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
I'm sorry to call you out on this one but you will never ever manage to get a full GigE to flow through through a 500Mhz general purpose Intel CPU with a 33Mhz PCI bus, even with the Intels TCP offload and LSO features. I'd be very suprised if you'd be able to get 50kpps in total tput.
Hate to break it to ya chief, but the box I described is actually in production and works like a champ. Using the Intel Express Pro gigabit cards means even at 80-85% capacity, the box only has a load of .5.
Seriously. My modded WRT54G and DSL modem are plugged into a UPS, as the only devices. Last time I did a full rundown test, the UPS lasted 6 hours powering my internet connection.
Of course my laptop will only last 2 or 3 hours, but I can plug it into the UPS too when the laptop battery dies. I figure I can get maybe 4 hours total off the one UPS. 6 to 8 hours if I buy the addon battery pack for my UPS (Back-UPS RS 1500)
The deals are out there. You just have to know what you're looking for.
I can't say I disagree with you, but as I work for a semiconductor manufacturer, I would like to expand on what 'unreliable' means in this case.
Actually, most consumer electronics devices are 'unreliable' in the sense that they experience relatively high failure rates (compared to, say, telecommunications infrastructure devices). This is a result of the (lack of) burn in done before the parts are deployed. Simply stated, it is cheaper to have consumer electronics fail in the field than to burn in all of the parts before-hand. This is not unique to Linksys.
Consumer devices are generally 250 FIT or higher for early failure rate [first year]. A FIT (failure in time) is the ratio of failed devices (in parts per million) to running time (in thousands of power on hours [kpoh])... so 250 FITS translates into 2500 parts per million (ppm) failing after 10 kpoh. That's really reasonable for consumer devices (0.25% failure in the first year). The average failure rate over the life of the consumer semiconductor (probably rated for 100K or 200K poh) is around 100 FITS.
As a side note, telecommunications devices are generally a higher standard, with early failure rate below 65 FIT and average failure rate below 25 FIT. The burn-in required to reduce the failure rate (since most of the failures occur early in the lifecycle, stress testing a part early on can trigger many of the early failures) costs a bundle of money, and can add enough expense to a part to eliminate the entire profit margin on a consumer device. Of course, for more important applications (telecom, brake systems in vehicles, medical equipment), higher reliability parts are used.
So yes, 'mainstream' (actually 'low margin and low risk in case of failure') does mean lower quality, but please don't bash the manufacturers too hard for it. Economics forces their hand, and the result is the system that is set up to take the returns, as you experienced.
Get a $10 crappy PC .. throw in 2 NE2000 (or similar) ISA based NICs (you've probably thrown them away before .. I have). Then you have a very VERY useful firewall, that DOES a helluva lot more than these little failure prone Linksys devices.
You really should not use ISA network cards for this. It might be fine if you're just using your connection for web browsing or e-mail, but if you use it for anything else (like gaming or bittorrent) they'll give you some serious problems. I made that mistake a few times.
> The question I've had for a while is whether or not I can as a distributor legaly hack a
> linksys router and drop our own distro on it, and give those out to customers.
Depends on which hack you install. Hyperwrt is a modified copy of the Linksys code. While the linux binaries and a lot of the other stuff is licensed under the GPL, you might want to make sure it ALL is. Openwrt on the other hand is plain old linux. No licensing problems there at all.
As for the other reply about a EULA, ignore that guy. You are buying hardware. Hardware IS sold and not licensed. Yes there is software embedded in it, but you are planning on blanking that out before you resell it so that is a moot point. The day a judge says a piece of hardware sold over the counter at Walmart is bound by an unsigned EULA is the day I declare the Revolution to have begun and load up my 'sporting goods'.
Democrat delenda est
On buy.com, the WRT54GS is actually cheaper than the WRT54GL, and has more RAM and more flash (4mb and 32 mb respectively). Seems kind of lame that they take the same device that used to sell for $45 and jack the price to $70, just to take advantage of the "linux" thing.
So to anyone looking to buy this router, consider the WRT54GS. With more ram and storage, you can do more things with it. All for about the same price.
Also, avoid Sveasoft at all costs. They are slimy. I still haven't been refunded my money after I canceled my automatically-renewing annual protect, I mean firmware access, fee. They promised they would, but a month later and several unanswered e-mails and I'm still out my $20 bucks. Next week I'll lodge a complaint with paypal.
For the best capabilities, use openwrt. it rocks! I've done so much more with it than I did with sveasoft, thanks to having a small writable partition to place scripts and so forth, instead of just having to use the nvram.
So, first they sabotage their $40 WRT54G model by making it impossible to buy a "good" version with any certainty unless you're physically holding the box to check the serial number. I can't buy one online now, because I have no idea if I'll get stuck with a v5. Then they re-release the old model, but with a price tag that's $30 higher? Brilliant.
Why create an unnecessary point of discontinuity in the product line? They should have kept linux on the WRT54G, and called the VxWorks model the "WRT54GSUX".
CompUSA had Wireless-G routers and USB, PCMCIA, and PCI wireless receivers for $2.99 each after rebate.
That's pronounced Com-POOZA.
$2.99 is expensive, I thought. These days I expect to get something free after rebate, or actually be paid to take something. *grin*
If ever you don't get a rebate, call them up and use the F word. Fraud. That causes low-paid rebate center employees to quit, and costs the fraudsters money to hire someone else.
Sorry, that's Com-POO-za
The price on these things has dropped as they halved the RAM and Flash. Basically, they now have two models where they had one: a cheaper version and the one we all know and love, they just gave the name to the cheaper one and added an "L" to make the fancier one sound better than last years model.
I have a WRT54GS v3.0, got it on rebate for $30 off. I made sure that I had the right version by using serial number ranges from http://www.linksysinfo.org/modules.php?name=Conten t&pa=showpage&pid=6
The latest GS version v4.0 has half the ram (4 & 16 instead of 8 and 32), but the store had mine and even a few 2.0 models mixed in for those who bothered to check the serial on the outside of the box.
I am running dd-rt v.23 right now, because it is free AND very easy to use, as well as modular (uses ipkg capabilities from openwrt). OpenWRT probably does more but needs more setup. I have been playing with the extra features, checking out all the software people like to use, and enjoying connecting via command line to check and change stuff in addition to browser access.
The G model was also on rebate, for a little less, but again the latest version isnt as good, in fact G version 5.0 doesnt use Linux, and getting a lower model revision required reading a lot of boxes (*or letting the store employees help-- I chased off 3 before I decided to let them help read serials after all)
William
You know, if they build a device much like the network attached storage (NSLU2whatever) device and shipped it with a decent amount of ram GEEKS LIKE ME WOULD FLOCK TO IT.
My ability to do cool things with their products is the ONLY reason I ever purchased it. Twice.
I ran a Pentium 133 underclocked without so much as a heatsink, definitly no fans involved. I doubt it used much if any more power then the wrt54g.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I dont always understand why someone would buy something like Linksys, especially the tech-inclined. I have pc-based firewalls at home and work. The home version is a machine that crashes when you exec the HLT instruction. Thus anything above windows 95 dies. I just run knoppix with 'nohlt' parameter. The work version does openbsd with lots of fancy packet filtering and is quite bulletproof.
So why should I spend $70 on lower sized hardware? Because its smaller? Or because its not x86? Or because someone brands it 'firewall'. I'd sooner spend a little more and get a 2600 cisco off ebay and use THAT.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Not only are the systems you suggest nearly twice the price of the Linksys, in six months the price of the Linksys will be even less. And three years from now, when the current wireless standard goes away to be replaced with another, I can pick up a Linksys for almost nothing and use it for something more useful than filling a trash dump.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Yes, ignore the other reply about a EULA (by me). After all, I'm just an anonymous IP attorney.
Now for the techie comeback:
If you imagine that the LinkSys firmware code is the ONLY software that is embedded in that router, then it's time to realize that you're dreaming. For instance, people in these threads have referred to a failover flash loader that lets you recover from bad firmware updates. Guess what, that's software. Software potentially covered by a EULA. Software that could very well get you dragged before a judge where you will have to explain your theory that the EULA is invalid, or the EULA doesn't cover anything but the LinkSys firmware.
Most of the time, getting dragged into court on a technical issue is guaranteed to generate a five figure legal bill. Most small businesses do not wish to risk that sort of money on something that is as vague as a EULA issue.
The day a judge says a piece of hardware sold over the counter at Walmart is bound by an unsigned EULA is the day I declare the Revolution to have begun and load up my 'sporting goods'.
It's not sold at WalMart, but the Stots Corporation sells a woodworking jig called the TemplateMaster under a license agreement that significantly restricts the ways in which you are permitted to use the tool. So long as the license/EULA is considered to be part of the sales contract, there is practically no right that you cannot waive (excluding, say, statutory warranties and tort liability) when you buy a product.
But I can understand why he should take your word for it. After all, you analyze legal rights for a living, right?
You've just got to be full of crap. It doesn't matter how much the CPU can handle, when you're dealing with bandwidth. It's not even in the picture, if it can handle it, it does--that's all that matters--it's a black box, for all we care. Maybe 500Mz in a general-purpose computer is enough to do basic routing at 1Gb/s, maybe. Doesn't matter.
:O
So, let's figure what you're talking about...
Let's assume you've got the best and fastest PCI bus available to a 500Mhz motherboard, even among the highest end x86 servers of the period: 64bit/66Mhz. It's not going to have 64bit/133Mhz PCI-X, which your Intel NIC works fine with, though it is backwards compatible with regular ol PCI. Your hypothetical 500Mhz CPU's motherboard (because it's not going to fit on a modern motherboard with PCI-X) gives us an aggregate bandwidth of 503MB/s, about 4Gbps. Considering that PCI (and PCI-X) is a parallel bus, and it's not capable of point-to-point communication like other interconnects (like SGI's XIO/crossbar switch and PCI-E--which are very similar), all of that stuff goes through the PCI controller, CPU, and back through your other NICs.
If it's true, in your other post to slashflood, that you have three peering partners, then your 4Gbps is divided among your three 10Gbs NICs, and probably at least one more for your own network. Yeah, there's no way you're ever, ever going to push 7Gbps through your hardware. Never. Not in a lifetime. Not even if your interfaces compute the routes. No matter how much you wish or say it were true, excepting perhaps if Jesus himself walks over on water and blesses your PCI bus.
PCI-X is good for 8Gbps, you could possibly do it with PCI-X...Maybe. Assuming the CPU can keep up, because it still goes north, buddy. It's just not designed for this. Now, with any sort of decent firewall rule set, and stateful inspecting, and all that sort of jazz, I sincerely doubt that even a modern multi-Ghz CPU could handle half of that capacity. Assuming that the NICs did the route processing, it may work. Now, for a switch interlink like SGI's, this would be a cakewalk, as long as nothing had to touch the CPU, that is. XIO is good for 1.6GB/s. Oh yeah, enough to handle that full 10Gbps.
So, maybe a 500Mhz computer could do one link. What kind of utility is that to ANYONE? Please, stop talking out of your ass, it hasn't been funny since Jim Carey did it.
It is possible I made a mistake in the numbers, but I used 8c/kwh, something I thought I found somewhere as being the average cost of electricity in the US.
Keep in mind that the original poster also suggested that the firewall just be a firewall, security-minded people avoid piling on other tasks onto the firewall simply because that opens up more avenues of attacks.
One thing I will grant is that if the Linksys really is unreliable, then there's the aggravation and time in replacing faulty equipment, though old PCs have that risk too. Personally, I've had no reliability issues with the Linksys, and a Linksys replaced a PC that was having reliability issues.
I'd sooner spend a little more and get a 2600 cisco off ebay and use THAT.
That's gonna cost you alot more than seventy bucks...even on ebay. When you start talking multiple ethernet interfaces, those models fetch much higher bids.
The day a judge says a piece of hardware sold over the counter at Walmart is bound by an unsigned EULA is the day I declare the Revolution to have begun and load up my 'sporting goods'.
Oh, one other thing that I forgot to mention. "Unsigned EULA?" You think that "unsigned" means that you can rest assured that the EULA cannot be enforced against you?
The statute of frauds in most states only requires a contract to be in the form of a signed writing if it involves, among other possibilities, the sale of goods in excess of $500. A LinkSys router costs quite a bit less. So do most of the things that you'd purchase at WalMart. You are not doing the questioner a favor by describing the world as you'd like it to be instead of the world as it is, because I have an inkling that he was seeking advice that was, to put it mildly, reasonably correct and verifiable.
You spend it because it is the optimal performance that you need and any perfomance equivalents that you can buy in a PC system will be built on older fab technology and thus produce more waste heat and cost more money in electricity. No to mention they will typically have loud, unreliable fans, etc.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Really I'de also like to know what Linksys corporates feeling on this is.
I'd say this 'new' WRT54GL answers that question somewhat no?
> If you imagine that the LinkSys firmware code is the ONLY software that is embedded in
> that router,
Yes, I know there is a small stub loader that isn't replaced by openwrt. However since it is licensed in from Broadcom and IS supplied in the GPL download tarball at linksys.com I'd say it is redistributable. And since it isn't in the least modified by replacing the firmware it would be pretty safe to assume the first sale doctrine applies to reselling that seperate and distinct software as it would to reselling the entire Linksys router unmodified, something also permitted by law.
> the Stots Corporation sells a woodworking jig called the TemplateMaster under a license
> agreement that significantly restricts the ways in which you are permitted to use the tool.
While not a lawyer, I have actually heard of that one. It can be used to make almost exact copies of itself, and naturally they consider that copyrightable. Not sure on this point, been a while, but I do believe they protect themselves with a real contract instead of a EULA that isn't worth the paper it is printed on in most states.
> So long as the license/EULA is considered to be part of the sales contract, there is
> practically no right that you cannot waive (excluding, say, statutory warranties and tort
> liability) when you buy a product.
With a contract you are correct. But EULAs are only valid in one state and partially in one other.
Democrat delenda est
First of all you don't replace the recovery software when flashing the device, alltho in some specific cases you may be using it. The EULA would have to specifically limit this usage to Linksys provided firmware or such to have any effect on this situation whatsoever, and then only in very specific cases.
Second, I'd really think Linksys released this WRT54GL because of it beign illegal to replace the firmware with your own eh? I have heard about companies suing their own customers before, but I doubt one (and especially this one) would be as stupid as to sell a device to their customers for the specific purpose of being able to sue them later.
You may be an IP attorney (or not, who is to say, mr. anonymous), but you obviously lack some common sense and/or understanding of the actual process of hacking this hardware.
First of all you don't replace the recovery software when flashing the device, alltho in some specific cases you may be using it. The EULA would have to specifically limit this usage to Linksys provided firmware or such to have any effect on this situation whatsoever, and then only in very specific cases.
First of all, "duh." I never suggested that the recovery software was replaced by a flash. I did suggest that the fact that you couldn't replace the recovery software was at least one reason why a EULA might apply. Second of all, I specifically stated that if there was a EULA there was not a legally clear answer. I will not debate the hypothetical terms of a EULA that may or may not exist merely to satisfy your ego.
Second, I'd really think Linksys released this WRT54GL because of it beign illegal to replace the firmware with your own eh? I have heard about companies suing their own customers before, but I doubt one (and especially this one) would be as stupid as to sell a device to their customers for the specific purpose of being able to sue them later.
I NEVER said that it would be illegal to replace the firmware on the router. However, it could very well be a breach of the sales contract and/or EULA to resell the router to someone else after you've replaced the firmware. And as you jump on the reply button scream "I gotcha!" consider that there's a big difference between Joe eBay selling his router and Joe's Routers eBaying several hundred routers. There is also the potential for a trademark enforcement problem, but proper marketing and labeling can eliminate that issue.
You may be an IP attorney (or not, who is to say, mr. anonymous), but you obviously lack some common sense and/or understanding of the actual process of hacking this hardware.
You obviously lack reading comprehension skills, among others (such as spelling). I comprehend the actual process, since I've done it myself. Who is to say that you understand it, "Bart"?
Well, I have a D-Link and I wish I had bought the Linksys. It locks up every 10 minutes or so (with only one user). If two people use it the range drops drastically and it locks up more often. If I enable their proprietary "turbo" mode it doesn't lock up nearly as often, but then I am forced to use a specific channel which happens to be very congested in my neighborhood so I get terrible performance.
:)
If I could run Linux on it I would in "a flash"
The lack of IPv6 on consumer routers is the single greatest hurdle to wider IPv6 adoption.
Imagine for a moment if
Suddenly all machines behind all of those users have globally unique IPv6 addresses. The easy P2P access that is suddenly available would revolutionize the Internet and light a fire under IPv6. Sadly there is no immediate profit for the NAT/firewall/router vendors in it, and this firmware change represents a sad step in the wrong direction such that - even if a killer app came out for IPv6 that made this desirable - the possibilty of providing an easy IPv6 upgrade for the average users' NAT frouters is now dissolving.
As an analogy, it sounds like you'd be doing something similar to a car tuning shop, like Roush -- taking a Mustang, modifying it, and then reselling it. If it's legal for them, I see no reason why it wouldn't be legal for you (although IANAL).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
(Duh, why does /. display my "Preview Comment" thing in this fancy shmancy box now? What was wrong with the old way, where it was simply displayed, followed by the edit field? No, now there's this box and half a screenful of Name, URL, Subject... blah blah blah... The old way was better.)
A lot of people, including myself, were deploying these units everywhere for all types of business use.
Things were getting a little squeezy because although hacking the unit was legal, not having Linksys officially 'bless' the process meant that at anytime they could change the floor beneath you.. making dramatic changes to the hardware in the next rev.. leaving everyone stranded. That seemed to be the direction Linksys was going in.
This new release of the hardware shows that Linksys is giving an official blessing to the whole proceeding.. I can deploy these things into the wild for myself and my customers with more confidence that this product line has a longer life.
The question I've had for a while is whether or not I can as a distributor legaly hack a linksys router and drop our own distro on it, and give those out to customers.
It's the same question as whether or not you can buy a Dell system with Windows pre-installed, wipe out Windows, and sell it as your own solution. Of course you can. Just don't use Linksys's name to promote it.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
BZZT. Wrong.
There is force that exists, and people are being screwed. When "free to exploit the consumer markets" exist, and the practical choice (in this case, the pre-modifed Linux WRT54G/GS) is modified against the consumer's wishes in a deceptive manner, they are being screwed.
Exploitative economics is not a defense to mess with your customer. The deception by introducing the linux model later (by fully knowing of those who mod this would avoid the "standard" model if the linux one was there first) is further proof.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
and
With a contract you are correct. But EULAs are only valid in one state and partially in one other.
You're confusing the validity of a EULA with the enactment of UCITA. I, legal precedent, and even WikiPedia disagree with you, in that you're making the issue appear far more certain than it is:
New York is not a UCITA state. The jurisdiction of the Seventh and Eighth Circuit courts of appeals does not include a UCITA state (neglecting cases that may involve choice of law provisions). BnetD lost (although I wouldn't necessarily count winning under the DMCA as winning under a EULA, since the EULA could be silent about reverse engineering and BnetD still would have lost under the logic of the case).
In the interim I remembered an even better example that is sure to enrage you, which again has nothing to do with UCITA (and thus explains why I would rarely tell anyone to disregard the terms of a EULA):
Hill. v. Gateway 2000, decided in the 7th Circuit, held that a EULA (actually, an "unsigned" contract bundled with the computer, but it presents the same problem) was valid and enforceable despite the fact that the contract was only presented to the customer after the had already "bought" the computer and "paid" for the purchase with a credit card. So long as the customer has an option to return the product, which isn't especially difficult with something like a router, it can be binding in at least some non-UCITA states.
Again, unless you know the entire circumstance (including the terms of the EULA and the jurisdiction of the questioner), you are only discussing the world as you'd like it to be. Even with that information, analyzing an issue involving a EULA usually involves more uncertainty than your average businessperson will tolerate.
First of all, "duh." I never suggested that the recovery software was replaced by a flash. I did suggest that the fact that you couldn't replace the recovery software was at least one reason why a EULA might apply.
I did not need the recovery software to flash any of the WRT54Gs I have around, so I don't see how an EULA on it would apply to begin with (tho one can of course use the recovery software to flash the device, someone who is going to do this on a somewhat larger scale is definitely going to open up the device and use a programmer).
I NEVER said that it would be illegal to replace the firmware on the router. However, it could very well be a breach of the sales contract and/or EULA to resell the router to someone else after you've replaced the firmware.
I signed no contract, there was no EULA the box, and I do not need to turn the device on and do anything with the embedded software to flash new firmware on it (sure, as a typical consumer you do use the original firmware for the reflash, but as already said, there are better ways to do that esp. when doing this on a larger scale), so not even a clickthrough license. If you are not going to debate hypothetical terms of an EULA that may or may not exist, I understand, but please excuse me if I am going to laugh at you if a few lines after that you are debating the possible terms of a sales contract or EULA that may or may not exist, and at is very unlikely at best to apply in any way.
And as you jump on the reply button scream "I gotcha!" consider that there's a big difference between Joe eBay selling his router and Joe's Routers eBaying several hundred routers. There is also the potential for a trademark enforcement problem, but proper marketing and labeling can eliminate that issue.
Yep, trademark issues, lack of warranty from Linksys and such are potential issues, both quite solvable but something to think about.
You obviously lack reading comprehension skills, among others (such as spelling).
Ah, very intelligent response to someone calling you clueless indeed.
I comprehend the actual process, since I've done it myself. Who is to say that you understand it, "Bart"?
You may have flashed a router, that doesn't mean you understand the process, it just means you can execute it. Did you write your own bootstrap code for the device? or a driver for the flash hardware?
You are right of course that untill the day a court decides so, we have no way to be absolutely sure, but when I go into a shop, buy a box without having to sign any contract, then can open it up, do not find any kind of shrinkwrap license either, take the device out of the box, open it up, and connect it to my flash programmer and flash new firmware to it, I see no way for Linksys or any of their suppliers to have any kind of case against me, regardless of if I am going to resell the device after that.
Who may have a case with me are my local equivalent to the FCC due to radio interference caused by modifications to the radio settings.
You know, anytime I hear about one of these kinds of projects, I wonder one thing: Why don't you use A/G routers, with clients being served on 2.4GHz, and the backbone running at 5GHz (where there's less interference)? Might that not result in better overall performance (especially since you could use directional antennas for the 5GHz signal)?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
See subject.
I looked into it, and the ease of use of it, along with the feature set, (comparison here) pushed me into going ahead and buying a rev3 WRT54GS. Anyway, here is the link.
I don't know if they change the source code they distribute, but last time I check there were file with uncompatible with GPL in the kernel tree : there were lot's of confidential license from boradcom and AMD (for the flash). Not to say that most device needs binary driver (ethernet, wifi, ...).
So it isn't realy free Software and buying them encorage vendor to release only the minimun.
No to say the source code were released because people claimed about GPL violation...
The 5.8 GHz stuff costs far more so its only used in a few places but it is expanding.
Weird. I have version 5 and have none of these problems. I didn't even know it didn't run Linux any longer. I know, lazy Slashdot reader, I am.
I just installed it and bricked my v2 router after fooling around with it for a few minutes. Thanks, I needed that.
Why linksys would be agains linux distributions? Linksys is selling hardware. Why would they care how you use it? From their point of view it doesn't matter. If you don't use their software, better for them because they get less service calls, less customer support.
So I don't see any interest for linksys to stop producing a platform that people want to buy. If they managed to port their system to vxworks and not it requires 1/2 memory and flash, it is worth to save money on hardware, but it does not mean that they should stop producing something that people want to buy.
So bottom line, it make sence to sell both old hardware and new hardware.
This doesn't reflect Linux as a trend, this is something the average Linux user probably won't be doing.
It's the people who look at something like this and ask "Hmmm... just what can I do with a low-powered Linux box that's k3w1?" who buy it.
But even at that, 120K units a year for a premium-priced box for hardware h4xx0rs is amazing.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Apart from memory, a CPU and connectivity, what does a thin client need? Right, you missed keyboard and monitor adapters. Your proposal sounds more like a thin client than a thin server.
Could be interesting nevertheless, but it's just something different. A thin server should rather provide a small (public) HTML server, printer, DHCP, NTP, authentification, VPN - the usual stuff. For bittorrent, SAMBA/NFS storage, POP/IMAP or any other meaningful server task, you need ata/scsi periferals.
When Linksys started shipping v5, we switched to Asus WL-500G Deluxe. It has 32MB RAM, 2xUSB and (almost) ready-to-use COM-port. The only problem is small flash memory. I had to build a very custom OpenWRT image. Asus WL-500G Deluxe is more engineer-friendly than Linksys.
is easier to use
is less bulky
consumes way less power (please, think of the global warming)
me and my thinkpad, sittin' in a tree, c-o-d-i-n-g...
If memory serves, most of these home routers are running on MIPS based hardware. There is no port of OpenBSD to the sbmips platform (yes there is an SGI MIPS port but I doubt it is similar enough for an easy transition). I believe NetBSD has been ported to this platform but I am unsure of whether the supported chipset is the same as that in a home router. There's also the possiblity that there won't be wifi card or ethernet drivers on NetBSD so you would have to reverse engineer those... Personally I'd just stick with Linux but porting a *BSD for full support would be an interesting exercise.
As another poster said, if you want to run OpenBSD on embedded hardware you are better off going for the soekris stuff but you'll pay a LOT more (prices for just the board without case, wifi card or power cable start at $128) than for the shelf consumer stuff (Amazon has a WRT54 for $54.99).
I've seen Sofa King many dead and defective Linksys wireless routers that you couldn't give me one.
In fact, I have nine Linksys 802.11b routers in my garage -- six of them still in the shrink wrap -- that I'd be willing to give you.
Now if they would just would wire and finish the serial ports, and add POE ... nobody would ever buy Cisco's entperprise hardware.
v4sw6PU$hw6ln6pr4F$ck 4/6$ma3+6u7LNS$w2m4l7U$i2e4+7en6a2X h
This is slightly off-topic, but since the WRT54G is a hackable router, is there any way to make it act like a wireless-ethernet bridge? (Much like the WET54GS5). This way, I could simply purchase one device (the WRT54G) and configure it to act one way or the other.
Titus Barik
I'm glad they have essentially resumed production of the Linux version. It's a good sign that they are concerned with their customers' demands.
But if they are going to make a Linux version, then it's a fairly foregone conclusion that people intend to hack on it. They should, therefore, make it more hack-friendly in the process. Add a CF slot to the device! Mark it up accordingly as I am sure people will buy the heck out of those.
I've had Linksys's own firmware re-flashing fail for reasons not apparent to me. I know what I'm doing, I've done many of the firmware upgrades, I read the readme, yet I have two VP41 and one SX41 sitting here that were working fine before the firmware upgrade, yet died immediately when I flashed them. Out of warranty, so now I own some bricks. Isn't there some JTAG method of repairing these?
Curator of the Jefferson Computer Museum http://www.threedee.com/jcm
All of these units are based on the broadcom "airforce" reference design. Instead of having to purchase a Linksys or ASUS I would actually prefer to just be able to purchase the reference design from broadcom or have some one like gumstix manufacture this reference design "specifically to support Linux hacking". Here is the link to broadcom site http://www.broadcom.com/products/Wireless-LAN/802. 11-Wireless-LAN-Solutions. So someone could partner with a group like OpenWRT and sell them. This should not be to hard to do with the current offerings of cm, like flextronics.
Just in case anyone else was curious, here is there price list in USD (they are a Swiss outfit):
http://www.pcengines.ch/order1.php?c=4
Short version:
2 LAN / 2 miniPCI / 128MB = $130
3 LAN / 1 miniPCI / 128MB = $136
1 LAN / 2 miniPCI / 64 MB = $115
1 LAN / 2 miniPCI / 128MB = $122
Not bad, actually. Although if you have the space, you can get a surplus 1U rackmount server for not much more than that, as I recently found out.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The revolution has begun; start loading up on your sporting goods.
Or have you forgotten the entire lexmark ink cartridge refilling debacle?
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
OK, I officially mediawiki too much. Please allow me to rephrase:
Then I swapped it for an 2915ABG, which is natively supported in Linux just fine.
Of the fact that they have split off the 'linux' hackable version from the mainstream consumer model. Linux has always thrived on cheap commodity hardware. That is, Linux is a niche market that integrates well, in a lot of cases, as a subset of a large market, and the large market keeps prices low and products in production for the niche Linux users.
While I think it's cool that Linksys has at least made the option available, currently, to buy basically the 'older' model that is hackable and runs Linux, I wonder how long this will last? If it's true that the Linux hacker sales only account for a very small percent of the overall sales, will Linksys consider it worthwhile, in the long run, to continue to market the seperate product?
I suppose that depends on a few things - if some companies spring up that use the WRT54GL to create other products for resale to a mainstream market (for example, selling small-office wireless PBX's using Asterix on one of these devices - and I think there might be companies doing things like this), perhaps this secondary market would be large enough to justify the continued production of these units.
This kind of reminds me of the Corel Netwinder. I don't know how many people remember the netwinder. For some reason Corel (you know, the makers of WordPerfect and CorelDraw), in it's history, has experimented with various other businesses, including being a Linux Distro vendor for about 5 minutes (anyone ever try Corel Linux? It was based on Debian, but there was only ever one release that I know of), and before that, they tried creating a small, arm-based Linux computer.
It was a nice design - extremely compact, quite - really it was about the size of most WAPs in it's physical form-factor, and had a very visually pleasing case design. I think Corel eventually split the netwinder off as a seperate company, which I think struggled along until May of 2005 (the current status of netwinder seems to be a little fuzzy to me - based on a google search, it apepars that as recently as May of 2005, there was a company continuing to develop and sell small Linux-based hardware under the Netwinder name).
The netwinder was a very cool device, but unfortunately, I don't think there was enough market for it, as it targetted people who wanted small, relatively cheap, low-end Linux servers and workstations - but alot of that same market just bought intel or amd based commodity hardware (tower servers, rack servers, blade servers, etc). Linux thrives as a being a subset of a large market, not as a seperate niche market.
... according to the openwrt site, the linksys wrt54g 5.0 comes with half the ram and flash of the 4.0 model (and other prior models). That could explain the cost difference.
Also, the wrt54gs looks more interesting, it has 8mb flash / 32mb ram...
Are you forgetting about the part where the judge threw Lexmark's attempt into the trash heap of history?
Fuck your flamebait. The parent was flamebait. I was flaming him. That should rightly be (+3, Flaming the Asshole Flamebaiter You Myopic Bastards). I am metamodding you into oblivion inside my head.
Can you put Linux on the WRT54GC? It's the compact version of the WRT54G but I do not think that it currently runs Linux at all (the F/W download page has the GPL Code button all grayed out.) Anybody knows what this model really runs?
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Can anyone tell me if there is an ADSL variant of the WRT54GL?
And the free space loss is higher with a higher frequency. So you get less distance for the same amount of power - and it's less efficient to create the same amount of power.
Costs are still the main problem however, as if you want to do anything serious, you need to avoid coax at 5Ghz as the loss is large. This means if you need to put the equipment seperate from the antenna, you'll need to use a 5Ghz waveguide. These are not cheap.
So you want something with radio and antenna built into one - which means something custom made. Custom made = expensive.
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
Yeah eh ... who would want to do This on there cheap little router.
Research these things man they do way more then you could imagine. People have hacked frickin Sound or even a SD Card.
Sheesh research before you spew. A 200MHz Linux server that's your Router/Firewall/Ipv6 Gateway and a ton of other cool stuff all in one little box. I don't see why your bitchin.
Solosoft.org - Your Online Resource to Nothing
The alchemy firmware for the wrt54g is excellent and free. The firmware includes a pptp server as well as other high end functions. We use the pptp server for our edge network here at lightspoke
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