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."

Comments

money in the pockets

[way2trivial]

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....

Re:money in the pockets

[Mr. Flibble]

As buying it implies intended use that is not covered by warranty--- and denying the claim entirely.

And this, IMO is fair. After all, if you flash it, and you brick it, and then you try to warranty it, you are really cheating Linksys. They are telling you, Hey we will support you UNLESS YOU DO X. So you do X it breaks, and then you claim warranty? That is duplicitous.

It would be like backing over it in your car, and then saying "I dunno what when wrong with it.." The only difference being that Linksys could tell if you backed over it in your car, in this case they cannot. Linksys is a company that exists to make a profit. Bricking your router by doing something non-warranty safe and getting a replacement is unfair to Linksys - big faceless corporation or not.

Re:open

[Jeff DeMaagd]

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.

Re:open

[jmorris42]

> 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'.

Re:Similar embedded platforms

[Anonymous Coward]

You are confused in your math. The gumstix starter platform costs about $100, then for another $150 you can add ethernet and wifi (and you have to go to another vendor to get the wifi card, after you buy the adapter for gumstix). Dont forget, you still need details like a case, power supply, and antennas etc.

The wrt comes 'off the shelf' for about $70 (depending on where you buy it), comes in a nice little case, complete with power supply, 5 ethernet ports, wifi, antennas, and as a bonus, inside the box is a 6' ethernet cable and a nice coaster (cd). If you are going thru enough of them (I have over 1000 in the field), you will never run out of 90 day 'free trials' for an anti virus, every one of those coasters has one of those too.

I use the wrt as an edge device, loaded with my own custom firmware specific to our network. It can go out to any location, and they just plug it in. When it 'wakes up' at the new location, it brings up a vpn link back to head office. Voila, instant access to locations from the arctic down to locations in mexico. It's solid state, not a power hunger computer, and gives me all the flexibility I need in a custom linux edge device.

With the numbers I have in the field, it's important to look at the 'total cost deployed', not just the sticker price on the 'basic item before necessary add-ons'. If I could deploy gumstix at even double the cost of using wrt54, I probably would, but I cant. the reality is, I can put 3 WRT routers into a location for about what it would cost to build up a gumstix with ethernet and wifi, and it still needs an external switch to give multiple ports.

The WRT54 has yet one more fabulous redeeming feature. It's available EVERYWHERE. On more than one occaision, instead of shipping a pre-configured router, i've had somebody run to the local computer store, buy a wrt54, take it back to the office, plug it into a dsl connect and give me remote admin access. 10 minutes later, it's re-flashed, and they have a highly customized router that automatically integrates into the bigger picture corporate network.

Bottom line, gumstix and wrt54 are not similar platforms. gumstix is a hackers toy, meant for hardware hackers that want to do thier own soldering to hook it up to stuff. WRT54 is a complete/finished edge device, ready to go, out of the box, just add firmware.

Re:IPv6

[petermgreen]

You are confused, you view nat as a _bad_ thing, and publicly addressible computers via ipv6 as a _good_ thing. That's fine in theory, but, out here in the real world, the internet is a nasty place, and to put a windows machine into a slot where it is ip accessible from the outside, well, that's just begging for problems.
being on a public ipv6 addrss is much safer than on a public ipv4 address simply because the hit rate of random attacks is about 16 billion billion times lower. but yes there is still the possibility of targeted attacks (e.g. by a server you connect to) and windows is shitty enough to make running it on a network that is end to end open require care.

but anyway you can have a no incoming connections unless i specify otherwise policy perfectly easilly without having nat.

say for example you wan't to be able to admin all your boxes remotely with ssh. it would seem far more convinaiant to be able to just say "allow ssh from theese ips" once rather than making a mapping for every single machine and trying to memorise which port maps to ssh on which machine.

and besides if someone really wants to get into any nontrivial sized network its probablly not that hard to get a box on the inside.