Slashdot Mirror
Download Torrents With Your PC Turned Off
Mr.Tweak writes to tell us that they have a review posted of a new wireless router from ASUS. What sets this router apart from others is that in addition to being a wireless router/gateway is that it also functions as a thin client system with a pre-installed 160 GB IDE drive (no SATA support sorry) and three USB 2.0 ports for peripherals. If you happen to use one of those USB ports for another drive the router will also support RAID 0 and 1, quite a bit more than the average router.
This isn't anything new. According to the RIAA, you can download music without even owning a computer.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
It seems like a full computer would be better than this in just about every aspect--price, power consumption, etc.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Yes, it does run linux.
liqbase
Wow, now let's put into it _all_ functionality we expect from a computer! ;-)
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
This is good news, but I wonder if it's web interface, stability and value is up to par with other networking routers. I hope that they won't be using a stupid mini OS that will crash every once it receives too many connections. Even better, could people boot Linux on it?
I know this is a bit off-topic, but does it provide sufficent cooling? I've been using many routers throughout the years and most of them have processors without heatsinks which heat up A LOT. In fact, I install a fan on every switch that I have (And use a Linux box as the router). Does heat actually do something to the router? Or are they all designed to support tremendous temperatures?
The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
What's with not using the word torrent in the whole summary?
:)t em_features_configuration/index.html
Here is the part of the article:
"Applications lets you enable/disable the router's inbuilt applications - Download Master, Download Daemon, Download Share, Photo Album and Media Server, as well as do some basic configuration like specifying the port range and default seeding time for the BitTorrent client, and the default web server port. You can also configure the settings for an attached USB webcam, enabling to run via a web interface, and even turning it into a security camera controlled by the router, which can enable motion detection and email alerts. And finally, locally-attached USB printers can be configured and shared out - ready for connection from UPnP-enabled clients."
And here is the link
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/939/5/page_5_sys
I have to assume that power consumption is going to go up to power this thing. If I was turning off my PC to save power, I don't think I'd want this thing.
According to the RIAA my grandpa downloaded music long after he died! (and yes, without a computer to boot) :D
What's so new about this? http://smoothwall.org/, http://ipcop.org/ and http://m0n0.ch/wall/ could easily be custimized to perform a similar function. Easy as installing a bittorrent application, and using SSH.
By the way, these 3 options happen to be free and upgradable.
Dollar Highway Financial News
That seem like a bad choice as usb has a lot of cpu over head firewire or e-sata wound of been better.
It also only has a basic BitTorrent client.
I wonder how it stands up under a full raid and bitTorrent load.
eom
It needs more than the ability to run Bittorrent. You need something like Peer Guardian running to filter out all those "bad" IP Addresses.
It's more of a NAS meets Wireless router. Which is cool, but....yeah....so?
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
This one's a winner, I think.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
"It seems like a full computer would be better than this in just about every aspect--price, power consumption, etc."
Heat! Time! Remember not everyone's a geek, and shouldn't have to be to get some of the offered features.
Isn't a parentheses one of these ( )?
And aren't these " " called quotation marks?
Sorry, but it's hard to take an article seriously when the author doesn't know the difference.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
you could use this as a pre tivo loader. Or as a buffer for doing large scale monitoring from diverse sensors or sources. Say your input hits a huge spike for some reason, this do dad could store it until your regular machine could get to it, and with some thought, it could pre ilter out the junk. Hmm, could be a mail milter as well.
If you were downloading a file from bit torrent that contained a virus or spyware that affected the OS that shipped with the router, would that mean that not only your router, but every computer connected to that router would become infected?
Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
And I thought wow, this is by far the best news of the day. Then I saw that there is a new drug just like morphine, only non-addictive. And then I thought, wow, I thought AIDs being cured was a big deal, but that's nothing compared to this. And now I see that I can download porno movies without even turning on my computer. God I love /.
Why does a thin client need 160GB?
...Video at 11:00.
I find it crazy that people are running more and more applications directly on their Internet router. The more applications and services there are running, the more likely a serious security flaw will be found in the device. Do they really think this through? This is just going to be another attack vector for script kiddies to own peoples' networks. Several months after they release this, another vendor will be releasing a seperate firewall/router to protect this device.
"An explanatory or qualifying word, clause, or sentence inserted into a passage with which it has not necessarily any grammatical connection, and from which it is usually marked off by round or square brackets, dashes, or commas."
Of course, quotation marks aren't in there, so I don't know what they meant by "parentheses."
Here's why it makes sense to do this on a router:
For one thing, everyone's router is always on, so there is nothing extra in the house sucking power. Maybe more relevant: The router, when Skype is being used, can be set to automatically throttle back the up/down bandwith that it's passing to connected computers (or using for its own bittorrent). This helps prevent degradation of Skype quality. And third, this would be totally simple - just plug in the router, tell it your Skype login/pass, and all your contacts are imported (Skype itself stores those things).
The effect with SkypeIn would essentially be: Vonage without the fees (or for $30/year for SkypeIn)... no, better, because Vonage sounds like crap when I'm using unthrotteled bittorrent. This would justify the price of the hardware, and if the manufacturer could keep the costs low, it would also be very good for Skype/eBay and its userbase. Maybe Ebay could subsidize the costs a bit, and offer free SkypeIn for a year, since anyone who buys this will also probably buy SkypeOut minutes eventually.
That's parenthesis, singular. Parentheses (plural) are several examples of parenthesis, or a pair of brackets. The article is just wrong.
Now I only miss the ability to watch the downloaded pr0n with my eyes turned off...
Now, mod me down freely. My karma can't get any worse...
As a grey hat who has on more than one occaision slipped to the dark side, I happen to agree with you. However, in the name of being pedantic (about everything but my possible spelling mistakes):
Information wants to be free. That doesn't give you the right to access it. I want to have carnal drunken sex with Angelina Jolie... doesn't mean it is my right to do so. Like anything, I would have to work for it. And in this case I would have to work bloody hard to do so.
Don't think that you can't access my credit card numbers, if you do, well done, but if you used one exploit you found in your script kiddie tool box, or you didn't spend 3 month's analysing every weakness in the firewall, then you do not deserve what you have obtained, and thus you have no right to be accessing said data. Only the truly elite have this power (no that is not me) and you do not hear them screaming "hack the planet" at every opportunity.
This is a great idea, _but_ imagine the possibilities for rooting these devices. With a harddrive so large, and a processor at least powerful enough to handle BitTorrent, imagine the possibilities for a remote user to install malware on it. Mail relays, fake websites, even packet sniffers to capture your login as you use online banking.
Worse still, you can run various anti-malware and anti-virus tools on your desktop, but how do you plan to even detect your router being rooted, let alone repair it? (and no, that is not an invitation for the top 1% brainiac population to suggest ripping out the drive, re-installing the firmware, or running Linux on it - we're talking about the general public).
I think it's a great idea, but if it becomes popular and these are always-on devices with a lot of services running on them, that could be a problem.
...my NSLU2.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Will this do anything my *nix box won't?
Check out the cave on the east side of lake Hylia. Strange and wonderful things live in it.
I thought it read "Download Tourette's." I knew your computer could get viruses but neurological disorders too?!?!?!
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
Oh no! Macadamia_harold is downloading hot grits into Natalie Portman's pants.
For $200, I was thinking of getting an OmniFlash board and kit from J&K Microsystem for a lot of my "PC off" needs. I haven't thought of doing torrents with it, so I'm not sure if it has enough ram for the job. (No big fat GUI to feed; it might work.)
I don't really like the idea of piling more tasks on top of a wireless router. All I want from a wireless router is to be solid and secure. I'll add the bells and whistles to something less critical, thanks...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Read these 2 sentences and find the error. I can't understand how people miss things like this. There's a rapidly-expanding section of the home electronics market which revolves around "devices". The reason for the parentheses is that it's difficult to know how to label these gadgets, because they don't fit easily into any pre-defined categories. For those of you who are a little slow or lack vocabulary, "" are not parentheses.
...because I never shut off my 'puters.
Do not mark in this space. For official office use only.
This type of router would be much more functional if it had a proxy server capabilities with builtin virus scanner.
Though, Asus is starting something Linksys, Dlink and Netgear will probably jump on.
\
will it run linux?
Unfortunately, those of you with the new ASUS PCs will not be able to see it.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
"Oh, and 99% of the legitimate 99% is music. Its just legal http://bt.etree.org/ and http://www.archive.org/audio for starts."
Good thing we have Piratebay to keep them free.
I'd love to 0wn a few thousand of these babies for my interweb botnet.
Hack the OS, make the files appear as free space to normal users, and nobody will know the difference. It's not like I'll be slowing down their PCs or anything.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
How do you know that the independent music that you download is lawful? Heck, how do even the bands know that their music is lawful, given the subconscious copying doctrine?
Under the policies of many last-mile duopoly ISPs, you don't have the legal right to expose your "home servers" to the Internet over their privately owned network unless you upgrade from residential Internet service to business Internet service. Worse yet, through the tying practices that cities let the telcos get away with, this may entail an upgrade from residential wire-line phone service to business wire-line phone service or from residential cable television service to business cable television service. No, Speakeasy isn't available everywhere.
To be serious - there are rootkits out there that script kiddies use, but they need a way in first. If the router is not running much and has the admin tools all restricted to only work through the internal ethernet interface then there really are not very many ways in. I've seen a linux box that got rooted - after it had been sitting unpatched for a couple of years somebody decided it was a good idea to give all email users an executable shell, put a compiler on there, turned on telnet, let telnet be acessable from the internet, and one user had the password "coffee". I didn't even bother to work out how they got to root from there - the only thing to do is assign new passwords, build a new system and put the proir failure down to ignorance, incompetance and overconfidence.
Personally I think a router should have a read only OS in solid state media and no way to execute from read write media that is attached to it. Flashing new versions of the OS and applications should be only possible with explicit user intervention and from the internal interface.
ASUS a device with a cpu, ram, hard drive, networking, usb, and an OS, which downloads torrent files. And they're telling me that the computer is "turned off"??? They're idiots.
Why do they have a picture of a Linksys WAP54G on every page and list prices for them when the article is talking about a different router? Their other articles seem to have ads targeted at the subject of the article.
Can it check my email?
But you've got it backwards, we want it to use less power, so we can use more!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
So now people too cheap to pay for books, movies, cable TV, music, and software no longer have to pay to keep their 350 watt power supplies running all day either? What's the chance someone that cheap would actually pay for the router?
True enough, and that is quite a shame. However, I hate the idea that I need to store things on someone else's server (and therefore lose control of it) in order to have access to it over the internet. Along with everything else, a good, easy to set up, home server might start showing people why ISPs closing off ports is a bad thing. As it is, I think ISPs get away with it because most of their customers have no idea it's happening, and wouldn't know how to set up their own web server if they had port 80 open.
The Kuro box is nice that the HD is not included - I would like a larger HD than 160GB. However, the Kuro doesn't seem to have WiFi, unless I missed that. I do like that the Kuro has Gigabit - the Asus should, IMO. Both the Kuro and the Asus box are nice in that they don't pull down a lot of current, compared to a PC. And, I've got to say that I am starting to prefer the easier setup appliances - I don't have time to massage a linux distro to do what I want.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
I use the Kurobox for this. The kurobox is basically a modified version of the Buffalo link station but it is designed to be reloaded with a custom linux. Some pre-configured images are available and include tons of apps for torrent, dyndns, LAMP, e-donkey, samba and all kinds of other stuff. It has a USB port which you could use for another hard drive or USB NIC to turn it into a firewall or router although I'm sure most slashdot readers already have pretty good routers. I think linksys made a hackable NAS too but I haven't tried that one.
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
1. How much does this cost/where can I buy these? 2. how is the radio in this 2a. Does it have multiple SSID/client interfaces? 3. Is there an openSDK?
I really don't understand why that got modded so high. Basically, you've got your geeks and your average consumers. Of course the geeks have been able to roll their own solution for years. Do you think the average person is going to? Probably not. This is an end user consumer friendly product. Its got smooth edges so children don't poke their eye out. It can be recalled. It has probably been in front of some sort of focus group to see if average people can use it. There's a huge difference. I see this as news because this is one of the first mass production consumer products like this. That's why it's news.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I bought Asus WL500G Premium (wl500gp), a lighter version of the router from TFA. The hype is similar - Download with the PC turned off. The main difference is that wl500gp does not have a storage unit included and the user must attach one if wants to enjoy computerless leeching.
Bottomline:
- nice router - I live in an apartment, and I have all around coverage: 18MBps WLAN connection through a couple of walls, 1 - 1 1/2 feet thick each;
- buggy firmware - (e.g. the only way to set the date and time on router is to use the included and non-functional NTP client, no way to set or check the number of simultaneous NAT connections, no way to modify radio power)
- the Download Master does not work (the torrents fail to start)
- lame online support
I hope that the alternative firmware OSS projects (such as http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv2/index.php or http://www.wl500g.info/ or http://www.openwrt.org/ will provide a stable alternative.
Torrentflux is a webinterface for Bittorando running on Linux , also got support for Windows now...
3 24.0.html
I think the crew was aiming on thinking of making a embedded version :
http://www.torrentflux.com/forum/index.php/topic,
http://tomsnetworking.com/2006/08/11/qnap_ts101_na s_review/
r rent-router/
or lok at a review of the asus unit here: http://torrentfreak.com/review-the-wireless-bitto
Buffer overflow exploits don't normally work on secuirty built linux. Bit like the protection in Vistia in places.
Windows users have just be exposted to problems that have been not required.
Wouldn't it be cheaper (both power and price) to use a gigabyte of RAM? Sure you would lose everything at a powerloss, but this is a router, not a server. And if your Torrent does not fit completely, you could build up "credit" all night seeding the first half of your movie and then the next day boot your PC, synchronise your HD with the router and let the router start downloading the second half. Yes, you would need a synchronisation protocol a little more sophisticated then FTP, but how hard can it be? Same if you want it to host a small website; just have the website on your HD, and sync it to the router just before switching off your PC. Running a POP server could be a problem, but maybe the POP server could trick the remote SMTP server into delaying sending you the email until it can see your PC is turned on again?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
It does everything you ask for, except it has no internal hard drive so you have to connect an external USB/firewire one.
And it desn't do email, but you can get the firmware source from the website, and it supports site-to-site IPsec and other goodies. Installation of software is not complicated.
And it's a damn fine router.
how much the linux install can be customized. Can I get arbitrary packages working? Put together a pretty nice website?
What would be interesting is to see how easily you can destroy this device, and if it can be done quickly enough to be possible after a knock on the door and before you open to find the FBI outside. $260? Too much.
So move along here - nothing new to see, really...
-b.
This is kind old ( over a week now ) and the router is really not that great. The BT client is very buggy and have extremely limited capabilities compared to clients like Azureus. It is a great concept though even if it's a very pricy router. Embeded applications are slowly gaining momentum and this makes me a happy camper.
Even brings up the print dialog for you, but cancelling it is less annoying that clicking next...next...next...
I'm using an old Cobalt Qube2 as a router, proxy, and to run bittorrent clients. With a 250MHz MIPS Cpu, 32k 1st level caches, no 2nd level cache and a 32bit memory bus, this thing should be comparable in speed to the board you suggested, but it feels extremely slow with anything but the most trivial tasks by todays standards. It does use only 10-15W of power, and with 256MB Ram there's no paging at all, but the normal python based bt client is actually CPU-limited at about 300kB/s. Can anyone suggest a fast bittorent client that is comparable to btlaunchmanycurses and runs on a linux text console?
If you can still get one, meshcubes were sold as a kit for EUR 200 each, and at least had a 400MHz CPU. routerboard also has some products with 400MHz CPUs. If you have a slightly larger power and space budget, a VIA EPIA baord with 533MHz may be an interesting option, and will be significantly faster than any of the aforementioned embedded CPUs, but still slow by today's standards.
Radio Free America.
Can't you all see it?
Solar power, 12 volt.
Wireless routers. On the roof. Actally cheap PC's.
Add hard drives, and eventually super capacious solid-state mass storage with no moving parts.
Distribute and place millions, billions of them.
Access your local node via laptop.
Bittorrent that can move. Bittorrent that can easily be replaced as the Copyright Stazi finds them and destroys them.
No logs. No traces. An ghostnet, a dark cloud hovering over and above the internet, using IP and low power radio. I'd suggest NOT using the usual name servers.
Governments, and the rich men that now own them, should be afraid of their people. Without communications that aren't logged and monitored, there can be no free people, and they've nothing to fear.
And for all of you with the explosives/control analogy: we're talking about spoken words, written words, moving pictures here. I can understand why powerful men equate such things with explosives, but you are not they. Explosives kill people by blowing them up. Words blow up lies that powerful and stupid people put into our heads. Viva the words.
Does it run OpenBSD?
I'm asking because the Linksys WRT54G doesn't. I have tested 3 of those boxes. Connection just disappears for all connected nodes (you cannot even ping the router anymore) if you have at least one Mac connected to the LAN. First Linksys claimed my WRT54G box was dead and sent a replacement. However, those replacements had the same symptoms. Ultimately, they said that they officially only support Windows. But they also admitted that it should work, however it simply doesn't. I hate to say it as I own CSCO stock, but the Linksys WRT54G is just a piece crap. Don't buy it.
Tepples is trying to apply one case to all music. As I mentioned per our last conversation precedent doesn't stop a judge from ruling different in similiar circumstances. The majority of music presented to the same judge most likely would pass muster. Tepples fearmongering nonwithstanding (he still hasn't read the footnotes like I asked him to)
For a slightly larger form factor, I can recommend the PC Engines WRAP boards. They are 6"x6", but come with up to 3 100Mbit network connectors, 266MHz AMD Geode CPUs, 64 or 128MB of RAM and boot from a compact flash card. Mine has two miniPCI slots; one contains an Atheros 802.11a/b/g card (supports two antennae for each wavelength; four in total) and the other will probably gain a hardware crypto card at some point, when I start bothering with VPN things. It runs OpenBSD very happily (instructions for installing OpenBSD on a flash card).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Do they really think this through?
Probably not. I did. My storage router is non-wireless, and behind another router... which only forwards three WAN ports to it (HTTP, FTP, VPN). I also keep my wired and wireless devices on two other (separate) routers. Yes, I'm deeply paranoid.
If I had the cash, I might buy one of these just to put up with wireless on and no uplink, to see what the neighbors started storing on it. =)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
In Germany the Fritz!Box by AVM is quite popular. The regular firmware doesn't provide BT but once you install a fine mod it works pretty well in connection with its USB port. See a thread here: http://www.ip-phone-forum.de/showthread.php?t=9381 1 The cool thing about the Fritz!Box is it has a built in DSL-modem, wireless router and VOIP connector (S0 and analog). With the mod you can add pretty much anything to your Box (SSH, OpenVPN etc)
It probably uses a lot less power than your PCs, takes up a lot less space, and is probably much quieter.
MS has stated that an estimated 80% or so of features in Office are never used by most users. How many users actually have a legitimate need to do a mail merge? Or use vbscript?
Just because you don't want to use it doesn't mean you can't use it like that. With explosives the uses are heavily regulated so you probably don't even have a place to detonate them without violating any laws. You could decide at any time to download e.g. a Linux distro via Bittorrent so it has legitimate uses, whether you notice them is up to you.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
And now the router is gonna do it for us ?
Whats next ? Filesharing service directly from your isp ?
Share ahoy !
Read radical news here