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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
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.
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.
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Well, I know it's a pain, but if you read the _whole_ article, it did say that it was shipped with Linux.
What's a sig? Pete Brubaker
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Anon: Have you not considered buying your dead relatives computers? It is the information age you know!
This just in, the RIAA has proof: There is life after death- refuses to share details. Film at 11.
Yeah, but it is just because they hate sharing so much.
A blog about stuff.
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.
\
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.
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.
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!
I'm sorry. I just have to reply to this.
/year or about $23 a month.
I'm starting to look around in the market for a NAS box. I've been in contact with Buffalo about their Terastation, and I have pending e-mails with other companies. The Terastation uses 80 watts when fully powered. It is not perfect, however as it never spins down the drives even if they arn't being used.
My windows box for comparison uses somewhere around 180 watts when ideling with the drives on.
If I multiply 180*24*365 I get 1576 Kwh / year. 180 watts does not sound like much, but look at this quote:
"Starting in July 2001, new energy standards went into effect. Since that time all 15 cubic foot top-freezer refrigerator (with no through-the-door ice or water features) are required to have an energy rating of no more than 450 kilowatt-hours per year, a similarly featured 18 cubic foot model needed to have a rating of under 485 kilowatt-hours per year, and a 22 cubic foot unit needed to have a rating of less than 535 kilowatt-hours per year." (From here)
My fridge costs me about $20 a month to run in electricity, according to a nice little power meter I picked up from thinkgeek a while back. My Windows box uses more then twice as much. Leaving my Windows box online all the time costs me MORE THEN MY DSL.
Now, the power usage of the Terastation is not much better... 683 Kwh
I don't mind spending cash on hardware. Spending money on power is just dumb, especially when I could be spending less.
My UID is prime and so is this number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
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.
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.