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FCC Giving Away Wi-fi Routers For Broadband Tests

Posted by samzenpus on from the wireless-handouts dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will be giving away 10,000 Wireless-N routers as part of their program to perform a number of broadband tests, for the benefit of a better connection in the future. They are striving to work on improving a number of issues including latency, packet loss, connection speeds and much more."

5 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Re:$50 for your privacy by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 3, Informative

    My privacy is worth much more then a crappy router that will accidentally send all my browsing information.

    So... What type of sites do you browse that you don't care for the feds to know about? Anime Tentacle Porn usually isn't illegal, you know...

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  2. Re:stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Old news. This is already ongoing. It's a pretty darn decent Netgear (almost $100 on Newegg).

  3. Re:Proper Heading by macraig · · Score: 3, Informative

    Simple: the router must use custom firmware that performs bandwidth tests during idle periods and reports the results. Can't do that with any old random router off the shelf.

  4. Re:stupid by mcelrath · · Score: 3, Informative

    eventhough its one of the cheapest crap routers out there

    Ahem. The WNR3500L they're giving away is a linux-based (openwrt) high-end wireless router. It was $150 when new, now can be had for $80. Its successor the WNDR3700 retails for $185 and it's freaking awesome. A customizable linux-based router is precisely what I'd choose if I wanted to do an experiment like this.

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  5. Old news, but the router and tracking is awesome by Frozen-Solid · · Score: 3, Informative

    Old news, and it was even posted on Slashdot when the program started last summer. I've been running an FCC White Box for several months now and love it. The router is a high quality Netgear with QoS filtering and all the bells and whistles you expect out of a $100+ router. It beats the ever living crap out of my old Belkin Wireless N. The tracking software doesn't monitor actual sites or any actual private information. Just packet loss, ping times, download and upload speeds, streaming stability, voip stability, etc. The graphs and charts it spits out are extremely useful and I've been using them for the past 2 months when complaining to Mediacom about my slow speeds, packet loss, and horrible ping times. It keeps 2 weeks of hourly data, and after that just tracks it as an average/min/max for the day. http://i53.tinypic.com/35bt5ro.jpg

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