New OpenWRT Drops Support For Linux 2.4, Low-Mem Devices

hypnosec writes with word that the OpenWRT team a few days ago released the final version of the project's newest iteration, version 12.09 (codenamed "Attitude Adjustment"). "The final version doesn't support Linux 2.4, because of which the distribution wouldn't run on old router models, for example the Linksys WRT54G models, which have 16MB of RAM and CPUs clocked at 200MHz. The distribution is now based on Linux 3.3 and there is good news for the Raspberry Pi fans as the distribution now supports the credit card-sized computer, along with Ramips routers."

Comments

Time for a rename?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the OpenWRT project is dropping support for the very device that gave it its name.
Time for a new name?

Re:Time for a rename?

[petteyg359]

Why? Did the WRT350N cease to exist?

Re:Time for a rename?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Did the existing versions of the software cease to exist?

Keep using the old version (most-likely to be forked real soon now), if you want to continue to use archaic hardware.

Re:Time for a rename?

[ArcadeMan]

I suggest The Distribution Formerly Known As OpenWRT.

Re:Time for a rename?

[GameboyRMH]

I thought it was a short form for Wireless Router? I know it's in the names of many routers from many manufacturers, not just the old blue-face Linksys.

Re:Time for a rename?

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

OpenLART?

But... but... but...

[Anonymous Coward]

But Linux runs old older, slower hardware, right??? I can avoid throwing away my old stuff by installing Linux and putting it to good use, right? RIGHT????

Re:But... but... but...

[ganjadude]

well technically yes. I am sure that some other pissed off people out there will fork the revision and continue support for the version that is officially no longer supported. you see it happen all the time for example mySQL - MARIADB

Re:But... but... but...

[Lunix Nutcase]

Since when is MySQL no longer supported?

Re:But... but... but...

[davester666]

Since Oracle bought it.

Re:But... but... but...

[ganjadude]

My point was not that MYSQL was not supported but rather that it was forked to create MARIADB after ORACLE bought SUN. (not sure why I am being modded down people here should know that was what I meant)

Re:But... but... but...

[Runaway1956]

Yes - what are you squawking about? Tell you what - take Windows 7 or Windows 8, whichever you prefer. Slap it onto a ten year old computer. See how it crawls. Especially if the original purchaser decided to opt for the minimum amount of RAM. When you're tired of suffering, take that very same ten year old hardware, and install whichever flavor of *nix you care to install. Linux, BSD, Solaris - I don't care which.

None of the *nixes are going to turn that old hardware into a high performance machine, but any of them will keep your machine running pretty painlessly.

I'll note that the more ram installed, the better Windows will do. In that case, the difference between Windows and *nix will be less dramatic, but you're still going to see a difference.

Re:But... but... but...

[unixisc]

Depends on the version you use. If you are into newer versions that support the latest file systems and other features, it will certainly not run on older, slower hardware. But if that's not needed, since you are after all running the older hardware, then your older Linux would run just fine. The kernel would still run on 32MB of RAM, depending on the version you are using. Yeah, you can avoid discarding the older hardware by running the version of Linux that ran on it, but don't expect all the new features of Linux to be available on this one.

Brilliant

[Holi]

So they drop support for the routers everyone has and want you to build your own router from a raspberry. Sounds like a plan for success.

Re:Brilliant

[Microlith]

What a completely ridiculous comment.

Re:Brilliant

[CRiMSON]

Sounds like you need an attitude adjustment.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

You still demand php4 support, don't you? The WRT54G was first released in December 2002. That's 11 years ago, back when XP was fairly new. Upgrade.

Re:Brilliant

[ganjadude]

I KNEW IT!!! I knew I should be writing code for the apple ][ instead of IOS ....

Re:Brilliant

[morcego]

Pretty much par of course for them.
For years now OpenWRT is becoming more and more bloated, to a point it is hard to make it run smoothly in the standard base device (WRT54GL). I haven't been able to use the standard image for at least 3 years now, having to build my own removing as much bloat as I can...

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenWRT was never founded on core business models.

Besides, those that are capable of installing and running OpenWRT are likely just as capable of building their own router from a rasberry pi.

Re:Brilliant

[ArcadeMan]

I sense a great disturbance in the fork.

Re:Brilliant

[bobbied]

Using the Pi as a router does have it's interesting advantages and the price point is pretty close in that application as the smaller cheaper Pi would serve well in that capacity. Shame to drop support for the smaller devices, but you can beat yourself to death trying to support too many platforms.

By the way, the Pi offerings are not the only options out there. I'm seeing a lot of similar cards popping up out there.

Re:Brilliant

[sunking2]

And here I thought we were supposed to take all the people loving linux because it kept their old machines useful seriously.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it is, I guess when you don't want your software to be used you right it for devices most people don't have.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Why upgrade? Seriously? Shit works. Shit is faster than my cable modem service? Why poison the planet with another piece of expendable?

Re:Brilliant

[GameboyRMH]

You're still using an old-ass B router? You should be on an N router and considering switching to an AC router.

You'd have trouble finding tires for a Model T too.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a thought, but perhaps your time is more valuable than you are giving yourself credit for? I would imagine a new router would be much cheaper than the time you've had to spend compiling new images with less bloat. (Unless you are just doing it for fun, hobby, etc. and enjoy the effort and learning - in which case, please do continue).

Re:Brilliant

[BenBoy]

Raspberry Pi? Sounds like a plan for a rather cheap, capable repeater bridge to me, even if I don't feel like replacing my dinosaur 54GL. And if temperature is any indication (hint: it is), it's a heck of a lot more power efficient too.

Re:Brilliant

[silas_moeckel]

A R Pi has a single 10/100 Ethernet that's connected to USB 2.0. That does not seem like much of a router to me it might be useful for encryption bit it's can not handle current upper tier broadband speeds.

Re:Brilliant

[dj245]

So they drop support for the routers everyone has and want you to build your own router from a raspberry. Sounds like a plan for success.

The WRT54G and its derivatives are positively ancient in computer terms. They date to 2002- over 11 years ago. They can't really keep up with modern demands on routers. Gigabit ethernet is a really good thing if you have a file server in your LAN, and it is becoming increasingly worthwhile to have it on the WAN side also. The processor is slow and chokes on modern loads. There are a number of other routers out there that will run OpenWRT and have modern features and processing power. If you have one of the WRT54G series now, do you really need frequent updates on the firmware? The only computing equipment I even have from 2002 is my model M keyboard, some VGA cables, and some computer power cables- everything else from that era was obsolete a long time ago. Running a WRT54G nowadays is like using an Intel Pentium III with 256MB of RAM and a 30GB hard drive. Networking equipment generally has a longer lifetime than general computing equipment, but the WRT54G just doesn't cut it anymore.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

It took me all of 10 seconds to find tires for a Model T:
http://www.modeltford.com/item/TIRE2.aspx

They even come in white to:
http://www.modeltford.com/item/TIRE1WSR.aspx

As someone who has several WRT54G routers that are perfectly capable devices, this is sad news.

Re:Brilliant

[Microlith]

I don't know, 11 year old routers might be pretty uncommon. Hell, I'd suggest that it'd be a good time to upgrade. My Netgear WNDR-3700 has 64MB of RAM and 8MB of flash, so this will work fine for me. I'll be upgrading from 10.03.1 so the lack of an ancient, obsolete kernel like Linux 2.4 means nothing to me.

But hey, the older images are still there.

Re:Brilliant

[Narishma]

That's the model B. The model A the parent is talking about doesn't have ethernet support at all.

Re:Brilliant

[L4t3r4lu5]

A capable and cost-effective replacement for your aging A/B/G router.

Disclaimer: I own one. It works.

Re:Brilliant

[GameboyRMH]

Perfectly capable of reaching a one-generation-old bandwidth standard (at best) on both the wireless and wired LAN sides...you can still run the older firmwares on these devices. It's hardly sad news.

Re:Brilliant

[Lunix Nutcase]

Yes, which is still probably more than 10 times faster than most people's Internet connection.

Re:Brilliant

[Microlith]

I don't see how those old systems suddenly became useless. And not everyone feels compelled to stay on ancient kernels with crusty, old hardware.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it is, I guess when you don't want your software to be used you write it for devices most people don't have.

FTFY

Re:Brilliant

[ArcadeMan]

If it works, why upgrade it?

Re:Brilliant

[c]

The WRT54G and its derivatives are positively ancient in computer terms. They date to 2002- over 11 years ago. They can't really keep up with modern demands on routers.

It depends on your demands. My WRT54G is fine for 95% of the things I throw at it... about the only thing it chokes on is streaming 1080p video over wireless. Since my main media player is on ethernet, that's mostly a non-issue.

Admittedly, I'm in a very rural area and my ISP is over a fixed wireless connection which maxes out at 90's era DSL speeds, so I'm not exactly hammering on it like city folks would and I don't have to fight with 2.4GHz congestion.

Eventually I'll get around to replacing it. The added range of the newer wireless standards would be nice, and I'd love a USB port or two. But it's no hurry.

If you have one of the WRT54G series now, do you really need frequent updates on the firmware?

That's a legit argument. The only thing I've really wanted beyond the original Linksys firmware is QoS, sshd, and some of the security enhancements/fixes. Tomato from 2010 gives me everything I need.

Re:Brilliant

[ArcadeMan]

My cable internet is only 2Mbps. I'm not upgrading because it's enough for me and going with 5Mbps or 10Mbps would double or triple my monthly fee.

No, there's no other options where I live, the company has a real monopoly.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, so I can get these immediately at my local Tire place?

Not too likely, unless by chance they know I'm a customer already or they have them in stock by sheer chance of somebody else's order.

Re:Brilliant

[Altanar]

The main problem I've had is that every newer router I've tried in the 3 or 4 years have has had horrible reliability problems... dropped connections and the like. I got tired of messing with them and spent the $50 on the WRT54GL (which is what it's still going for on Newegg: and haven't had an issue like that since. Sure, the wireless is slower, but my WRT54GL's been running stably and consistently despite not having been rebooted in over 2 months. whereas the newest router I had required a full router reboot every couple days. That wasn't my doing. That wasn't a faulty hardware. That was the default setting in the router's setup page under its "maintenance" page. The default setting had the router set to reboot on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Do they make new routers that can maintain a stable connection for under $100?

Re:Brilliant

[GameboyRMH]

But still a small fraction of their wired LAN bandwidth. If you often transfer large files or stream HD video within your home network like I do, you can't afford to be generations behind or wired or wireless speed. There are still other maintained older OpenWRT firmwares that can work on these routers, dropping support for these relics in the latest release is no big loss.

Re:Brilliant

[fast turtle]

why in hell should I use an "N" router when everybody and their clan has one in my neighborhood? I've found that sticking with the "B" band works better, gives me a longer range and I don't suffer all the stinking interference that everyone using "N" does. Hell it's the same reason I switched back to a 900Mhz cordless phone. Better range and a lack of interference from all the other hardware crapping on the 5Ghz band (shit N routers).

Re:Brilliant

[silas_moeckel]

Well it supports USB to Ethernet and USB wifi adapters, adding them to the cost though.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

I will give up my trusty WRT54GL and Intel Pentium III with 256MB of RAM and a 30GB hard drive system when they pry them from my cold dead hands, or my mom kicks me out of her basement. Interweb is a fad. A P3 is more then enough power for slashdot. Crap, I have to go chase some kids off the front lawn..

Re:Brilliant

[Lothsahn]

Well, my WRT54G maxed out at 30Mb down/10Mb up. Given I have 62/15 service, I was severely bottlenecked by my router. Also, it doesn't have wireless N or 5Ghz, so my wireless transfer rates were capped at about 8-12Mbit. My new RT-N66U has far more range (at default power levels) than the WRT54G does, even at boosted power levels. I use my router for a VPN server, and the 200Mhz processor in the WRT54G was really struggling at that.

In general, I agree with you--I keep devices for a very long time to be environmentally friendly. I still use my WRT54G's as wireless bridges. But there is a reason to upgrade your router if you have tangible needs for the additional speed/range. Especially one from 2002.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

so... if you dont feel the need of hardware hupgrades and are perfectly satisfed of your routers, why do you feel the need of -software- upgrades?

Re:Brilliant

[tlhIngan]

I don't know, 11 year old routers might be pretty uncommon. Hell, I'd suggest that it'd be a good time to upgrade. My Netgear WNDR-3700 has 64MB of RAM and 8MB of flash, so this will work fine for me. I'll be upgrading from 10.03.1 so the lack of an ancient, obsolete kernel like Linux 2.4 means nothing to me.

Well, a bigger reason is that if you're on the faster internet service, ye olde WRT54GL is no longer fast enough. I think it's routing speed is fast for when it was released (50Mbps?) but it's no longer adequate in this age where a startling number are getting 25, 50, 100Mbps service (indeed, it's become the bottleneck). Even using it for 25Mbps might get iffy due to the low headroom available.

It was stupidly fast on release when few had 10Mbps service, but it seems the availability of faster service has rendered it out of date.

Especially with modern high end routers getting 750+Mbps speeds. Not fast enough for Google Fiber, but definitely enough with headroom for the top tier 250Mbps service available in some areas.

It's time for it to be retired. There are new generations of open routers available nowadays. Though, router power consumption is creeping upwards a bit - I'm sure you can build a PC that can do full wirespeed GigE routing and consumes under 50W, plus handle wifi and everything else and be pretty much fanless and quiet.

Re:Brilliant

[Holi]

Gee I thought the WRT54G was a G router.

Re:Brilliant

[TheoMurpse]

WRT54G is, as you might assume from the "G" at the end, a G router. In the United States, G is faster than the connection to the house. An order of magnitude faster, actually.

Re:Brilliant

[Lothsahn]

The ASUS RT-N66U is rock solid stable using Toastman Tomato. I've been running it for 3 months with no crashes, lockups, dropped connections, or other problems. Unfortunately, it's $170, not under your $100 pricepoint. I got mine on sale with a free USB HD, so it was really like $120 at the time. It's also nearly impossible to brick.

I also have experience with the WNR3500Lv1, which has worked great for me (stable for years with no lockups). I see it's listed for $60 at Amazon, however, there is a new v2 hardware out which is VERY different from the v1, and software support is radically different. If you could get your hands on an old WNR3500Lv1, it'll work great. If you order a new one, you'll probably get a v2, which is NOT what you want. It's not dual-band, though.

The RT-N66U appears to be what most of the Tomato devs use, so that's what I would recommend. To me, it's worth the extra $$, as I plan on keeping it for many years and the 5Ghz gives me great speeds in my house (62Mbit reliable at pings only 2ms slower than wired).

Re:Brilliant

[knarf]

Running a WRT54G nowadays is like using an Intel Pentium III with 256MB of RAM and a 30GB hard drive. Networking equipment generally has a longer lifetime than general computing equipment, but the WRT54G just doesn't cut it anymore.

Funny that, I still use a few Thinkpad T23's, Pentium IIIm inside. I upped the RAM to 768MB a long time ago - it would be expensive to do that nowadays - but they do indeed contain 20GB and 30GB drives. They are very usable machines, running some form of Linux (one Debian, two Ubuntu).

It was not that long ago they connected to the 'net using a WRT54GL. The wrath of Thor was a bit to much for that router so it got replaced by an Asus RT-N16 which, again, was killed by lightning not that long after. I'm now on my second RT-N16...

In other words, don't discount 'old' computer equipment just because it is old. Don't throw around nonsensical terms like 'modern loads' either, it makes your post sound like marketing drivel. While this older equipment is not suitable for playing more recent games, it still works fine for many other tasks.

Re:Brilliant

[bill_mcgonigle]

Gigabit ethernet is a really good thing if you have a file server in your LAN

yeah, but if you count up the 90th percentile, people use wireless AP's to connect their laptops to their cable or DSL connection to reach servers where the total link speed is less than real-world 802.11g performance. And Backfire will work just fine for that. Internet connection speeds aren't much different than they were in 2002 for most people; a 200MHz MIPS is plenty to handle 7Mbps.

I have a wndr3700v2 running Attitude Adjustment with wpad and luci-ssl installed, but that's me.

There is at least one exception: I was trying to help my folks get out from behind their double-NAT situation on FiOS and realized that the TV gets routed through IP, so the packet processing speed of their 54g will be insufficient, so I needed to turn back on that one. BTW, what a massive pain FiOS is to use your own router.

Re:Brilliant

[bobbied]

I said that it would serve fairly well in some applications as compared to the WRT hardware that got dropped. The Pi sure has limitations, but it's a pretty cheap platform that comes at a similar price point to what you can get WRT hardware for.

My real interest would be in the *other* cards out there at similar price points to the Pi. I think the Pi has at least spurred on the development of similar cards which are more capable (memory, CPU etc) and hopefully will lower the prices of such cards.

Re:Brilliant

[Hadlock]

I bought one last year. They're still for sale and being manufactured. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Re:Brilliant

[kenh]

Amazon is still selling them new for $50/each

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol. The fastest net I can get is 3.0 mbsp dsl. Not everyone lives in fucking new england.

Re:Brilliant

[armanox]

Depends on your area. I currently have 15/2 Mb/s D/U, and that's being phased out for 50/25 (a friend of mine has 150/65, and is probably going to jump to 300 soon).

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Security vulnerabilities?

Re:Brilliant

[armanox]

I'm going to assume it's a Tualtin P3? As long as it doesn't have the Intel graphics you should be running fine. I've got a Dell C400 that I use as a netbook (P3 1.2GHz, 1GB RAM) that does great until something tries to use the GPU (which also excludes modern Linux. Still runing RHEL 5 on that thing).

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent comment sponsored by Fox News.

Re:Brilliant

[Lumpy]

Yes. it's called quit playing with toys and run iPCop or other real firewall. I can do a lot more easier and it is brain dead easy to update myself. Built a nice mico ITX box with two ethernet ports into a router/firewall that is fantastic in every way and does not suck up all my time to manage it.

Re:Brilliant

[Lumpy]

"You'd have trouble finding tires for a Model T too."

Nope : http://www.cokertire.com/ Easy as pie. They even carry Model A tires.

Re:Brilliant

[Lumpy]

Yes you can. if you pull your head out of your ass and call them first they will order from Coker and have them there the next day. Why you got a rally race in 4 hours and you need tires?

But you seem to be the type that has his head firmly shoved up his rectum and likes it that way..

Re:Brilliant

[operagost]

802.11b uses the same 2.4 GHz band that G and N does. Yes, N uses both 5 and 2.4 GHz. In fact, from my experience most of your neighbors are probably NOT "crapping on the 5GHz band" because the low-end routers, notebooks, and tablets don't support it.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Router on a stick if it supports vlan

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Most cowards are like that.

Re:Brilliant

[Albanach]

I don't know, 11 year old routers might be pretty uncommon.

You can buy a wrt-54gl (the model with the original, larger, flash and ram) new from Amazon, today. Your netgear model is double the price.

Re:Brilliant

[lister king of smeg]

old is a moving target there is currently much faster old hardware. There reaches a point where something gets old enough that you should upgrade. ten years old for a router of that type is passed from old to ancient. remember just because the they aren't actively supporting it does not mean you can not compile and backport features yourself if it is that important to you otherwise just download the older version.

Re:Brilliant

[TheCRAIGGERS]

But still a small fraction of their wired LAN bandwidth. If you often transfer large files or stream HD video within your home network like I do, you can't afford to be generations behind or wired or wireless speed.

I call BS. A quick google search says Hollywood blueray is usually encoded around 25-35 Mb/s. So even an uncompressed video would stream just fine with an old 10/100 router and cat 5 cabling. And that's with no/minimal compression.

Big files, sure, I'll give you that. But I'd also argue the average person isn't moving files that large to and fro on their network too often.

Re:Brilliant

[makomk]

Most people don't change the firmware on their router either.

Re:Brilliant

[GameboyRMH]

I meant over the wireless. 100Mbps is enough for pretty much any video, although still painful waiting for transferring multi-GB files.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

>Why upgrade? Seriously? Shit works

Yeah. let's all just stick to Linux 2.2 because even with that shit works.

Re:Brilliant

[ArhcAngel]

I'm thinking an Alix board might be a better solution if you are looking at a R Pi as a possible solution. It costs more sure but it comes with all of the features you need (LAN/WAN port, WiFi) built in.

Re:Brilliant

[hairyfeet]

Hell go look on newegg and you'll see the majority of routers being sold today aren't any faster than the WRT54G, heck most of them still don't have IPV6 support.

Its a router folks, router companies aren't exactly known for rushing to embrace new tech. Honestly I'd be amazed if even 15% of the new routers coming out would support this change.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a wrt54g v1.1, its now 10 years old. The value in keeping it going is somewhat limited by the fact I can't upgrade its wireless chipset to a newer standard. Really it is about time I upgraded to something with support for 802.11n, or maybe even something that can do 802.11ac.

Re:Brilliant

[SCHecklerX]

If you have to do that, might as well put a full-featured firewall on instead. Pfsense, for example.

Re:Brilliant

[theMAGE]

Sure, Linux (and BSD) allows you to maintain (or to pay somebody to maintain) old kernels on old hardware (without allowing a third party to interfere). It does not mean that whatever you need will fall from the sky, on the back of a unicorn.

Free as in freedom, not as in beer.

Re:Brilliant

[robot5x]

I have a pi and this would be a useful project for me (in need of a new router)

But I'm keen to know how feasible it really is. As poster says below, the spec isn't great and even now I'm getting frequent ethernet dropouts on my openelec install (I haven't looked into this yet, so I dunno if it's software or power supply-related).

Any real world experience out there using pi as a SOHO router?

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Immediately and the next day are not the same thing.

And when I want tires, yes, I want them the same day. I don't know about you, but I've never bought tires on order, because when I need a new tire, it's an immediate need, not something I scheduled in advance.

But you're the type of person who piles himself in his own shit, then complains about the smell.

Re:Brilliant

[robot5x]

Do they make new routers that can maintain a stable connection for under $100?

Yes - TP-LINK do. Currently $50 at amazon.

I'd never heard of them until getting this model a while back. Plus it looks like something designed by the people responsible for Knight Rider (I like it, but apparently routers are also fashion accessories nowadays), but it's a really good unit.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Sucks to be you.
I pay $16 for a 20Mbps DSL connection.

I bet there are other options in your area, you are just too stupid or lazy to look around. Try your local phone company, or even sattelite provider if you don't care too much about latency.

Re:Brilliant

[robot5x]

+1 agree.

I posted about this router above. It can be had for $50 at amazon right now.

Re:Brilliant

[PopeRatzo]

So they drop support for the routers everyone has...

"Dropping support" does not mean you won't be able to get an OpenWRT for your old device that's about to go tits-up anyway. The older versions of OpenWRT will still work, won't they?

What the hell are you going on about?

raspberry

Nobody's forcing you to go fruity.

Re:Brilliant

[idunham]

> I bought one last year. They're still for sale and being manufactured. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Yup, and I've got one that's probably about 5 years old.
Specifically, the WRT54G v8, which needs a micro build (2 MB flash, 8 mb ram).
I'm half wondering if it would be possible to build a musl/busybox system with a newer kernel...

Re:Brilliant

[niteshifter]

Yes. I've a pair of Buffalo WZR-HP-AG300H dual band / high power. $90 US via Amazon. I use the 5GHz radios as N dual channel to get a solid 250+ Mbps between backend (where the audio / video servers live) to the "front" (WAN connection and media play 'puter) plus two 2.4 GHz WAPs in mixed mode. "High" power on this means 20 dbm. I had the radios turned down to 8 dbm, but that ended this past Christmas with the explosion in number of 802.11W ** devices around my neighborhood. The router features two choices for firmware built in: Yer basic easy-peasy setup tool or DD-WRT with all the fun stuff.

** 802.11 Whatever. I'm old and tired of alphabet soup.

Re:Brilliant

[idunham]

> Sucks to be you.
> I pay $16 for a 20Mbps DSL connection.

> I bet there are other options in your area, you are just too stupid or lazy to look around. Try your local phone company, or even sattelite provider if you don't care too much about latency.

Have you ever seen the prices for satellite? In my area it starts at $70.
10 Mbps down/1.5 Mbps up DSL for $25 here,IIRC (my brother pays for it, and it's "fast enough to use"). But the same plan would cost $35 now and that's the cheapest DSL gets here.

So here's your "clueless provincial urbanite" award.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, why upgrade a decade old router to the new kernel? Obviously you aren't using it for anything performance sensitive or cutting edge. With any other distro I might buy "security fixes", but OpenWRT's packages are perpetually 2 - 5 years out of date anyway (in large part due to the patching required to support such ancient and low spec hardware).

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't all that useful for encryption. I set mine up to terminate a VPN and host a SOCKS proxy for anonymous access out... it could barely move 200kbps without pegging the CPU at 100%.

Re:Brilliant

[jgoshorn]

OpenWRT is for your wireless router. For example, I have a BSD-based firewall on a server, but I also have a wireless router. OpenWRT or in my case dd-wrt runs on the wireless router and provides a great deal of extra and useful functionality. This is not about the firewall.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, Agreed. I just bought a fit-pc2i value and installed Smoothwall. May change to IPCop if I feel the need.
Works a treat.

Re:Brilliant

[ArcadeMan]

I've been watching for other options for the last four years, aside from $100+ per month for satellite with monthly caps of 2GB, there's nothing but the local cable company.

Re:Brilliant

[morcego]

You are probably thinking of a home or even a soho environment.

However, using a WRT box (as I call them) has other advantages, including power consumption, it is fanless (less noise and less prone to fail), has 5 programmable ethernet ports (multilink, load balancing etc), is cheap, easy to maintain and fast to replace.

It is choosing the right tool for the right job, mostly. Your ITX box is a good choice sometimes (minus IPCop). Other times, a WRT box is better.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Lucky you, I have 3Mbit down and 768Kbit up, my WRT54G is just fine for it.
When someone, anyone, offers internet speeds in this area of 30Mbit, maybe I'll think about it... think it'll be a long wait though.

Re:Brilliant

[T-Bone-T]

I get 15mbps cable internet, the second-lowest tier, out in the boonies. My parents can get 6mbps wireless and they live even more in the boonies than I do. Yes, even in the middle of nowhere the WRT54GL is getting very close to being the bottleneck.

Re:Brilliant

[T-Bone-T]

You really should double-check your facts before you spot off something that is easily verifiable. Out of 388 wireless routers on Newegg, 14 of them are 54mbps or slower and 121 are 10x or more faster. Newegg makes it difficult to evaluate your IPv6 statement, though. Of the first 3 "featured" wireless routers, 2 mentioned IPv6 support while the third didn't say either way. Searching yielded 4 routers, none of which were the 2 "featured" routers I found that had IPv6 support. Router companies aren't exactly rushing but even a turtle can travel considerable distances given enough time.

Re:Brilliant

[raju1kabir]

My slowest option is 25mbps.

I know many people still have slower connections, but OpenWRT doesn't really have anywhere else to go in terms of supporting devices that are no longer being manufactured (or soon to be discontinued). It's much more interesting and productive for them to focus on adding new features that take advantage of new hardware and modern trends in connectivity.

Anyone who wants/needs to use older hardware is still free to do so with the existing versions of OpenWRT.

Re:Brilliant

[raju1kabir]

Have you ever seen the prices for satellite? In my area it starts at $70.

Hint: it's satellite. Your "area" is huge and in almost all cases encompasses multiple countries.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

You should take some medication for that, or learn to be less of a doooshbag.

you also throw fits if you dont get things your way as well I see..... What an immature baby.

Re:Brilliant

[idunham]

And in my case, I live near the largest and cheapest (especially when it comes to internet) city in Northern California. Don't assume that everyone on the internet is from Northern Europe, or that internet connections are always as cheap as they are where you are.

Re:Brilliant

[raju1kabir]

Okay. My point is that satellite ISPs have a huge footprint. I have brought dishes from the Midwestern USA to Central America, and from Europe to the Middle East, and they worked fine. You can shop around more than you think. Just because someone has a distributor agreement for your town doesn't mean it's really the only option.

Re:Brilliant

[losinggeneration]

I tend to agree, the potential issue is power consumption (which tends to be higher with x86/x86_64.) My old AMD K5 with 32 Mb RAM, two ethernet cards and a wireless card served me for many years. It was running a minimal Debian with iptables & ssh. I never measured power consumption, but I'd wager it was higher than an off the shelf router.

Blogspam

[Nimey]

And now for some karma whoring^W^W^Wthe actual details:

The OpenWrt Release Team would like to announce the final Attitude Adjustment Release (12.09).

Highlights since Backfire 10.03.1:
Dropped support for legacy Broadcom target (brcm-2.4)
Switched to Kernel 3.3
Switched to uClibc 0.9.33.2
Switched x86 images from ext2 to ext4 filesystem
Improved parallel building support
New netifd implementation to replace the old script based network configuration system
Switched to shadow passwords
Support for external overlay filesystems in release images
Various firewall enhancements
Wireless driver updates and stability improvements
Experimential support for 5 and 10 MHz channels in ath5k and ath9k
Package updates and dependency fixes
New target support: ramips, bcm2708 (Raspberry Pi) and others
Support for further router models
Support for building with eglic instead of uClibc
Support for 6RD configuration
Support for bridge firewalling in release images

Known Issues:
Most open tickets at the time of the final builds
Lower end devices with only 16 MiB RAM will easily run out of Memory, for bcm47xx based devices is Backfire with brcm-2.4 recommended

More detailed information: https://dev.openwrt.org/query?status=closed&group=resolution&milestone=Attitude+Adjustment+12.09
Detailed core changelog at: https://dev.openwrt.org/log/branches/attitude_adjustment
Detailed packages changelog at: https://dev.openwrt.org/log/branches/packages_12.09
Binaries can be downloaded at http://downloads.openwrt.org/attitude_adjustment/12.09/

Re:Blogspam

[Black Parrot]

And now for some karma whoring^W^W^Wthe actual details:

You left out the most important part:

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT (12.09, r36088)
    * 1/4 oz Vodka
    * 1/4 oz Gin
    * 1/4 oz Amaretto
    * 1/4 oz Triple sec
    * 1/4 oz Peach schnapps
    * 1/4 oz Sour mix
    * 1 splash Cranberry juice
Pour all ingredients into mixing
tin with ice, strain into glass.

(Reformatted to please Slashdot's filters.)

Re:Blogspam

[Holi]

If that's the attitude adjustment someone else said I need, I am down for it.

Re:Blogspam

[Anonymous Coward]

Why 3.3 kernel? 3.4 and 3.2 kernels get longterm support.

Re:Blogspam

[Nimey]

Routers don't get their kernels or distributions updated all that often, so a kernel being LTS probably doesn't matter in this space.

My 54GL still has a 2.4.20 kernel.

Re:Blogspam

[morcego]

Routers don't get their kernels or distributions updated all that often, so a kernel being LTS probably doesn't matter in this space.

My 54GL still has a 2.4.20 kernel.

2.4.37.9 on mine. (10.03, r20728).
No complain, really.

Rasberry Pi

[Anonymous Coward]

So now it runs on Rasberry Pi?
Just what I needed, a router with a single network interface!

Hype

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you have to support the RaPi because that's where the attention is. It's still a complete mismatch. The cheap RaPi doesn't even have an ethernet port and the less cheap one has a single network port, but it's connected via a buggy USB port and shares bandwidth with any other network device you add on and, more importantly, with USB attached disks. There are much cheaper routers available which have much more flexible network peripherals, like 5 port switches that allow each port to be a separate network, or you know, gigabit ethernet. And those come with a case, wireless lan and a power supply.

there's a solution for all us with older hardware

[iggymanz]

it's called BSD

Sigh...

[Black Parrot]

A few seconds at openwrt.org will reveal that OpenWRT is a specialized Linux distribution, and they've simply migrated to the 3.3 kernel. Kind of like Ubuntu 10 migrated to 2.6, lo those many years ago.

Maybe this qualifies as news for some people, but it's certainly not something to get your panties in a bunch over.

Re:Sigh...

[hobarrera]

It's not just the linux kernel upgrade that matters here, but also the end-of-support for "low memory devices". IMHO, though, 16MB is a pretty large amount of memory for a home router.

Re:Sigh...

[skids]

I'm also a bit concerned about this "netifd" creature. I'll have to figure out how to wedge it onto something I'm not using in production in order to play with it, but it seems at first blush to be removing a lot of scripting capabilities surrounding the network event system, which I use a lot, in ways that are not expressable/supported in /etc/config/network. It also takes the configuration further away from matching what happens on a normal linux host, which will create more of a dichotomy to code on both sides of.

The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[Above]

The WRT54G came out in 2002. The newer WRT54GL version was released in 2005. While these were phenomenal products with a long lifespan, they are obsolete by any standard. Things like no N support, no Gigabit Ethernet, and the lack of CPU and Memory to do cool things have been huge issues for a while.

Serious users have already moved on. Platforms like the Netgear WNDR3700v2 are cheap, easy to find, and offer modern features. No one is suggesting rolling your own from a Raspberry will be the most popular option, but that enabling it will be a cool option for many hackers.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[Nimey]

I'm still using my 54GL with Tomato Firmware on it. Tomato seems to have died (last update for the mainline was in June 2010) but it seems fine, aside from not supporting newer things like IPv6 (software limitation), 802.11n, or GigE (hardware limitations), all of which are merely "nice to have" right now.

I do plan to replace the old beast, but will wait until my ISP finally brings out IPv6 support so that I can have the best possible router within my budget when that finally happens.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[Anonymous Coward]

WNDR3700v1 running 24/7 for the last 4 years - first year on stock firmware, another 2 years on DD-WRT, then a month on OpenWRT, then switched back to DD-WRT (openwrt would hang after running for a couple of days)

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[synapse7]

I'm using this flavor of tomato and it has been great for me and sees quite regular updates.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tomato seems to have died (last update for the mainline was in June 2010) but it seems fine

On the same basis, OpenWRT backfire 10.03.1 will continue to exist for users needing to use 54GL devices

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[Lothsahn]

Tomato isn't dead... The main site isn't being updated--the devs either don't have access or don't update the site.

The two main branches of Tomato are:
Toastman: (What I use) http://www.4shared.com/dir/v1BuINP3/Toastman_Builds.html#dir=zBnbpdpY
Shibby: http://tomato.groov.pl/

I've been using Toastman tomato on a WNR3500Lv1 and a ASUS RT-N66U for months now. If you're going to get a new router, I'd strongly recommend the RT-N66U, because the WNR3500L has a v2 which is totally different hardware. In addition, the RT-N66U is very fast, stable (never crashed), nearly impossible to brick and is dual-band. The RT-N66U is $170, and it's been worth every penny. Signal output is very strong--I can pick up my internet in my neighbor's house, without adjusting transmitter output power. In addition, the devs appear to use the RT-N66U's personally, so it has the most testing.

Tomato has been rock solid, stable, and an excellent daily driver for me for the last 5 years or so. I strongly recommend it, and my friends and neighbors use it and have been very happy with it. Do update to Toastman or Shibby--they're doing an excellent job fixing issues and keeping things current.

I still use my WRT54G's as wireless bridges throughout my house, but they do show performance issues when I go above 10MBps Upload/30MB Download.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[Nimey]

Hmm. OK, I'm seeing several builds for routers in that family but no guidelines as to which will work on a real 54GL with 4MB of flash storage.

I'm interested in these features from build.png: IPv6, OpenVPN, kernel 2.6 if possible. That points me to using either the Max, miniVPN, or VPN-nousb builds. Of those, the MIPSR1 Max build is 5.8MB so too big. MiniVPN is 3.7MB so I suppose it'd fit, and for kernel 2.4 there's the VPN-nousb build at 3.4 MB.

Am I on the right track here?

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[Anonymous Coward]

...Serious users have already moved on. ...

Don't s'pose you have some kind of reference on this statement?

Or, perhaps you are, in all your glory, the definer of "serious"? :-)

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[Anonymous Coward]

Independent of the actual flavour of your preferred router OS, once you want IPv6, you also want kernel >>2.6 - which in turn needs more than 16 MB RAM. 4 MB flash and IPv6 is, due to the additional userspace requirements also getting tight, but possible - once you add VPN into the mix, 4 MB flash won't be sufficient - and neither are 200 MHz mips or 16 MB RAM.

Yes, you might be able to make it fit (probably either IPv6 or OpenVPN), but not comfortably - and at serious performance implications. The WRT-54GL is really obsolete by now, the baseline pretty much is ~400 MHz mips32, 32 MB RAM and 8 MB flash (with significantly better specs not being much more expensive, plus the added benefits of GBit/s Ethernet, dual-radio, etc.) - selling for less than the WRT-54GL now.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to second the RT-N66U... very sweet router (and it's actually only $140 these days)... and I do the same thing with my old WRT55G :)

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[ThatsNotPudding]

Signal output is very strong--I can pick up my internet in my neighbor's house, without adjusting transmitter output power.

"Planes and satellites do occasionaly fall out of the sky around here, but hey: TANSTAAFL."

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[Hadlock]

Toastman Tomato is a great release

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[hairyfeet]

I don't think that's the problem hoss, its the fact that they are suggesting using the RPi, which has 1 lousy Ethernet plug and USB 2.0 as a suitable replacement for a fricking router that has most people going WTF.

To use a slashdot car analogy that would be like Ford saying your truck is obsolete so here is a motor, build yourself a replacement. The "solution" isn't one, its a piss poor substitute for an actual router and this is coming from somebody that actually likes the RPI, its great for things like rocketry or remote planes or all kinds of cool stuff but a router? I'd say that is trying to jam a square peg in a round hole, not everything can be done easily with a RPi nor should it.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[hairyfeet]

The RT-N66U is $180, The WRT54G is $50...kinda not really comparable, hell an Apple airport is cheaper. How about showing us one under $100 that will run the new/newer stuff?

Oh and if it isn't wireless so much the better as the first thing I have to do with a wireless router is disable the wireless part, between all the interference from having so many in a large apt complex on the same frequency and the script kiddies constantly pounding on the firewalls looking for somebody to leech off of? Not really worth messing with.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[Dadoo]

If you're going to get a new router, I'd strongly recommend the RT-N66U

I understand what makes ASUS think the RT-N66U is worth $60 more than an RT-N16, but does it really make a difference, if you're just using it for a home router?

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[robot5x]

How about the TP-LINK WR1043. Costing equivalent of $80USD here in NZ, probably cheaper in US, I didn't look.

I got one recently when I was looking at ways to manage per-user data usage quotas at home. I have a lodger who is hammering my meager 40gb monthly allowance and with the gargoyle firmware I can throttle or kick him off the LAN when quota is exceeded. This firmware is based on openwrt I believe.

I was running tomato on WRT54-GL before this, but lack of gigabit ethernet was another motivation for me to switch up.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[unixisc]

The WRT54G came out in 2002. The newer WRT54GL version was released in 2005. While these were phenomenal products with a long lifespan, they are obsolete by any standard. Things like no N support, no Gigabit Ethernet, and the lack of CPU and Memory to do cool things have been huge issues for a while.

Serious users have already moved on. Platforms like the Netgear WNDR3700v2 are cheap, easy to find, and offer modern features. No one is suggesting rolling your own from a Raspberry will be the most popular option, but that enabling it will be a cool option for many hackers.

Okay, so how is OpenWRT's IPv6 support? Since it's so good that it's okay to drop support for the G?

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[UnknownSoldier]

So I'm supposed to pay $150 for a brand new router to replace a working box w/ Tomato that hasn't been touched in 4+ years ??

When it finally dies THEN I'll look into replacing the WRT54GL workhorse.

The first rule of networking: If it ain't broke, don't fuck with it.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[robot5x]

ok I just checked - it costs $50 in the US according to amazon. Amazing value!

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[Anonymous Coward]

Signal output is very strong--I can pick up my internet in my neighbor's house, ...

Sigh. And here it goes one more person who thinks stronger signal power output equals better wifi.

I have to say, kids who find the "power output" setting of their routers are the second biggest problem faced by urban wifi, just behind the people who don't understand channel collisions and set their routers to channels 2,3,4,5,7,8,9 or 10 (or channels 2,3,4,7,8,10,12 in Europe) because it is "less crowded".

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[synapse7]

Yeah, tomato-ND-1.28.5x-108-VPN.trx looks to me what you'd be looking for. I use the ipv6 tunnel and it works great, lots of other neat features, however I'm using it on an e3000.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[BadgerRush]

And just in case someone runs to the defence of the overlapping channels: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/wireless/technology/channel/deployment/guide/Channel.html

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[chihowa]

Not to mention, off all the things the Pi is great at, network throughput on either the built-in ethernet port (which hangs off USB) or a second USB attached adapter don't even make the list. Hooray for crazy unpredictable latency spikes as you peg the CPU and poor overall throughput.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[Nimey]

OK, so you think kernel 2.6 wouldn't work so well with my hardware? Fair enough, it's pretty old.

I don't seen an obvious HOWTO on his webpage. Can I install his firmware by going into stock Tomato's interface for upgrading firmware, rebooting, and then clearing NVRAM?

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[dwye]

How many residential cable or DSL modems have Gigabit Ethernet, that your wireless router would need to support it? Or are you buying cheap stuff and replacing its kernel with your own Linux, for work?

As to supporting N, that would just let my neighbors sponge off of my connection, or cause me to interfere with theirs. I already cover our yard. If you need it, though, go ahead.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[vlueboy]

My 2007 router has had native and DDWRT support, but the telco only offers DHCPv6 to its 50Mbps fiber clients. No service in my building because they don't care about wiring up the landlord's property for now.

Meanwhile, their DSL offering was supposed to pump IPv6 late last year since the fiber pilot program has been working. Their website FAQ has just stopped being updated on the matter. It reminds me of Firefox's Electrolysis project page (or what you may know in Chrome as multi-process tabs)... vaporware stinks in software, but even more in hardware.

Software at least comes down the pipe eventually, but hardware must be supported from the core out, which is what makes it so expensive and slow to reach the home user. The slow switch to Wireless A, G, N (stage by stage) and now to 5Ghz is more proof of just what kind of timeframes we are talking about. My 6 year old router offers so many features I cannot use due to a sucky ISP. Since IPv6 is an industrial product that benefits enterprises more than a home-based solution, you'll have to wait a long time before dropping your IPv6 tunnel solutions so you can swap your router.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[hairyfeet]

Looks good, I bookmarked it, thanks. I'll still have to kill the wireless,last thing I want is my network slowed to a crawl from script kiddies (or worse, they hauled a guy across the way off in cuffs the other day for downloading CP) but it looks like it'll run the latest and greatest...any idea if it'll support IPV6? As i can't seem to find a thing about IPV6 on it anywhere and I don't see a point in tossing an IPV4 router (Zonenet, nothing fancy but its built like a tank) for another IPV4 only router. if this thing supports IPV6 I'll be snatching it in the fall as i hear that is when they will first start testing having IPV6 alongside IPV4 here.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[hairyfeet]

Its the same thing I pointed out when someone suggested using an RPi for a carputer to record cams, its just not built for that kind of stuff and doesn't have the horse to force it to do the job with any reliability or consistency. Hell if you want a DIY router you'd be better off getting one of those little Via Pico carputers, those at least are dual cores with built in support for AES encryption and are around $150 with one or two PCIe slots. At least that would have enough throughput to get the job done, hell one of those $70 bobcat boards i use as an upgrade to the shitty old P4s I find in offices would be a better router than an RPi, it was just never made to have a ton of data streaming through its itty bitty brain.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[FLaSh SWT]

Here is the main place to go for all Tomato development, all current developers are active here:
http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?forums/tomato-firmware.33/

Last year I upgraded from a WRT54GL with original Tomato to an Asus RT-N16 running Toastman's build. Got 365 days of rock solid stability before upgrading to a newer build with VLANs and Multi-SSD.

In my mind the RT-N16 has replaced the WRT54GL as the standard open source router for new installs.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[Lothsahn]

The RT-N16 doesn't have dual-band capability. Getting 62Mbit (my internet download speed) on 2.4 GHZ can be challenging, but it's not a problem on 5Ghz. For internal transfers, the 5GHZ goes even faster. I work from home--paying an extra $60 for my setup really isn't that big of a deal to me. Over a 5 year lifetime, that's $12/yr and I kept my last router for 12 years...

The $60 pays for a second transmitter and antennas on the 5GHZ band. Worth it to me.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[robot5x]

...any idea if it'll support IPV6?

definitely not out of the box. TP-link site has a page where ipv6-ready routers are specificed, and this model isn't there.

there is a custom openWRT image for the 1043 with ipv6 support, but only with a lot of caveats by the looks.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[Above]

OpenWRT's IPv6 support is what I would call "usable". I do some IPv6 work and change home gateways regularly testing various IPv6 things, and OpenWRT isn't bad. The UI still needs some work to make it easy to use, but all the basic features are there. A couple advanced ones require manually editing config files. A basic tunnel and LAN setup should just work.

I've been extremely pleased with the combo of a Netgear WNDR3700v2 and OpenWRT.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[Above]

For a lot of users the speed of the modem is not germane to the need for Gigabit Ethernet.

My need for GigE, and 802.11n wireless is because my WiFi only laptops backup to a wired NAS device. The SSD's in the laptops are quite happy to saturate 802.11n at 300Mbps, and would be bottlenecked on the other side without 802.11n. Back when we had G-only one laptop backing up made the WiFi nearly unusably slow for everyone else, now with 802.11n that doesn't occur.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[hairyfeet]

Well so much for that, thanks anyway. Why anybody is still making IPV4 only routers I don't know, this is one place where the gov really should step in and say "That's it, IPV6 capable or its not brought in" because all an IPV4 router is now is landfill fodder, its pretty damned obvious most places will have IPV6 rolled out in 4 years or less, probably less as the addresses run out.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[raju1kabir]

How many residential cable or DSL modems have Gigabit Ethernet

All the modems provided by both cable companies in this country have gigabit ethernet. Otherwise who's going to upgrade to their 100/150/200/etc tiers?

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[dwye]

Our phone company must have stuck us with their refurbished obsolescent junk then (we do not have one of the high tiers), because our DSL modem doesn't support Gigabit Ethernet, at least according to all reports.

Neither did the Comcast modem that it replaced, but that had been working well for almost four (4) years, and replaced one that worked for eight (8) years.

Re:The WRT54G had a good run, but it's obsolete.

[Anonymous Coward]

From my experience, OpenWRT has excellent IPv6 support. I was running a tunnel to "Hurricane Electric" for a while (using the "6in4" package), but now I use my AT&T DSL (using the "6rd" package).

As far as hardware goes, I recommend the WRT160NL, TL-WR1043ND or TL-WDR4300 .

From IIGS to 3GS

[tepples]

I knew I should be writing code for the apple ][ instead of IOS

The first hint might have been when Apple named the iPhone 3GS after the Apple IIGS.

Re:From IIGS to 3GS

[JustOK]

They named most of their products after the IIGS

Pi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if I could put this on a Pi, why? It only has one NIC on board. A router requires a minimum of two NICS to function as a router.

So for a Pi to be used as a firewall\router, you would need to purchase a USB NIC and take up one of the USB ports. While not impossible, it could lead to configuration issues.

Now, if they were to release a Pi with two onboard NICS, I would be all over this.

Re:Pi?

[Nimey]

So the Pi could be a wireless access point. Those only need 1x Ethernet + wireless.

Some people don't use wired Ethernet anymore.

Re:Pi?

[Anonymous Coward]

The USB hub chip integrates an ethernet port, so the "onboard" NIC is a USB-NIC as well.

Re:Pi?

[kwark]

"A router requires a minimum of two NICS to function as a router."

No it doesn't. There are things like aliases and vlans that make routing possible with 1 nic.

Re:Pi?

[Anonymous Coward]

And we call those people idiots

Re:Pi?

[Nimey]

Your mother is a whore.

Re:Pi?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to check "Post Anonymously" and labeled yourself an @$$h014. I know you're not an @$$h014. It's unfortunate.

Re:Pi?

[Nimey]

Your mother is still a whore, and I can spell "asshole" without looking like a naughty 12-year-old boy.

Re:Pi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mother is a whore!

Artifact title

[tepples]

People have their underwear in a bunch over the fact that "OpenWRT" has become an artifact title. It no longer supports the appliance after which it was named (the WRT54G).

Re:Artifact title

[Microlith]

So the original device is being retired and the name lives on. If you're insistent, the Linksys WRT160NL and Linksys WRT350N v2 are supported still as they have 32MB of RAM each. But it's supported on such a wide array of other devices, I still don't see why this is any reason to throw up a fuss.

AR430W

[Anonymous Coward]

As well as various other airlink hardware may still have 4 meg flash and 16-32 megs of RAM.

Additionally: Why does changing the kernel require that much more memory for the same featureset?

Kinda makes you wonder...

Re:AR430W

[Microlith]

Kinda makes you wonder

Not really. 2.4 didn't have an IPv6 stack last I recall. Combined with the fact that 2.4 and 3.3 have little in common (hell 2.6.0 and 2.6.39 had little in common) and 3.3 has way more in terms of features, I'm not surprised that 16MB of RAM was a little too constraining.

Re:AR430W

[armanox]

Kernel 2.4 is a completely different beast then version >= 2.6.0. That was why the version went from 2.4 to 2.6 - back then the second number incremented for super major changes.

Re:AR430W

[Anonymous Coward]

come on... the first parts of IPv6 were added to kernel 2.1.8 - as the rather outdated IPv6-HOWTO tells you...

Post the link

[hduff]

Somebody post the link to the latest version that uses the 2.4 kernel, so this can be a useful Slashdot bookmark.

Does it support HFS+ now?

[jbssm]

For me and many Mac users the question is: Does it support HFS+ for a connected external drive now?

Previous versions didn't (neither does DDWRT), although you could find the drivers in some obscure place you could not make it work because of kernel support (you could use the HFS, minus +, in some way just to read tough). So far, as I'm lead to believe, only Tomato firmware correctly supports HFS+. I didn't' test it myself tough, so I still take that with a bit of salt.

Re:Does it support HFS+ now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off Mac fag. Format your shit ext3 and use MacFUSE.

Re:Does it support HFS+ now?

[armanox]

Last I checked (which was kernel 2.6.18 IIRC) HFS+ was supported by the kernel, but only if journaling was off.

Re:Does it support HFS+ now?

[vlueboy]

I don't know where my router's DDWRT implementation went wrong, but the USB port support has been horrible.
I have some NTFS-formatted USB drives and a USB enclosure but it triggers a known issue that consists of an endless reboot loop. The Windows-only driver to use with the stock firmware (this is the Dlink DIR825) had an annoying imposition. It prevents more than one connected user from viewing the files at once.
Its DDWRT USB print server fared better, but after some print jobs the router stops processing jobs silently until rebooted. If there are alternatives to DDWRT, it would be nice to hear of them now.

You should drop them anyway...

[gQuigs]

Below are the speedtests of two different routers using a wired connection.

Actiontec (about 2011) – 53.22 MB (down) 8.23 (up)
Linksys WRT54G v2 (about 2004) – 23 MB (down) 7.76 (up)

http://bryanquigley.com/libre-software/on-upgrading-routers

Re:You should drop them anyway...

[Rob the Bold]

Below are the speedtests of two different routers using a wired connection.

Actiontec (about 2011) – 53.22 MB (down) 8.23 (up) Linksys WRT54G v2 (about 2004) – 23 MB (down) 7.76 (up)

I've got Time Warner cable internet, so I'm cool, then.

for bcm47xx ... Backfire with brcm-2.4 recommended

[bill_mcgonigle]

Right there in the release note, folks - if you have a 54G, use Backfire.

Newer hardware gets better kernels.

Next story.

Lack of 2.4 isn't the problem

[Guspaz]

Tomato RAF for the WRT54G uses the 2.6.22 kernel, and can push 80 Mbps of routed throughput (not sure why. Optimizations? Performance improvements in 2.6 versus the 2.4 used by most other WRT54G firmwares?) The things are still ancient, though, and should be retired.

Re:Lack of 2.4 isn't the problem

[fnj]

Why should they be retired just because they are "ancient". They are still perfect serviceable, and still perfectly available. They also have a reputation for being more reliable and longer lasting, hardware-wise, than the consumer crap they chrun out nowadays.

Re:Lack of 2.4 isn't the problem

[Guspaz]

Lack of support for modern wireless networking (no 802.11n, on either 2.4GHz or 5 GHz), inability to perform any sort of processing whatsoever on faster connections (hitting those 80Mbps speeds requires disabling anything that might hit the CPU, so no stateful firewall, no QoS, no wifi encryption, no nothing), limited wired performance (100 megabit switch is a bottleneck for LAN use), limited conntrack ability due to tiny amounts of RAM and CPU power available, lack of USB ports for external connectivity (no hard disks, no 3G/4G data sticks, etc), enormously overpriced when sold new ($50 is enough to get you a simultaneous dual-band 802.11n router today), etc.

For modern internet connections, the thing is nearly useless. I've got a 50/10 VDSL2 line. The WRT54GL that I've got is incapable of routing that at full speed without seriously stripping it down to disable all the useful stuff, and even then its ancient 802.11g wireless radio won't even do half the speed of my connection. On top of that, the lack of a gigabit switch would bottleneck access to my file server (even my gigabit switch is a bottleneck there).

If you've got an old 10 meg internet connection and don't have much of a LAN, it might still be suitable. For people with modern connections, it's useless.

Re:Lack of 2.4 isn't the problem

[fnj]

OK, so to sum up, for about two thirds of North American users it's fine (they don't have more than a 22/5 pipe), and probably 99.9% of casual users would never notice the difference compared to the highest performance available wireless router. They most certainly would never notice the absence of a gigabit switch (although same is only $20 to add on).

Mind, I personally use a Sonicwall TZ 170 Unlimited with enhanced firmware, and I have four gigabit switches on my LAN, but I'm hardly a typical user.

still severely crippled

[dutchwhizzman]

A Raspberry Pi uses a single USB interface between it's CPU and all the IO. Even the "on board" Ethernet for the Model B is connected to the on board USB hub. By adding extra interfaces to the USB bus, you will not only limit bandwidth even more, but also probably make the Pi run less stable. You can prevent this by using an external powered USB hub, adding more complexity and cost to the Pi, but you'll still have limited bandwidth. At a theoretical maximum of 400Mbit (half duplex) getting a Pi to route anything above 50Mbit full duplex will become a challenge, with a theoretical maximum of 100Mbit Full Duplex (100 FD per interface, means 200 HD per interface, 2 interfaces, total 400Mbit HD). Given the fact that a WRT54G will at least switch 100Mbit full duplex and route 20+ Mbit via wireless, a Raspberry Pi plus a powered external hub plus USB ethernet/WiFi isn't that much of an upgrade. Getting a Gbit wireless N router that is supported will most likely cost you the same or less, be less complex in hardware and give you more bandwidth than a Pi.

Re:still severely crippled

[Anonymous Coward]

"Given the fact that a WRT54G will at least switch 100Mbit full duplex and route 20+ Mbit via wireless"

But a WRT54G(L) will not route much more than 50Mbps, so a Pi is not that much worse.

Why 3.3?

[junkgoof]

The odd branches are normally unstable and short term. The 3.3 branch is EOL. Why not use 3.4?

I looked around and I don't see a specific reason. There are references to using 3.4 and problems with 3.6.

Re:Why 3.3?

[kwark]

"The odd branches are normally unstable and short term."

In the pre 2.6 era. This scheme hasn't been used for near a decade. Not in 2.6 and certainly not in 3.x. 3.2 and 3.4 are long term supported, but there is no difference for 3.3/3.5-3.8 versions.

It's XBMC all over again....

[Anonymous Coward]

Only for routers this time.

Given that the alternatives are Tomato and DD-WRT, I'd have to say the Free Router Movement is dead.

Debian + Intel DN2800MT.

[Robert Frazier]

This combination is what I use at home. Debian has all the software one needs. The DN2800MT can take a couple of mini pcie cards, and a pcie card. This gives me two radios (5/2.4GHz) and an extra ethernet port (total 2). It has plenty of SATA connectors for NAS (2x1TB 2.5" drives). I have the whole thing in a tiny M300 case. Power consumption after boot is about 14W under normal use. It is about 11W when idle, and 18W when hammered. It doesn't have a slew of ethernet ports, so I have to add 6W (v. active)/3W (idle) for a managed switch.

I looked at open WRT, but thought "why not go whole hog?".

Best wishes,
Bob

Re:Debian + Intel DN2800MT.

[dbc]

You must have had better luck finding a WiFi card compatible with the DN2800MT that supported hostapd than I did. Maybe things have changed recently and I need to go update bios and such, but I eventually gave up trying to get hostapd to work and moved on to other things. What hardware have you actually gotten to work in host mode? What BIOS rev are you on? I'd still like to go back and get the AP function working on my robot. (DN2800MT is a great card for higher-end robots, since the power supply requirements are "something resembling DC". I like when a robot can be its own AP (no back-haul while driving around, obviously) but it makes debug and control much simpler if any WiFi device can get a DHCP address and ssh into the robot.)

Re:Debian + Intel DN2800MT.

[Robert Frazier]

I don't know the bios version off the top of my head. For the wireless access point, I'm using an Atheros AR9285 for 2.4GHz, and AR9390 for 5GHz. They are both used with hostapd. One needs a separate configuration file for each, but that can be set in /etc/default/hostapd.

Best wishes,
Bob

Re:Debian + Intel DN2800MT.

[dbc]

OK, so I think I am in BIOS upgrade-ville, because Atheros cards don't work with the old BIOS that I have. Is this the card you are using?
http://www.amazon.com/Atheros-AR5B95-AR9285-802-11B-PCI-E/dp/B005HMZ8B2
-tnx

My old stuff!

[antdude]

Ditto. I even use older stuff like my 19.5" Sharp CRT TV from January 1996, VCR (for connecting between computers, DTV Pal DVR, and TV) Casio Data Bank (DB) 150 calculator watch, analog bone conduction hearing aid model from 1994 (don't want digital with implants), no mobile phones, old computer parts (IDE/PATA HDDs, two HDTV PCI tuner cards from 2005, etc.), etc. They all still work for me. I will upgrade/replace them when needed. :)

Same software for old and new hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand the people that say that old hardware not meets their todays needs.
But I don't understand why the same distribution of software can't share almost the same software to run different machines, although some pieces doesn't be activated on the old hardware, and some "light" versions should be installed (like main libraries, without support of ipv6 and things like that), and the kernel was a old version.
A router, no matters if is moderm and with more memory, it should use reduced versions of exes, and main software for manage could be shared for all routers.
 

No Drop

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenWrt didn't drop anything, you can still run the newer version on 16MB RAM devices. Just install zram in the kernel, or upgrade the ram of your router. OpenWrt only has 1 defect, the web interface, btw you don't need it for configure the router.