[HN Gopher] WRT54G History: The Router That Accidentally Went Op...
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WRT54G History: The Router That Accidentally Went Open Source
Author : uptown
Score : 454 points
Date : 2021-01-13 14:35 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tedium.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (tedium.co)
| birdman3131 wrote:
| One thing this article completely misses is the reliability of
| the WRT54G. It may be old but I have never picked up a used one
| that did not just work reliably. Never heard of anybody I know
| having one die.
|
| Contrast that to the newer square black pancake linksys routers
| and after about a year or so they seem to develop hardware issues
| and even a reset won't fix them. (Always assumed the chips needed
| heatsinks and were slowly cooking themselves)
| Bluecobra wrote:
| I remember lots of people reporting failures around the time
| when bad capacitors flooded the market and lots of consumer
| devices were affected. My WRT54G is a later model (v4.0?) that
| seemed to be unaffected by this issue.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
| znpy wrote:
| Just bought a WRT3200ACM about a month ago to replace the isp-
| provided router... Slapped OpenWRT on it and... It's a dream.
| stagger87 wrote:
| As someone with a WRT3200ACM, what's the advantage of OpenWRT
| over the preinstalled FW? (honest question) A quick search
| indicated better security (which I don't know how to assess),
| and I was wondering if there was any functional/feature
| advantages you have seen.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| I just bought 8 WRT54Gs and GSs to set up some Broadband Hamnet
| nodes for a mesh net.
| [deleted]
| cowmix wrote:
| This route + Tomato firmware.. amazing!
| wnevets wrote:
| Tomato was ahead of its time when it came to router ui
| DanTheManPR wrote:
| Tomato is such a slick piece of software, combined with one of
| the most practical pieces of consumer electronics I've ever
| owned. Only reason I stopped using it was because of eventual
| advances in networking tech. My old WRT54G with Tomato got
| donated to my friend's game store, and still serves to this day
| as the public wifi access point there.
| smiley1437 wrote:
| Tomato is\was amazing, like you I've moved on
|
| However I've never found a cheap router that has Real-time,
| PER-IP network utilization graphs that you can just click on
| like in Tomato (I don't want to send netflows to another
| machine for analysis, I just want to see it right on the
| router's web interface)
|
| If anyone has a suggestion I'm all ears
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Reading this article makes me realize how old I am. I pretend,
| but then when "historical" write-ups are presented, and I blurt
| out "wait, that was just yesteryear...", I instantly realize, I
| am ancient in technology terms.
| throwaway1999x wrote:
| So, I worked for Broadcom for some years after this went down.
| This post is purely descriptive to give people some insight into
| the history from inside the company; I'm not commenting on who
| should have done what (although I was not directly involved, so
| if someone who was comments, take their word over mine).
|
| Broadcom made an error of judgement here, but this incident
| fostered a deep distrust of open source, at senior levels, that
| persisted for more than a decade after; perhaps to this day.
|
| Firstly at this point Cisco was, at the time, Broadcom's largest
| customer by a large margin. This caused huge tension in that
| relationship that was totally unforseen, and was very painful for
| a while.
|
| Secondly, a at a certain point it dawned on Cisco and Broadcom
| that the GPL lawsuit was not like a normal business dispute ,
| because businessmen after a certain point will settle for money
| even if they didn't get everything they want. Sure a few people
| will keep going to the detriment of their own business, but most
| aim to make profit, not expound a principle. Many companies in
| the position of the FSF would have settled for a cut of the
| revenue. But the FSF wanted the source code released, and they
| were prepared to kill the business to get it. So Cisco and
| Broadcom had to concede. The source code was released, and
| OpenWRT was born.
|
| The fallout, though was that subsequently Broadcom router ICs
| were designed with hardware accelerators which were separate from
| the main CPU. They were driven by separate CPUs on the same SoC
| that did not run linux and whose drivers could not be demanded
| under the GPL. none of the open source firmwares can run these
| devices efficiently unless someone spends weeks reverse
| engineering them.
| d1zzy wrote:
| I'm not sure about the last point. I would think hardware
| dedicated accelerators were done because it was the cheapest
| way to achieve that performance not because it allowed to
| somehow bypass GPL. However, choosing to not run Linux but some
| proprietary OS could most certainly have something to do with
| that.
|
| At the end of the day, was it a good thing? I would say it was.
| It opened many generations of home router hardware to being
| modded/replaced with user controlled software. It even created
| a market of its own where certain consumer router hardware is
| advertised as being designed to run custom/third-party software
| and where vendors themselves ship with some heavily modified
| software and release the sources for it from day 1 (which are
| the only wifi routers I shop for these days).
| ktpsns wrote:
| If there was a WRT54G version with Gigabit ethernet, it would be
| my daily driver today. Having a 100mbit/sec switch is the only
| reason why my WRT54G is sitting in the shelve without any work. I
| only use it for tinkering one day or the other.
| ct0 wrote:
| https://www.asuswrt-merlin.net/features
| selectodude wrote:
| WRT3200ACM is the modern incarnation.
| [deleted]
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| At 5 times the price.
| sonotmyname wrote:
| They're $249 almost everywhere, and the WRT54G was $199.
| Taking inflation into account, the 3200 is likely cheaper
| than the 54g was...
| masklinn wrote:
| According to the CPI's Inflation Calculator, $200 in
| December 2002 (release of the 54G) was $287.98 as of
| December 2020.
|
| So yeah.
|
| Even at MSRP (280), the 3200 is cheaper than the 54G was
| at release.
| Macha wrote:
| https://www.linksys.com/us/p/P-WRT3200ACM/
|
| I had to look because I was wondering "Do they really
| charge $1000 for a consumer router + AP?" The answer is no.
|
| $250 vs the $200 of the WRT54G in its heyday doesn't seem
| so bad for 15 years of inflation
| tandr wrote:
| I don't remember ever seeing WRT54G above $80, and I
| bought both of mine for $69 and $59 I think. What time
| period are referring to ?
| guenthert wrote:
| The WRT54GL was $50 when I picked it up new many, many
| years ago.
|
| EDIT: apparently it dropped in price considerably in the
| first few years.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Can confirm this router can handle gigabit ISP speeds, I
| upgraded to this specifically because my previous router
| (also flashed with OpenWRT) couldn't get my full speeds I was
| paying for.
|
| Here it is on Amazon:
| https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JOXW3YE/
| bentcorner wrote:
| You can install openwrt on x86. Grab an old desktop PC (or
| laptop) and if it has built in GigE it might be enough,
| depending on the processor. Worst case buy an Intel NIC and
| you're off.
|
| Alternately get an Edgerouter X and install openwrt on that.
| shimonabi wrote:
| I used a WRT54G v2.2 for more than 10 years.
|
| A few years ago I wanted to setup a repeater with it, but it was
| not powerful enough to handle AES in repeater mode, if I remember
| correctly.
| Triv888 wrote:
| The other day, I accidentally robbed a bank...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Interesting concept to outsource software development to OSS
| developers and stick to hardware development. Wonder why Cisco
| didn't take that angle with WRT54GL derivatives. I had one and it
| was quite nice.
|
| Only thing I can think of is that the hardware was plenty capable
| but the software is where feature differentiation is and they
| didn't want to end up being commoditized.
|
| It appears that approach has been successful.
| technofiend wrote:
| I see Mikrotik does have an open source repo on Github, but it's
| not clear if you could really build a working OS from it.
|
| That's another platform I'd love to see go open source with as
| required binary blobs for the network bits. In particular to see
| how updating their kernel to something recent benefits
| performance; their patches are for kernel 3.3.x.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I remember feeling like such an edgy, cool and counter-culture
| youth during this period that I did everything in my power to
| avoid using this piece of hardware just because it was so
| popular. Joke was totally on me - everything else in the space at
| the time was mostly crap. I finally caved in and ultimately owned
| quite a few of them. Really rock-solid pieces of gear!
| napkin wrote:
| I was _just_ thinking about the importance of the WRT54G in the
| last days while selecting a new wireless access point. I ordered
| an Ubiquiti UAC-AP-LITE, based on the price and clean hardware
| design. I was torn on firmware- Unifi, or flash OpenWRT? The day
| my package arrives the news of the Ubiquiti breach emerges.
| OpenWRT it is! Some things never change.
|
| A lot of what I learned about networking I owe to the
| coolness/fun factor of installing OpenWRT on WRT54G units when I
| was a teenager.
| pabs3 wrote:
| I wonder what class of device will accidentally go open source
| next. I think I vote robot vacuums.
| hattar wrote:
| I don't know that it's accidental. iRobot really promotes
| hacking their devices even going to the extent of making non-
| vacuum devices similar to their base units that are designed to
| be modded. https://store.irobot.com/default/create-
| programmable-program...
| gorgoiler wrote:
| It's right up there with the NSLU2 in terms of delightfully
| accidental Linux platforms.
| sunnytimes wrote:
| i loved my WRT in the beginning for XLink Kai .. after that when
| i got a new router i used the WRT as a range extender which was
| nice until the wifi basically died .. loved tomato.. i think i
| still have one ..
| dgrabla wrote:
| I cannot believe nobody has said "I'm still using them" yet. I
| have two of them still happily moving packets the same they did
| back in mid 2000.
| the8472 wrote:
| Network speeds got faster and the software stack became more
| CPU-hungry (e.g. running CAKE), which means old hardware can't
| keep up with many use-cases.
| jabl wrote:
| I donated mine to my father. He still uses it for his somewhat
| basic wifi needs (he has wired ethernet for his "real" desktop
| computer).
| hyperman1 wrote:
| Seconded. I actually used it a few months ago to stage 20 old
| laptops for covid induced homescooling. The 10 laptops staging
| before that managed to cook my more modern router, and I had
| promised to deliver the next day. The WRT didn't budge and was
| actually speedy enough.
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| I donated two of them to my parents who used them until one
| died a few months ago. They live in the boonies so, they only
| get 10mbps internet but wanted good coverage for a decently
| sized house + garage, so I set one up as repeater.
|
| But I wouldn't use it myself anymore, unlike my parents I don't
| have mid 2000's internet speeds, and I stream games, movies and
| take backups over wifi.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| What's a reliable company for multi-AP setups that also respect
| my privacy? Ubiquity had that whole phone home scandal.. Eero I'm
| not sure yet.
|
| I have pfSense for the routing but now just need access points.
| So far I've been using an old Asus ac86u on Merlin as an AP but
| the reception is not great in other rooms due to the fact that
| walls in my apartment are concrete with rebar.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I use a pfSense+UniFi combo. I know about the scandal, but they
| added an option for the user to control it and as far as I
| know, they haven't done anything questionable since - software
| quality aside.
|
| (Actually I know the internet loves to bitch about Ubiquiti but
| my experience has been just fine. Maybe it's because I don't
| have a Unifi router.)
| nicolas_t wrote:
| Yeah, it might be an overreaction but the fact they did that
| does show that they have people who are clueless in their
| company and don't respect their customers
|
| Given the target market of their product I would expect any
| such attempt to be quickly found so I guess there's not that
| much risk to use them
| r1ch wrote:
| If you can live with only 802.11ac, I've had great results
| flashing OpenWRT onto Mikrotik wAP AC boards. Performance peaks
| at about ~400mbps TCP throughput at 2x2 MCS-9. WPA3 works
| without problems. For multi-ap, setting up 802.11r is fairly
| straightforward, k/v requires some custom scripting to generate
| the neighbor reports. Be careful not to get the new revision
| with the two chain radio as the chipset is different and not
| yet supported by OpenWRT.
| dddw wrote:
| Mikrotik. Maybe?
| dialamac wrote:
| CommScope Ruckus?
| asdff wrote:
| I've seen a few articles that use a raspberry pi in fact
| chenxiaolong wrote:
| I'm looking for the same as well. I've heard good things about
| actual enterprise APs, though they seem to be quite expensive.
| Ruckus APs are 4x the price of my current Ubiquiti APs.
|
| I'll probably do more research into this when Wi-Fi 6E becomes
| more commonplace. For now, I just block outbound internet
| access on the management network for my Ubiquiti APs and
| controller.
| tomhoward wrote:
| Such fond memories using these on the ADSL2+ internet services we
| started getting in Australia in the mid 2000s!
| keanebean86 wrote:
| I knew a dude in college that was trying to set up a campus wide
| mesh network (he worked in IT) with these. The college bought
| some and he started working on it.
|
| Then 2008 happened and he got laid off. It was a cool idea but
| long term would have been a burden.
| jandrese wrote:
| Also, he would have discovered eventually that mesh networks
| are slow and can't support many simultaneous users. For general
| Internet access they aren't a great solution.
| geocrasher wrote:
| Its spiritual successor was the Asus RTN-16. I still have one
| sitting on my bench, running TomatoUSB. I got it 9 years ago, and
| for the past 5 years it's been a 2.4ghz wifi bridge, connecting
| the hardwired devices in my office to the wifi router in my
| house. It just keeps working, so I keep using it.
|
| Of course I can't forget the first time I got a WRT54G. My
| brother in law had one just sitting around unused (around 2006 I
| think) and while I didn't know a lot about them, I asked him
| about the router. I ended up trading him a well used laptop for
| it. The router was the locked down version. Then it died. Oh
| well.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| One fascinating sidebar in the WRT54G history was the Fon [0]
| "Fonera" project, which was one of the reasons I bought WRT54G
| specifically. (Which I found in a box just recently, Fon stickers
| beside it.) Fon had the idea of trying to build a network of
| independent residential wifi that users could share roaming among
| each other. It was a paid wifi network, so people that had a
| Fonera AP at home could opt for either free access wherever they
| went as benefit of running an AP or a simple profit sharing
| option (but then they'd pay for their own roaming).
|
| The original Fonera projects were all built on top of OpenWRT.
|
| It was cute idea for trying to make guest-accessible wifi
| ubiquitous. It ran up against shifts in law in some countries
| making network AP owners more personally responsible for accesses
| to their wifi. Also, it never really hit network effects that the
| scale mattered. I ran a Fonera AP through a large chunk of
| college/grad school and can't say that I ever saw another AP in
| the wild to take advantage of the free roaming (and if I had it
| switched to the profit-sharing mode I never would have seen a
| dime).
|
| Fon pivoted entirely out of the Fonera residential wifi project
| in 2016. It was a neat idea, but it didn't survive.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fon_(company)
| usertrjx wrote:
| I don't recall which wifi router I used, but also I setup
| fonera for about a week. I also don't believe I ever saw one in
| the wild. I thought it was an interesting idea.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I don't know why WiFi AP manufacturers don't just give up and
| just use stock open source firmware on their devices. They are
| not even trying to get the sw right. The first thing I do when
| buying one anymore is ditch the built in tinker-toy firmware and
| install an open source one. Lots of companies that make hardware
| treat software as just another line item on the BOM like a bolt
| or a screw, and source the cheapest shit they can find, rather
| than treating the software as an integral part of the product
| that needs the same polish as the external box and marketing
| materials.
| mook wrote:
| I had a Buffalo router that did that; IIRC it came with their
| proprietary firmware and a copy of DD-WRT on a CD. (Might have
| been the other way around; this was about a decade ago.)
|
| I don't believe they would have been in much legal issues:
| they'd have to make sure the copy of DD-WRT they shipped was
| fine, but if you get updates / flash your own, there's no
| reason they'd be on the hook.
| njharman wrote:
| It's probably mostly due to legal liability. Real or perceived.
| It's gonna be risky to convince a jury you did your fiduciary
| duty to either consumers or stockholders when opposing lawyer
| is saying "so you subjected my client's data to you didn't even
| write? Code anyone one on internet can change at anytime, etc.
| etc.
|
| legal is not about what is true or right or fair or probably it
| is about risk reduction/mitigation. A 20% chance to lose court
| case is too much. Or even chance of bad PR is something to be
| avoided.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| If this were the issue you'd think there would already be a
| series of lawsuits against the free software drivers
| currently available.
| cbozeman wrote:
| LOL, Yeah like all the open-source software that drives 95%
| of the Internet?
|
| If this _could_ be done, it _would_ have been done already.
| cryptonym wrote:
| Doubt... Look at all the CVE on that kind of hardware,
| limited liability and actual loss of control to contractors.
| In this case, leading to not knowing you are actually selling
| Open Source technology.
|
| Look at the longevity of this router and all the features:
| "it was the perfect way to turn your $60 router into a $600
| router". With closed firmware, you can artificially lock
| features and prevent everyone from adding them to cheap
| devices. You can also stop updating firmware after few years
| so everyone trash old devices and buy a new one.
|
| Fun fact: Open Source is good for the environment.
| hobofan wrote:
| > You can also stop updating firmware after few years so
| everyone trash old devices and buy a new one.
|
| Routers aren't really the kind of devices that become
| obsolete quickly though, are they? A bulk of all users will
| just use they one they will get from their ISP. Since the
| main interest of ISPs is reduce ongoing costs for support
| (reduce calls to hotline and sending out technicians for
| the setup of a new router), they should also be motivated
| to provide cheap, long lived routers.
| aksss wrote:
| They are motivated to provide cheap, managed, reliable,
| plug-and-play units. Changes are driven by feature sets
| they need to stay competitive (eg new WiFi or wps
| standard) and wholesale deals.
| asddubs wrote:
| only kind of hardware where this seems to be commonplace is 3d
| printers. super modular in general, you can usually just swap
| in hardware from one machine to the next, unless it's a super
| commercial grade machine. I get the principle doesn't transfer
| as well to other devices in all cases, but I wish more stuff
| was like that
| IshKebab wrote:
| Probably because they can ensure their software works properly.
| I recently dug out an old Asus RT-N16 and the latest Tomato
| firmwares are all completely broken. WAN DHCP doesn't work.
| Took me a couple of hours to figure out. Turns out it was
| broken a year or two ago and nobody has noticed (it's a pretty
| old router; I doubt anyone still uses it). The official
| firmware worked fine.
|
| The point is the manufacturers have a much higher incentive to
| ensure everything works than open source developers.
|
| The ASUS firmware at least seems to support way more features
| than Tomato did, at least without resorting to the command
| line. E.g. my ISP requires the VLAN ID to be set. I doubt open
| source router GUIs have a nice option for that.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| It's not _that_ old, works tolerably for a small household if
| the link speed is below 100Mbps. Freshtomato worked fine last
| time I checked. Too bad these chips suffer performance loss
| with OpenWRT, though.
|
| The sad thing is ten years later the market is still
| dominated by devices with half its RAM.
| sleavey wrote:
| FRITZboxes are better in terms of their software. The names and
| descriptions for the various controls are written in proper
| language, and there are loads of graphs and stats for the
| nerds. My only gripes are that the interface relies too much on
| JavaScript (you get sent back to the login when you refresh the
| page...) and that, at least on my model, there is no way to
| perform a factory reset without plugging in a phone handset
| (who has one of those these days!).
|
| Of course, OpenWRT still kills it in terms of support for
| standards. FRITZboxes have their own stupid mesh protocol
| that's only compatible with other FRITZboxes, not implementing
| e.g. 802.11s.
| maweki wrote:
| To be fair, the FRITZ suite also wants to (and does) support
| Cable internet (afaik the only non-ISP-supplied modem or
| router-modem you could even buy in europe), DECT, and a range
| of 433MHz home automation products. And of course, you
| mentioned their homebrew mesh stuff.
|
| So there's a lot of non-standard tech available in those
| boxes and it is no huge surprise that this is kept
| proprietary.
| zoobab wrote:
| I ordered a router from Amazon when someone said it was running
| Linux. I received it, and gave it to my uni friend on Friday. On
| Sunday, he told me he found an exploit in the webinterface.
| yial wrote:
| I still have one of these in a box. Maybe two as I used to
| encourage friends to buy them years ago.
|
| I only stopped using it(with some custom firmware) about a year
| and a half ago because it was just too slow - and had gotten this
| weird issue where it would cut off the internet to some devices
| while keeping them on the network.
|
| It was really by luck that I had one of these in my teenage years
| initially to play with. I sometimes wonder what hobbies I would
| have developed if I hadn't lucked out and found working computer
| in the trash, or my parents had bought something that wasn't such
| an easily moddable desktop (AMD K6-2 was the CPU in the first
| computer they purchased).
|
| Anyway - the WRT54G really was a fun piece of hardware to play
| with.
| BearOso wrote:
| > because it was just too slow
|
| The WAN to LAN throughput on a wrt54g is only like 34mbits/s.
| It's just too slow to handle a fast internet connection. I
| guess the fact that so many are still being used shows how ISP
| connection speeds have stagnated.
| guenthert wrote:
| Or that there simply is no need for that high a bandwidth.
| Netflix, e.g., uses fancy compression algorithms and you can
| _almost_ watch their HD offerings with ~3mbps. They do
| recommend 5mbps and 25mbps for their 4k content.
|
| I so wished, I could get here a 6mbps connection for half the
| price of my current 65mps line.
| SulfurHexaFluri wrote:
| You might not have a need for it but others do. It really
| sucks to buy a new game after work and see that you won't
| be able to play it that night because it has a 5 hour
| download time.
| Jonnax wrote:
| So there's a need for it, it's just that you don't have a
| need for it.
|
| I'm happy with my 1gbps connection where I can download a
| 50GB game in less than 10 minutes.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Bro, when I want to play games with friends I frequently
| have to update to play because I play so rarely. Speed
| means lower latency to startup.
| zerd wrote:
| I'm still running a WRT54GL with Tomato firmware on at my
| parents place. I used it until I upgraded to a faster one, but
| the reason it's still running is that it provides the longest
| 2.4GHz range which is perfect for a large house. I've tried
| Ubiquity, newer ASUS routers and the range is shorter and their
| devices prefers to connect to the WRT54G. And my parents don't
| need super fast wifi, just a stable one.
| joshstrange wrote:
| If you still want to live that WRT life with something like
| OpenWRT/LEDE (I think they re-merged now just under OpenWRT but
| I'm running LEDE currently) then I can highly recommend this
| [0] updated version. I have it and I can get gigabit speeds
| (wired) through it just fine and don't have any issues with the
| wireless other than at the far, far end of my house and only
| sometimes.
|
| My next router will probably be a Ubiquity setup so I can setup
| 2-3 AP's for full coverage and coverage out to the (detached)
| garage but that setup is not cheap or simple and my current
| issues are so minor that it will be a while before I pull the
| trigger on that.
|
| [0] https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JOXW3YE/
| williesleg wrote:
| Great story, shit writing.
| temac wrote:
| How is respecting the licence of software you use an accident and
| a problem? The managers who believe that are completely insane.
| Even the market segmentation theory: you can not just sell
| perfectly capable hardware but artificially limited by software
| to a very narrow set of features and pretend you care about e.g.
| limited natural resources. Likewise attempting to limit the
| hackability (and reparability) of devices is starting to look
| criminal in my eyes.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The highly coveted WRT54G!
|
| I picked up a number of these at thrift stores over the years.
| Occasionally I'd get lucky and get the "WRT54GL" version. I was
| sometimes persuaded to exceed my "$5 or less" budget for a "L"
| version.
|
| They were great for having a little Linux-box to do oddball
| utility stuff-- ad-hoc OpenVPN endpoints, caching DNS server,
| captive Wi-Fi portal controller.
|
| They were eerily solid for their built-to-a-price-point nature.
| bityard wrote:
| A few years back, I spotted two of these for $0.50 at the
| thrift store amongst all the outdated DSL modems and answering
| machines. My tech hoard was already large enough at that point
| so I made sure they worked, flashed the factory firmware, and
| turned around and sold them for $25 each on craigslist in under
| 24 hours. Easiest beer money I ever made.
| paulcarroty wrote:
| Great device. Remember my first time experience with hackable
| router using openwrt, it was like miracle. I'm not feeling
| comfortable anymore when working with vendor-locked platforms.
| Aachen wrote:
| TL;DR they used GPL software and so had to provide the derivative
| work back to the community, latest upon request. That's how it
| went "accidentally" open source, if you want to save a click bait
| click, no source code was stolen or accidentally posted publicity
| or anything.
| aksss wrote:
| Haha you know somebody there was like, "shit! This is what
| Microsoft warned us about!" I can only imagine that spawned a
| backlash internally against open source until they realized how
| popular the router became. It was nice of them to make the
| homage WRT several years ago. Maybe I should go read the
| article. Like many here I had (and probably still have!) a 54
| series and ran ddwrt on it. Very liberating to realize half the
| functionality I wanted wasn't in any way a hardware limitation,
| just software. After that, my next routers were purchased with
| careful attention to the amount of RAM and nv memory onboard as
| well as the device compatibility table. Now I run UBNT in the
| house on the ER platform with unifi stack on a VM that rarely
| gets turned on except to manage fw upgrades of the radios.
| tfvlrue wrote:
| Even though I've since switched all my networking gear to
| Ubiquiti stuff these days, I still have fond memories of using
| DD-WRT on the WRT54GL. Being able to configure dynamic DNS and
| host a VPN server was an amazing thing when you had a handful of
| routers to remotely manage (parents, etc). And the replacement
| firmware made them so much more stable than stock. Gone were the
| days of the Internet dying and having to reboot the router to get
| it back.
|
| I still have a few unused WRT54GL lying around that I never got
| around to using. Funny to think they're still selling on Amazon
| for the same price they were a decade ago!
|
| In case anyone doubts my adoration for this router, take a look
| at https://tfvlrue.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/lego-router-
| wrt54gl... :)
| wejick wrote:
| I remember around 2006-2009 playing with this wireless router. I
| thought back then it was pretty cool, an enterprisey colored
| device with cisco logo on the front.
|
| That was the first time I learned about networking. Did pretty
| standard setting, like dhcp server and ip address of the port. We
| also put it on the point to point wireless network with the range
| of 10s KM, using grid antennas.
|
| That was quite early in Indonesian internet scene.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I brought a WRT54G to college, and left it with some roomies when
| I moved out. I think I had OpenWRT on it. It sucked that no
| custom firmware supported the D-Link I bought to replace it. I
| finally got fed up with it, and I've been using another router
| with OpenWRT for many years.
| bsharitt wrote:
| Man I used one of those forever, I think I finally threw it out
| once 100Mb switch and G wifi wasn't quite enough. Tomato was
| probably my favorite firmware for it. I remember bricking it with
| a bad update one time and having to jumper two pins with a paper
| clip to put it in tftp mode in order to load working firmware.
| bartvk wrote:
| A buddy of mine got divorced and found himself in a tiny
| apartment with ethernet and not a router. I dug up my WRT54G
| but yeah, G wifi... In the end, we found an unused TP-Link
| Archer C7 for him, but that WRT54G brought back some memories.
| ginko wrote:
| It's one of the most successful routers ever sold and yet network
| equipment manufacturers are still fighting tooth and nail to keep
| their devices closed source. It just doesn't make sense to me.
| Maxburn wrote:
| That's why I'm so impressed with OPNsense and pfSense and a
| wide selection of build it yourself hardware selection with
| them. You can own and tinker with your own router top to
| bottom. Seems like a niche market and I'm wondering why they
| aren't catching on with this same community that embraced the
| WRT.
| jabl wrote:
| I think those that want to run an open source software stack,
| but not assemble the hardware themselves, are served pretty
| well by going to the OpenWrt website (the successor project
| around the original wrt54g open source release), and choosing
| a suitable router from the table of hardware they maintain,
| and then just install openwrt on top of the stock firmware.
|
| That's what I've been doing ever since I jumped ship from ye
| olde WRT54G (currently I have a Zyxel Armor Z2, and I'm happy
| with it).
| Maxburn wrote:
| I never dove into the WRT devices myself but it definitely
| has a niche.
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| FWIW, "assemble the hardware themselves" means buy a > 5
| year old desktop computer and add a multi-port PCI-express
| NIC. Or even a USB3 -> Ethernet adapter.
|
| Moving to pfSense was the best decision I made for my home
| network.
| icelancer wrote:
| You can even buy one of these ready-made boxes and slap
| on pfsense.
|
| https://smile.amazon.com/Firewall-Appliance-Gigabit-
| Celeron-...
|
| I use this exact model + RAM + mSATA drive and its more
| than powerful enough to sit in front of my SMB gigabit
| fiber connection while running DPI/OpenVPN/zabbix/etc.
|
| pfsense is awesome and the learning curve is pretty
| reasonable if you understand basic network theory. I love
| it.
| sq_ wrote:
| Wonder if there's a chance some of the router projects and
| Pine64 could collaborate somehow to make a fully open router.
| Pine64 seems to be quickly developing some production chops
| and the various router projects also seem to be doing great
| work.
| yellowapple wrote:
| If Pine64 threw a bunch of Ethernet ports into a
| Clusterboard that'd be a pretty killer platform for a
| router. Start with one SOPINE for the actual router stuff,
| then add more for things like NAS, print servers, home
| streaming, home automation, etc.
| pimeys wrote:
| Turris Omnia is supposedly one of these routers. I have
| their old model from a few years back, and it's been
| serving quite well for all my needs. The OS is their custom
| version of OpenWRT, and you can do stuff like LXC,
| Wireguard and all that quite easily.
|
| The only problem is the ARMv7 hardware, which doesn't
| really cut it with modern Internet speeds anymore,
| especially with Wireguard.
|
| That said, I can't wait for pfSense and opnSense finally
| support Wireguard. And pihole should finally get a FreeBSD
| version. I'd much more prefer the sense systems over the
| wrt, but the time is not yet here.
| Decade wrote:
| I think the big motivation for the Omnia is the Turris
| project, not open source per se. Security threat analysis
| and automatic updates from the nonprofit organization
| that runs the Czech DNS registrar. LXC, Wireguard, and
| the customization options from the mini-PCIe slots are a
| bit of a bonus.
|
| The Omnia doesn't have great OpenWRT upstream support,
| and the wireless performance sucks. 2GB of RAM seems
| enormous for a router, but when I put a medium-size
| number of clients on it (100-ish), its security
| monitoring features overran the memory and oom-killed
| essential services. Fortunately, that can be turned off.
|
| And the Turris project seems to be retreating from modern
| Internet speeds. The Omnia can't keep up with 1Gb full-
| duplex fiber, but they've moved onto their next product:
| The MOX/Shield is even slower. (1.6 GHz CPU vs 1.0 GHz
| CPU)
| Maxburn wrote:
| ANY more work in this space would be great. The SG1100
| seems similar already though. Most configs of the Pine64
| I'm looking at are single Ethernet port though, I'm not a
| fan of the router on stick config, even the one in the
| SG1100 is confusing internally.
| zajio1am wrote:
| PC Engines makes a long-term series of pretty open router
| boards that works with vanilla Debian, current iteration is
| APU2: https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm
|
| It is pricier than low-end router, but they are high
| performance and are much easier to use.
| izacus wrote:
| I'd love to find a compact router/machine that has
| SFP/Gigabit switch and optionally PoE capability with pfSense
| support.
|
| Sadly, my annoying Mikrotik is the only thing I've found
| until now :(
| Maxburn wrote:
| That's a big wish list for compact.
| zamadatix wrote:
| It's 3 common things, one of which marked optional. The
| only "big wish" on that is the desire to run decent
| software of the users choice on it which is a big wish
| for anything except a PC-turned-network-device.
| izacus wrote:
| I know. Mikrotik managed to build it though (HeX PoE),
| but sadly it has a pretty old SoC.
| harha wrote:
| I would love to see some more prebuilt pfsense boxes with
| useful options (like built-in 4G) - there are some on Amazon
| without detailed specs and some small vendors that don't feel
| like shipping in all of the EU (can't blame them for the
| regulatory and tax challenges).
| Maxburn wrote:
| I believe the underlying BSD is the issue here, everyone
| that says they tried to do it says it is an awful
| experience. Similar story for the problems with realtek
| Ethernet chips.
| harha wrote:
| For the 4G? It's not ideal but there are some options [0]
| - though the list would be nicer if it had a few filters,
| like interface and supported bands.
|
| [0] https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/cellular/h
| ardware...
| m-p-3 wrote:
| Especially when they stop pushing firmware updates and leave
| the whole thing open to become part of a botnet.
|
| Seriously, keep the damn thing open.
| jandrese wrote:
| This. It drives me crazy that companies want to lock down the
| firmware, but then won't take responsibility for keeping
| their locked down firmware from being taken over by bots. If
| they hate maintaining the software so much let the community
| take over.
|
| If I were a AP manufacturer I would have like 1 software guy
| total, and his job would be to make sure the drivers for the
| hardware is always up to date on the open source software
| that my product ships, and to contribute bug fixes and
| feature improvements to that software.
|
| Well, I like to think that anyway. I have some suspicions
| that chipset manufacturers like to keep their documentation
| behind NDA that precludes anybody who signs it from
| contributing to open source software.
| SulfurHexaFluri wrote:
| Neither of those options push the user to buy a new router
| every few years.
| znpy wrote:
| the WRT3200ACM is available for purchase, is an almost-direct
| descendant of the WRT54GL and is supported out of the box by
| OpenWRT/Linux.
| earthscienceman wrote:
| Does OpenWRT implement some of the more obscure features,
| like MIMO and what not? I'm still using DDWRT on a Trendnet
| AC1750 supported router. I definitely don't _need_ much more
| but I could use some bandwidth and power range for local
| transfers and such.
| icelancer wrote:
| I used these before I switched to pfsense at my SMB. They're
| great. I use the WRT3200ACM at home + a UniFi AP for better
| range upstairs and have been very pleased.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Yep, those are pretty much all I buy nowadays for home /
| small office routers. Absolutely rock solid.
| guenthert wrote:
| Well, the original WRT54GL (Linux version with 8MiB RAM) cost
| me ~$50 when it was new, the WRT3200ACM is offered for $250.
| A descendant perhaps, but no replacement.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| I really like my Xiaomi Mi 3G. Cheap, has both 802.11ac and
| 1Gbps ports, runs OpenWRT. The only issue I have with it is
| no AES support on the CPU. My VPN speed is effectively
| limited by one of its cores running at 100% decoding
| OpenVPN traffic.
| Teever wrote:
| I recommend buying the WRT1200AC used on Ebay. They usually
| sell for $30-50 USD + shipping.
| Snitch-Thursday wrote:
| Correct. That's why I sought it out and may or may not have
| baffled / actively disregarded the Best Buy sales guy who
| wanted to sell some other routing hardware that was 'newer'.
|
| This message delivered to you with its help, and I am
| definitely going to be looking for its descendant when the
| time comes to replace this one....IF it is still open-source-
| ready.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| On the other hand, Ubiquiti has given end users an option for
| business class wireless and routing that wasn't available. You
| want a "real" router in 2005? eBay > Cisco.
| ip26 wrote:
| It's funny, Ubiquiti keeps getting talked up on HN, but every
| time I try to shop for their equipment out of curiosity, it's
| basically panned everywhere else. Don't know what to make of
| it.
| 293984j29384 wrote:
| I treat it as prosumer grade equipment. I use it at home
| but not at the office. My general rule of thumb is if I
| need it to make money, it's not going to be Ubiquiti.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't think there's any good options outside of
| commercial brands. If my Airport Time Machine and Extreme
| die, I'll probably switch to premium Netgear equipment.
|
| Meraki would be nice except Cisco owns it now and they are
| experts at milking you with annual fees.
| josteink wrote:
| > If my Airport Time Machine and Extreme die, I'll
| probably switch to premium Netgear equipment.
|
| Why just replace them with second hand units?
|
| _Apple_ may no longer sell them, but they are still
| widely available.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I assumed I wouldn't easily find them, but I will get
| them if I can!
| jandrese wrote:
| If you're doing serious business with your WiFi then the
| UBNT stuff is probably not quite good enough.
|
| I have one of the flying saucer shaped APs, but it's super
| old and only does B/G. It was under a hundred bucks and
| unlike my old APs it doesn't get angry at certain devices
| and deauth them randomly from the network. Or other APs
| I've used that start disconnecting users once you have more
| than 15 devices connected at once. The configuration
| software is a bloated Java daemon that I have to manually
| start then connect to with a client. It's not all that user
| friendly, but I've been around networks enough to get it
| working.
|
| So it's basically the cheapest AP that isn't regularly
| malfunctioning consumer garbage.
| icelancer wrote:
| I use a pfsense box (check comments for link) but Ubiquiti
| gear for WiFi APs/controller/PoE/switches. Been very happy
| with the setup despite the latest concerns with them posted
| here.
|
| Their security gateways are universally hated on, and for
| good reason - one major one is that enabling DPI causes a
| ridiculous drop in throughput rate, even on the newer
| machines (which also have faulty firmware). Stay away from
| them.
| Decade wrote:
| I feel it's really pervasively good marketing, and maybe
| the performance was better back when the WiFi link was not
| usually the bottleneck. (Ref: Bufferbloat, hard to verify
| because Ubiquiti flouts open-source licenses.)
| samgranieri wrote:
| I have UBNT gear at home, and have had it for four years to
| replace my apple AirPort Extreme. I got rid of the AirPort
| Extreme because I thought apple would abandon it. I've been
| very happy with the UBNT platform since. I do wish there
| would be a decent upgrade to the USG 3 coming soon
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| /r/homelab, which is where I heard about it, seems to like
| it.
|
| I've had UniFi equipment for a while now and am generally
| happy with it, though I'm not doing anything terribly
| crazy. Well, maybe crazy for a home user, but not nearly as
| crazy as some of the /r/homelab folks get.
|
| I've got multiple VLANs, firewall rules controlling
| traffic, multiple WiFi networks. I'm using 2 switches (8
| port 150W PoE, 24 port non-PoE), a USG, and an AP AC Pro.
| It all works fine.
|
| My only complaint is that the new version of the controller
| software rearranged all of the settings and I haven't
| figured out where everything lives.
| vetinari wrote:
| You can (still) switch back to old settings in the new
| controller. The latest one switched the client view to a
| newer one too, but fortunately the old one is also
| available.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I work in IT, and I and several others use UBNT. I have not
| had any reliability issues, but you do not want to be hasty
| with version upgrades unless you need it to fix a bug. Read
| release notes.
|
| I have an Edgemax ER-Lite router and a UAC-AP-Pro access
| point, and a security camera for testing.
|
| If you can, it's best to stick with one lineup of products.
| Unifi is one line, edgemax is another, amplifi is another,
| and so on - having one management plane is optimal. I have
| thought about getting a Unifi router so everything is done
| through one control center, but I don't _need_ to.
|
| tl;dr - I think they are great for the money. You can do
| advanced stuff with the routers as well, like VPN gateways
| and BGP if needed, but not always easily in the GUI.
| kazen44 wrote:
| the bgp implementation on all ubiquiti's products is a
| tangled mess. it hogs CPU, is unstable and does not
| support most "nice bgp features".
| tda wrote:
| Yep, that's because it is a mixed bag. Certainly a step up
| from normal consumer grade stuff, and not as expensive as
| 'real' enterprise hardware. Had a lot of promise, and lots
| of hn folks like myself converted.
|
| But I said had, because in 2020 the company seems to have
| transformed into a money-grabbing shitshow. Cloud for
| everything, deprecating fine hardware and fine software in
| favor of unneeded cloud stuff. Crappy firmwares with no
| easy way to rollback. CEO is supposedly running the company
| in the ground with outsourcing, constant crunch etc. There
| are some disgruntled ex ubiquity employees here and on
| reddit, if even half is true of what they say the company
| really needs to turn around soon, it is probably already to
| late.
| dingaling wrote:
| > Certainly a step up from normal consumer grade stuff
|
| Same mass-market Qualcomm SOCs as the other mass-market
| vendors, just better packaged and marketed.
|
| Smallnetbuilder consistently found them middling in
| performance.
| atombender wrote:
| Me neither. I switched out my trusty old Microtik AC router
| for a combination of a Unifi AP AC Pro and UniFi Security
| Gateway in order to get a bit more distance, and
| performance and reliability has been shoddy.
|
| I eventually got a TP-Link WiFi 6 AX3000, and it's been
| super solid, significantly faster, and required almost zero
| manual setup. The Unifi itself required a PoE adapter and a
| router, and of course needs the controller application to
| do anything.
|
| (The controller app with its easily-corrupted and hard-to-
| upgrade MongoDB database is perhaps the worst part of it.
| My _two_ devices occasionally required re- "adopting" for
| no discernible reason. I was unable to upgrade the
| controller at one point because apparently (?) they stopped
| bundling MongoDB, and the controller refused to use the
| version I installed manually. Of course, this breakage
| happened after the software updated, so the only way to fix
| it was by restoring the old version and database files from
| backups.)
|
| Maybe Ubiquiti products make more sense when you need
| dozens of access points across a big building, but
| definitely not in a small city apartment.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| I don't think that's an environment in which Ubiquiti
| gear makes sense. It's much more useful for the people
| who have a 3-story house and have to have a separate
| downstairs and upstairs Wi-Fi network to get decent
| coverage.
| vetinari wrote:
| It is useful even in apartments: you can have your router
| near entrance, where the ISP terminates, and then AP
| elsewhere in the apartment, where you can get better
| reception for your devices.
| atombender wrote:
| Agree, but I would at least expect performance and
| reliability to be better than a consumer router.
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| What do you mean when you say "the Unifi itself
| required...a router?"
|
| The Unifi Security Gateway is a router.
| atombender wrote:
| Sorry, the AC.
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| Any access-point-only device will require that, it's not
| a unique requirement to the Unifi access points.
| vetinari wrote:
| Many APs are routers. Unifi ones are bridges.
| atombender wrote:
| Of course. But it could be a lot simpler, too. For
| example, USG doesn't have PoE (only the EdgeRouter X
| does, I think), and the AC itself doesn't have a power
| adapter. Both things would have made things simpler.
|
| My wish is for a prosumer wireless router that's rock
| stable. I've burned through numerous routers that all
| have had weird issues. The closest I've gotten was my
| Microtik AC Lite, which I loved, but it doesn't have an
| external antenna, so its range was questionable.
| vetinari wrote:
| Didn't your AC ship with an injector?
|
| AFAIK, only the 5-piece package ships without injector,
| the individual ones do have it.
| atombender wrote:
| No injector came in the box. I remember reading forum
| discussions about it at the time that explained which
| models/packages came with the injector, but I forget what
| they said.
| vetinari wrote:
| That's bummer.
|
| I've purchased only nano-HDs and AC-lites, and they all
| came with one in the box. What didn't have any is
| Cloudkey 2 Plus. I had to get a third-party injector for
| that one (or Quickcharge USB charger with USB-C cable - I
| went with injector).
| na85 wrote:
| I have ubiquiti gear for my home network. It's pretty good
| for what it is, which is basically "consumer networking
| gear for power users" but I'm not sure I'd use ubiquiti to
| do serious networking for an enterprise environment. Maybe
| a small business/doctor's office type of environment.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Some routers openly tout the hackability of their routers to
| add open source firmware as a selling point. But those were
| also relatively expensive.
| pyvpx wrote:
| because working through the absolute trash fire that has been
| closed source merchant silicon SDKs was/is a competitive
| advantage.
|
| things like P4 will move the competitive advantages farther up
| the stack where they belong
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Yes, it may very well be the most successful router ever sold,
| but have you thought about how many new models were NOT sold
| because the oldie WRT54G was chugging along all too well?
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| But think of the economies of scale and the $ saved in terms
| of RnD and marketing
| mywittyname wrote:
| Cisco didn't want a threat to their lucrative enterprise
| market.
|
| Imagine if they kept pumping out updated hardware
| supporting DD-WRT over the years, and eventually captured
| 80+% of the home networking market. Now consider that,
| during that time, a generation of future networking
| engineers cut their teeth on hi-po Linksys home routers,
| giving Linksys a segue into the lucrative enterprise market
| as this generation of people started gaining influence.
|
| This ended up being one of magical events that could have
| been the turning point for a small, unknown company to take
| on a giant, and win. Instead, the opportunity was squished
| through a smart acquisition by Cisco.
| kazen44 wrote:
| while i understand your argument, enterprise/ISP routers
| have completely different functionality then home
| devices. most people in the network engineering field cut
| their teeth on enterprise gear in lower level positions.
|
| for instance, home routers do data and control plane
| processing on a single CPU with no or very little NPU
| involved, while enterprise gear has this functionality.
|
| not to mention the large array of technologies that are
| not even usable in small scale networks like VXLAN, BGP,
| IPVPN etc..
| mobilio wrote:
| I'm still using one WRT54GL 1.0 in rural area.
|
| Because it just works and refuse do die.
| midasuni wrote:
| That's a terrible product to sell in today's world
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Care to explain why a product that does what it's
| supposed to is terrible to sell in today's world?
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| I believe it was a sardonic expression on bucking the
| inexorable trend towards consumerism and recurring-
| purchase/subscriptions
| SulfurHexaFluri wrote:
| Products need to fail or become undesirable to use after
| 3 years so you buy a new one.
| bostik wrote:
| If its success has kept uncountable, "segmented" garbage
| devices from ever entering the market, I'd say WRT has been
| even better for the consumers than you think.
| enchiridion wrote:
| I think you both agree.
|
| Unfortunately what is good for consumers in this case is
| bad for companies, because it reduces long term sales.
| therealx wrote:
| Thanks for connecting those dots for me.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| I'd think there must be another reason. Almost anything a
| corporation does is optimizing for the next quarter.
| Sales 2 years in the future are a problem for the next
| set of CxO's
|
| Some candidate reasons: Open source is still to different
| and hence risky. Or maybe arrogance and not invented here
| syndrome.
| unicornporn wrote:
| True dat.
|
| (Message sent via WRT54GL)
| [deleted]
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Certainly that's a good thing though. Conserving resources
| and discouraging needless waste of perfectly functional
| products is a good thing.
| asdff wrote:
| Good for the world, bad for the capitalists. Guess who wins
| in the end?
| tandr wrote:
| I would continue to buy their newer routers if they have open
| firmware a la WRT54G. New wifi standards came out, had to
| install routers for friends and family, and WRT54G itself
| kind of died after 3 or 4 years... (I bought a second one,
| but by then N standard was up and running, so 3rd was not
| Linksys)
| sonotmyname wrote:
| You can buy a new WRT today that supports FOSS firmware out of
| the box - https://www.linksys.com/us/wireless-routers/c/wrt-
| wireless-r...
|
| And yet Linksys (and others) still sell their closed routers as
| well. One can only concluded that the Open Source support,
| while important for a niche group, is not enough for market
| dominance...
| hhh wrote:
| I had a WRT1900AC for several years. It was a very nice
| product, with very good community support.
|
| Official support, however, was not good in my experience.
| Several years later I finally bought a Ubiqui Dream Machine
| Pro, and absolutely love it. Kinda miffed that they suffered
| a breach a month after I bought it, though.
| merlinscholz wrote:
| I recently sold my UDMP and bought some mikrotik gear,
| because the device hat very tight limits on what ubiquiti
| wants you to do with it. No wireguard was an annoyance I
| could live with, but disabling NAT was not possible and a
| switch backplane running at 1gbps were the final blow. Also
| I do not want to have to log into an online account to use
| my (maybe airgapped) router.
| sscarduzio wrote:
| I'm curious about what Microtik router did you choose?
| vetinari wrote:
| The older Unifi routers, USG-3 and USGPRO-4, can run
| wireguard. The annoyance is, that you must configure it
| via config.gateway.json file and reinstall it after each
| firmware update. They also run without cloud accounts.
|
| Pity that Ubiquiti goes the wrong direction with their
| newer products.
| jcpham2 wrote:
| still rocking the wrt1900 and openwrt/lede
| lostlogin wrote:
| I've dithered on the UDM-P, the reviews are very mixed.
|
| I'm in a strange place with UniFi as a whole, as my APs are
| limiting download speeds to about 275mbps while upload
| speed is line speed, as is wired speed. There is lots on
| forums and Reddit about strange issues like this with
| Ubiquiti and they could really do with some firming up of
| their software.
| hinkley wrote:
| Linksys is owned by Cisco, and I don't know what they do now,
| but at the time a Cisco low-end router had no specialty
| hardware to run a lot of their features. Those features were
| implemented in software.
|
| So openwrt threatens their entry level and some of their mid-
| range devices, creating a conflict of interests.
| clashandcarry wrote:
| Linksys is currently owned by Foxconn.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/26/17166272/foxconn-buys-
| bel...
| jgalt212 wrote:
| Both were then subsequently sold to the Sheinhardt Wig
| Company.
| Forge36 wrote:
| This feels like it needs a graph to explain what went
| where.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Cisco hasn't owned Linksys since 2013. Belkin bought it
| from Cisco and kept the brand.
| walrus01 wrote:
| If you really want a small fully open source router these days,
| you can build your own VyOS (evolution of Vyatta) install ISO,
| which is fully open source, and install it on some small x86-64
| system with multiple 1/10GbE interfaces. Or install pfsense,
| which is also fully open source.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| It's why I decided to make my current router a full PC running
| Linux with a couple of NICs and am looking into getting
| wireless working directly on it.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > looking into getting wireless working directly on it. reply
|
| This is, unfortunately, pretty hard to do well. 5 GHz AP
| support is particularly complicated, as the AP is required to
| take some special steps to avoid interfering with other
| services using the band, including weather radar. Most
| consumer cards don't implement these steps, limiting them to
| operating as a client on those frequencies.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| I got a QCA986x/988x (forget exact model but that's what
| lspci says) and I'm reading it works with ath10k driver.
| Wish me luck. Really hope multiple BSSID works but that's
| why I bought 2.
|
| I'm not throwing out my Asus access point yet.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| I've done this in the past and had great results. The only
| downside is that running a regular PC drawing ~100W 24/7 can
| easily add up to $100/year depending on electricity costs and
| eventually an embedded device would pay itself off.
| second--shift wrote:
| I am running pfSense on a Supermicro X9SCL 1U pulling <40W,
| with an old SSD as the bootdisk. gig nics & everything
| else.
|
| Sure you can half the power draw again with an embedded
| device, but diminishing marginal gain.
| jaclaz wrote:
| Can't say if it applies to your case, but as a
| firewall/router I use a "thin client" with a TransMeta
| processor, the actual model is Fujitsu Futro S, there
| are/were several sub-models, mine is an old S220, it runs
| Zeroshell (a Linux distro) with an added "normal" PCI
| network cards and it is like 15W:
|
| https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/Futro/s200/
| Accujack wrote:
| The manufacturers are mostly run by people who were trained in
| "standard" corporate governance. This includes the ways to
| protect corporate revenue streams by suppressing (legally, of
| course) competition, delivering a range of products by
| producing the top end model and crippling it to sell at a
| cheaper price point, and repeatedly reducing costs to increase
| profits in a "race to the bottom".
|
| Until a new set of management philosophies is adopted for
| teaching, a large number of companies will keep doing the same
| thing, because in general corporate managers have a lead time
| associated with them, and we won't run out of the old school
| ones until 20+ years after philosophies change.
|
| This is an opportunity for anyone who can do things
| differently, of course.
| ownagefool wrote:
| Your standard bigco manager also believes a whole bunch of
| FUD about the lack of OSS secrity and what not, but it's 20
| years unless upstarts eat their market.
|
| Probably more likely for your average software company than
| hardware, but I suspect there's an inflection point in cheap
| hardware.
| stereolambda wrote:
| I see all this as a heartwarming story where a company was
| forced, with a "trap" set by GPL and its philosophy, to offer
| people for once a _square deal_ : good hardware, fairly
| priced, you are free to do with it what you want. All this
| serves human needs better and the manufacturer could in fact
| turn a profit.
|
| There is a faint, faint glimmer of hope that this is a peek
| of the far future of our techno-political-economic system. Of
| course with very different laws around intellectual property,
| company governance, customer protection, terms of
| participating in the market etc. We might be as far from it
| as the Enlightenment in 1750 (in a world built on overt
| serfdom and not even fully developed colonialism) was from
| the year 2000, but still. Makes me feel a teensy bit better
| about doing the right thing today, just because.
| woofie11 wrote:
| I'm firmly convinced that if a Chinese maker made a 100% open
| source keyboard or mouse, they could sell that for $30
| instead of $3, and establish a global brand to boot.
|
| Same thing for a lot of hardware, actually. Printers.
| Scanners. Etc.
| Decade wrote:
| Isn't that basically Keyboardio? Except it's a San
| Francisco company selling them for $150; expensive, but
| still within reason for boutique mechanical keyboards.
| k__ wrote:
| Which is kinda ironic, since obviously router software is the
| worst.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| When routers are ordered in bulk from ISPs in certain
| countries, the ISP is the customer, not the end user. The ISP
| often doesn't want the end user to be able to do things like
| enable IPv6 and things that could boost the effectiveness of
| Bittorrent. A closed-source design ensures that only the ISP
| can change certain settings.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I suspect it's more that when someone flashes a router with
| custom firmware, they are far more likely to then spend hours
| on the phone with tech support because they have messed up
| the MTU settings or can't get VoIP to work because the the
| SIP ALG isn't working properly anymore...
|
| For every person that delves into the internals who knows
| what they're doing, there are 10 people who delve into the
| internals following some incomplete and outdated online
| heresay...
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| This is the real reason. 90+% of their customers are, for
| lack of a better word, idiots when it comes to "hacking".
| The ISP just doesn't want to deal with it. And for the 10-%
| who _do_ know what they'd be doing, the ISP doesn't care
| because it's another configuration they have to support.
|
| There's a reason ISPs won't help you if you hook your own
| router up. It's not malicious. Just then doing what makes
| sense from a financial and a training standpoint.
|
| It's scummy, but the Dunning-Kruger effect with tech is
| very real.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| So they can say:
|
| Connect the modem we gave you with our settings, and if
| it works using that it's not our problem.
|
| It's not that hard.
| aksss wrote:
| I would say 90% of their customers don't _want_ to be
| hacking their router, and 90% of those that do don't
| really know what they're doing.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Probably. And in that case, the ISP would be even more
| justified in not supporting "non standard"
| configurations.
| cbozeman wrote:
| I'm fine with that... if they can prove it. They have to
| release stats that show what percentage of customers
| called in _with a custom firmware_ and _how long it took
| the techs to solve their issue_.
|
| I guaran-fucking-tee you someone smart enough to flash a
| custom firmware will likely have scoured the Internet for
| the answer first. Most of the time, they'll find their
| answer somewhere on a forum / blog post. I would actually
| be willing to bet money that technical support spends far
| less time with these people than it does with older
| customers who "can't be bothered with reading" or younger
| customers who grew up in the "it just works" generation.
|
| There seems to be a middle ground of people, I think
| we're called the Analog-To-Digital generation, that had
| to actually put effort into learning technology, because
| so much shit had to be manually configured, that we
| gained a pretty solid understanding of tech and we don't
| have the fear of it that I see in people even just five
| years older than me (I'm 40), and the lack of interest in
| digging around in the "guts" that I see in people far
| younger than me (25 and under).
| oarsinsync wrote:
| > I guaran-fucking-tee you someone smart enough to flash
| a custom firmware will likely have scoured the Internet
| for the answer first.
|
| Or they followed a "how to get free movies/tv/sports"
| guide which told them to follow these simple steps, and
| something went wrong, and they have no idea what to do
| next, and they're offline now too.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| When I was ~25 in the late 90s (now in my late 40s) I
| spent 3 months with a 'custom' guy. He was going in and
| re-writing our software stored procedures. They had to
| work a particular way or the whole harry ball came flying
| apart. 2 level one techs, 3 level two techs, 3 on site
| rebuilds with 3 installers and 4 senior engineers. 3
| months of work. All because 1 dude decided to change
| things out and did not follow our extensive docs and use
| the people we dedicated to help him. All because he
| wanted a feature but did not want to pay for it but did
| not want to admit he broke the multi million dollar
| system they bought. It was like an hour of work for me
| and 1 line of code. But he jerked us around for months
| and cost us thousands of dollars of time and work and
| would scream at us for hours on end that nothing worked
| because he broke it.
|
| BTW The dudes who worked the .COM boom/bust stuff are
| hitting their 50s. When you are on your 15th uber
| framework sometimes you just wing it and dig in only if
| you have to. Or as I say to my fellow devs 'what useless
| tech skill am I going to learn today that I did not want
| to know about'. For my first couple of stacks I can tell
| you everything you want to know for hours on end. For
| current ones that passion is mostly gone. Crunched out of
| me with endless meetings and forms to fill out.
| syshum wrote:
| The support angle is the party line for why they want to
| own the boxes, but there has never been any actual data to
| back this up. Further I do not see this being a real
| problem, hell I use a custom router but if I have a problem
| I have hook up the ISP router to talk to customer service,
| I am fine with that.
|
| The real reason they want this is 2 fold
|
| 1. Money. it is always money. They want to be able to
| advertise "Internet for only $30" but then tack on 20-30 in
| "other fees" to get that bill up, $5-10 for a router is an
| easy gain
|
| 2. Control. Companies like comcast have lots of control
| over the endpoints to the point where they can manipulate
| the firmware do do what ever they need for traffic
| management or even offer public wifi access to all your
| neighbors...
| dialamac wrote:
| 1 really doesn't hold water. Some ISPs in the US still
| waive the fee if you don't rent equipment, so that doesnt
| really strengthen the argument. I now have an ISP that
| doesn't waive the fee but that doesn't matter either,
| since it is not optional it is just part of the total
| sunk cost. I still use my own router.
|
| Your whole argument doesn't hold water because even with
| Comcast you can bring your own equipment. They don't go
| out of their way to help you... but they don't stop you
| either. Don't see how that is "control".
|
| Maybe you will not call tech support when your own
| equipment fails but you clearly have no experience in a
| support role if you think other people won't!
|
| Just spend some time on GitHub issues for more popular
| open source projects to get an idea, and the multiply
| that by at least 10 for the general public.
| syshum wrote:
| Both Comcast and my current ISP both simply refuse to
| assist if you do not have their equipment. I have
| experiences both "Please hook up your ISP provided router
| and if you are still experiencing problems please call
| back"
|
| Hell half the time they do not even help when you do have
| their equipment. It took me 3 months of calling support
| before my current ISP agreed to send a tech to look at my
| ONT that was clearly resetting itself, Tech replaced the
| ONT has not had any problems since.
|
| ISP, all ISP's, customer service is terrible, there is
| not a ISP on the planet that has good service. Or atleast
| in the US
| aksss wrote:
| I don't disagree with your points 1 and 2, but IME having
| worked in telecom for more than a decade your point about
| there being no data to back it up is wrong. Probably no
| data that you have been privy to, yes. Your lack of
| exposure to data does not equate to a lack of data. IME,
| internal analysis of trouble tickets along with unit cost
| is driving most moves by an ISP to make installation and
| usability simple, automated, and specifically not result
| in support calls. Remember that 90+% of their customers
| have the expectation that it just works like a power
| utility and buy their kids' gaming machines from Costco
| and Walmart. They really don't care about config
| customization and prioritize the assumption that it "just
| works" far above their flexibility to load custom
| firmware.
| kortilla wrote:
| > The ISP often doesn't want the end user to be able to do
| things like enable IPv6 and things that could boost the
| effectiveness of Bittorrent.
|
| In what country are ISPs blocking ipv6 because it makes
| BitTorrent effective?
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| I didn't say that ISPs are disabling IPv6 because it has
| any connection to Bittorrent, I said that IPv6, on one
| hand, and Bittorent-accelerating features, on the other
| hand, are two things that some ISPs in various countries
| may want to block.
|
| For example, in Poland the router that Orange forced fiber
| customers to accept for 2019 came with closed-source
| firmware, and while there was a hack to enable IPv6, the
| ISP - who alone had superuser privileges on the device -
| issued a command to the router each night at midnight to
| disable IPv6, because it considered IPv6 a "beta" feature
| not meant for wide use (a limbo it has been stuck in for
| years now). The customer, without access to the router
| internals, had no way to permanently override it.
| Fortunately, if I understand correctly, EU legislation is
| phasing out any obligation to accept only the ISP-provided
| router.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > As Lifehacker put it way back in 2006, it was the perfect way
| to turn your $60 router into a $600 router, which likely meant
| it was potentially costing Cisco money to have a device this
| good on the market.
| wpietri wrote:
| It depends a lot on what you mean by successful. Was the WRT54G
| successful in terms of sales numbers and value delivered to
| users? Absolutely. But in terms of internal hype, ever-
| increasing revenues, and executive promotions? Probably not.
| creeble wrote:
| I should test OpenWRT with my new multi-AP test setup.
|
| Many repeaters and pure (bridging) APs have an isolation problem
| for clients that switch between them. TP-Link, Netgear, and a few
| others suffer this problem.
|
| What happens is that when a wifi client moves from one AP to
| another, the old AP doesn't update its device table, and the
| client becomes unreachable from other clients on the old AP. This
| only matters on networks that use a lot of LAN comms (Sonos,
| AirPlay, etc), but it makes certain APs (and extenders) unusable
| on those networks.
|
| Two that work right are Ubiquity and Eero, fwiw.
| CharlesW wrote:
| FWIW, I've had a Netgear Orbi system (1 base, 2 satellites) for
| some time and haven't noticed any issues.
| paraleopiped wrote:
| Is there a list of useful hardware like this or tplink722 and
| other similar stories?
| cameronperot wrote:
| I absolutely loved my WRT54G series router. I had one years ago
| that had its input ethernet port fried during a storm. Luckily I
| was running DD-WRT on it and was able to reconfigure one of the
| output ethernet ports as the new input so the router lived on.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| The first dedicated site (I know of) that was distributing
| modified 54G firmware was wrt54g.com .
| https://web.archive.org/web/20050803021630/http://www.wrt54g...
|
| Right after that some guy (Thomas?) was tweaking the WRT firmware
| and selling it on his own site. He really liked red things. His
| whole endeavor kind of annoyed me.
| peter_d_sherman wrote:
| >"The companies Linksys was competing with were, again, focused
| on a market where routers cost nearly as much as a computer
| itself. But Victor found the sweet spot: A $199 router that came
| with software that was easy to set up and reasonably
| understandable for mere mortals."
| shmerl wrote:
| The latest router in the series is Linksys WRT3200ACM:
| https://www.linksys.com/us/p/P-WRT3200ACM/
|
| It has decent open source support and even WiFi drivers are open:
| https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi
|
| The WiFi firmware though is not, which became a problem when NXP
| bought Marvel that made the chips for WRT3200ACM. NXP is
| unresponsive and doesn't do anything to update the firmware.
|
| See: https://community.nxp.com/t5/Wireless-
| Connectivity/Drivers-f...
| rkagerer wrote:
| This may be a dumb question but are there any open-source
| routers out there that can manage to do QoS on a gigabit+ WAN
| connection (without tanking latency)?
| shmerl wrote:
| I didn't really play with QoS on it, but it has a dual core
| 1.8 GHz CPU, so may be it can handle it.
|
| In the worst case, you can just make your own custom router
| that runs Linux using x86_64 hardware. What's harder to find
| is a good MIMO WiFi cards for parallel connections. Qualcomm
| supposedly has some with open drivers (recent Atheros -
| ath10k, ath11k).
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