[PLUG] Robert Cringely expounds upon Linux and the WRT54G

[Eug <eug+plug@esmiley.net>]

Below is a rather interesting article by Robert Cringely about Linux
and the Linksys WRT54G wireless router. Also, does anyone have the
name of the local wireless mailinglist that was discussed recently? I
meant to get on it and lost track of it...


<http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040527.html>

MAY 27, 2004
The Little Engine That Could
How Linux is Inadvertently Poised to Remake the Telephone and Internet
Markets

By Robert X. Cringely

One of the cheapest Linux computers you can buy brand new (not at a
garage sale) is the Linksys WRT54G, an 802.11g wireless access point
and router that includes a four-port 10/100 Ethernet switch and can be
bought for as little as $69.99 according to Froogle. That's a heck of
a deal for a little box that performs all those functions, but a look
inside is even more amazing. There you'll find a 200 MHz MIPS
processor and either 16 or 32 megs of DRAM and four or eight megs of
flash RAM -- more computing power than I needed 10 years ago to run a
local Internet Service Provider with several hundred customers. But
since the operating system is Linux and since Linksys has respected
the Linux GPL by publishing all the source code for anyone to download
for free, the WRT54G is a lot more than just a wireless router. It is
a disruptive technology.

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