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Re: [PLUG] Wish list for PLUG talks --> OpenWRT
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JP Vossen wrote:
I have a "WRT54G" and a "WRT54G v.3" (w/ Cisco label) I need to set up.
Is OpenWRT what everyone recommends? I plan to put the device on its
own FW segment, with its own subnet, so I don't think I care about
anything but the wireless AP part. But I don't know anything about the
device or any of the possible firmwares.
Thoughts or recommendations? (Remember, I'm occupationally paranoid.)
The firmware I've heard everybody recommend is DD-WRT. It has a very
powerful web interface, and comes with all the features to be expected
of a third party firmware. HOWEVER! While it's based on the Linux
kernel, and it's still using FOSS for a lot of the features, DD-WRT has
taken a worrying turn towards being proprietary. As far as I can tell
they can sort of do this because they rewrote the web interface for v23
or v24, and they don't offer that under a free license, but it's still
pretty legally sketchy IMHO, as well as morally questionable.
I suppose I could live with that for now. It works pretty well and has
the best out-of-the-box feature set of all third party firmwares I've
seen. However I also noticed it has an x86 version and a few other
feature-enhanced versions that require you to purchase an
activation code! Not just "please pay us to be able to download
this and cover our costs" but "you must pay for this to use it, for
every single router you install it on".
At that point I started using Tomato and haven't looked back. I've
come to realize that I don't really need 99% of the features DD-WRT
has, and I like the bandwidth-shaping and -monitoring features of
Tomato, and it's user-friendliness.
I have avoided OpenWRT so far because Tomato works for me and I don't
need the extra complexity that OpenWRT has. One of the main reasons is
that OpenWRT doesn't come with a Web GUI out of the box; it comes as a
separate package and has to be installed, as do most extra features on
OpenWRT. It's not for everybody, but it sounds to me like you--and
many people on this list--would want to go for OpenWRT. I would like
to hear a talk on it as well.
--Gordon
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