The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
| From: | Karen Sohl <Karen.Sohl-AT-belkin.com> | |
| To: | Karen Sohl <Karen.Sohl-AT-belkin.com> | |
| Subject: | Linksys Makes WRT1900AC even better with open source too! | |
| Date: | Thu, 8 Oct 2015 01:01:37 +0000 | |
| Message-ID: | <CY1PR0801MB159363358C05C27C612E0839F7350@CY1PR0801MB1593.namprd08.prod.outlook.com> |
Information on pre-built images based on OpenWrt's, "Chaos Calmer" 15.05 is available immediately for the WRT1900ACS on the OpenWrt wiki page at http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/linksys/wrt1900acs. (This URL will be live tomorrow after the release goes over the wire at 8:00 AM EST) LINKSYS MAKES THE AWARD WINNING WRT1900AC WI-FI ROUTER EVEN BETTER New WRT1900ACS Wireless Router Provides Faster Processing Speed and Double the Memory than Original WRT1900AC Irvine, Calif. - Oct. 8, 2015- Linksys(r)<http://www.linksys.com/>, the first to sell 100 million routers globally and a leader in networking solutions for the home and business, today announced it has improved upon its best AC1900 wireless router to deliver even better performance with more processing power, more memory, fully open source ready and at an even better price. The newly improved WRT1900ACS Dual-Band Gigabit Router<http://www.linksys.com/wrt1900acs> is equipped with powerful hardware including a dual-core 1.6 GHz processor, 128MB flash memory, 512MB DDR3 RAM memory, eSATA and USB ports. The new WRT ships with Linksys Smart Wi-Fi setup and management tools, and Linksys has also collaborated with Marvell(r)<http://www.marvell.com> and OpenWrt<http://www.openwrt.org>.org to ensure full open source support in the latest version of OpenWrt's Chaos Calmer release (15.05) at launch. The new hardware and multiple software and firmware options make for an unprecedented router with advanced customization and blazing fast speeds. "We just made the best performing Linksys AC1900 router even better," said Mike Chen, vice president product management and engineering for Linksys. "We are committed to making the Linksys WRT lineup the most advanced and best-in-class router line for the prosumer so they can get more out of the network they use in their home and office environment. We improved on the original WRT1900AC because we were able to incorporate better components such as a faster processor to make the router perform at higher clock speeds and providing more RAM for advanced users. Adding more memory enables our customers to build more off the open source platform as well as enabling us to provide more enhancements in firmware as we innovate and create more features." Performance Perfected(r) The Linksys WRT1900ACS Dual-Band Gigabit Wi-Fi Router is capable of speeds of up to 1.3Gbps* on the 5 GHz band and up to 600Mpbs* on the 2.4 GHz band, Other features that make the WRT1900ACS a premium and best-in-class router include: * [* 3 Spatial Streams * 4 External Antennas, Adjustable and Removable * Implicit and Explicit Beamforming * FAT, NTFS, and HFS+ File System Support * UPnP Server * DLNA Compatible * Wi-Fi Protected Set-Up * Smart Wi-Fi Setup and Management Software o iOS and Android App available * Network Topology Map * Works with Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10, MAC OS (X Leopard V10.5.8 or later, Snow Leopard V10.6.1 or later, Lion v10.7 or Mountain Lion v10.8) * Much More!] <http://www.linksys.com/us/wireless-routers/c/smart-wi-fi-...> 1.6GHz Dual-Core ARM-based Processor * 128MB Flash * 512MB DDR3 RAM * Full Open Source Ready * OpenWrt Chaos Calmer Support * Open VPN Server * PPTP VPN Support * IPSec Pass-thru * 4x Gigabit LAN Ports * 1x Gigabit WAN Port * 1x USB 3.0 Port * 1x eSATA/USB 2.0 Port * 2.4GHz and 5GHz Simultaneous Dual-Band * 64/128-bit WEP * WPA/WPA2-Personal and Enterprise The combination of all the above features and functionality together enabled Linksys to build a robust router that could perform without lag or buffering for the dozens of wireless products on today's networks, including laptops, tablets, smart phones, gaming consoles, media centers, hard drives, TVs, computers, printers and the dozens of connected devices still coming to market. In an IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by Linksys (March 2015), titled The Home Network, the Neglected Workhorse <http://cache-www.linksys.com/resources/img/features/ea850...>, IDC found that the average connected home had five devices connected to the Internet and in use at the same time. Service Providers are also increasing their internet service options to up to one gigabit of bandwidth into the home. With more Internet bandwidth and more connected devices, home users will need to update their home router with the latest Wireless-AC technology, such as the WRT1900ACS, to take advantage of the speed. OpenWRT Support Linksys has collaborated with OpenWrt and Marvell to provide full open source support for the WRT1900ACS in OpenWrt's stable and development branches. OpenWrt is a modular system, where users can select and install additional features on top of pre-compiled firmware images from the open source community such as BitTorrent support, multiple VPN clients and servers, advanced QoS and firewall features, media file sharing, and captive portal support for creating Wi-Fi hot spots. This modularity allows networking-savvy users to fully customize the feature set of their router to better suit their particular needs. Some of the recent highlights in OpenWrt include full support for IPv6 networks, better support for multi-core systems in the network stack and enhanced support for 3G/4G modems. Information on pre-built images based on OpenWrt's, "Chaos Calmer" 15.05 is available immediately for the WRT1900ACS on the OpenWrt wiki page at http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/linksys/wrt1900acs. Pricing and Availability The new Linksys WRT1900ACS Dual-Band Gigabit Wireless-AC 1900 Router is available for pre-order today at Amazon.com, NewEgg.com and at the Linksys.com store<http://www.linksys.com/wrt1900acs> with plans to ship this coming Sunday - October 11, 2015. Retail availability is planned for Best Buy in mid-November. The MSRP is $229.99. About Linksys The Linksys brand has pioneered wireless connectivity since its inception in 1988 with its leading innovation and engineering strategies, and best-in-class technology, design, and customer service. Linksys enables a connected lifestyle for people at home, at work and on the move, and with its award-winning products, simplifies home control, entertainment, security and Internet access through innovative features and a growing application and partner ecosystem. For more information, visit linksys.com<http://www.linksys.com>, like us on Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/linksys>, follow us on Twitter<http://www.twitter.com/linksys> or watch us on YouTube<http://www.youtube.com/linksys>. ### *The standard transmission rates - 1.3 Gbps (for 5 GHz), 600 Mbps (for 2.4 GHz) - are the physical data rates. Actual data throughput will be lower and may depend on the mix of wireless products used and external factors. The maximum performance for wireless is derived from IEEE Standard 802.11 specifications. Actual performance can vary, and might result in lower wireless network capacity, data throughput rate, range and coverage. Performance depends on many factors, conditions and variables, including distance from the access point, volume of network traffic, environment building materials and construction, operating system used, mix of wireless products used, interference and other adverse conditions. To achieve maximum performance, routers must be paired with coordinating adapters/and or computers in both the 2.4 and 5.0 GHz band such that the maximum performance can be maximized for each GHz band. LINKSYS, Performance Perfected and many product names and logos are trademarks of Belkin International. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. (c) 2015 Belkin International, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Posted Oct 10, 2015 12:13 UTC (Sat)
by robert_s (subscriber, #42402)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Oct 10, 2015 19:16 UTC (Sat)
by troglobit (subscriber, #39178)
[Link]
I remember they once had Lennert Buytenhek on the payroll, that was exciting
Posted Oct 10, 2015 20:50 UTC (Sat)
by arnd (subscriber, #8866)
[Link] (2 responses)
https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi/blob/master/bin/firmware...
This is unfortunately the case for all 802.11ac routers I'm aware of (Qualcomm Atheros, Broadcom, Mediatek, Marvell, Realtek), but it's still different from the previous generation of Atheros (ath9k) based routers that are fully open source, cheap and widely available.
If I'm mistaken and the firmware running on the 88W8864 wifi chip is now open source, that would indeed be major news.
Posted Oct 11, 2015 9:17 UTC (Sun)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
One - is it illegal for it to be Open Source?
Two - there's been various comments - including here on lwn - about how that would be BAD news because it makes it far too easy for bad actors to steal the spectrum, and effectively destroy the capability of using wireless :-(
Much as I'd like to see stuff open-source, the problem is that by upping the power output, individuals gain at the expense of the commons, so everybody (who can) ups power output. Those who can usually end up worse off, those who can't end up pretty much excluded.
Cheers,
Posted Oct 11, 2015 18:58 UTC (Sun)
by arnd (subscriber, #8866)
[Link]
The problem for binary-only wireless firmware is the same as for binary-only host (on the router) firmware, that it makes it impossible to fix problems, most notably the bufferbloat that is pervasive in all of them.
Posted Oct 10, 2015 13:02 UTC (Sat)
by Thue (guest, #14277)
[Link] (12 responses)
Posted Oct 10, 2015 13:32 UTC (Sat)
by rvfh (guest, #31018)
[Link]
Posted Oct 10, 2015 14:37 UTC (Sat)
by martin.langhoff (guest, #61417)
[Link]
There's a reason most of the industry doesn't do it. It costs a lot to take the long road... and customers don't care whether you took shortcuts instead.
Do you care? Buy it. It's the only answer that matters. If the market shows no interest, who'll stick his/her neck out to dtrt next time?
Posted Oct 10, 2015 14:41 UTC (Sat)
by diegor (subscriber, #1967)
[Link]
It's true that you can find equivalent hardware for 150$ It's quite expensive, and you can find similar hardware at better price. But not at very much better price. And you can also find equivalent hardware at 300$. And it does'nt have open firmware.
So, at the end the price is ok, if you need a powerful wifi-router.
Posted Oct 10, 2015 15:08 UTC (Sat)
by lutchann (subscriber, #8872)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Oct 12, 2015 17:40 UTC (Mon)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
My problem is I'd like to get one and stick a raid array on it - an enclosure for the disks costs as much as a disk, if not more :-( A 3TB Red costs £100, a four disk enclosure about £300 :-(
Cheers,
Posted Oct 10, 2015 16:17 UTC (Sat)
by niner (subscriber, #26151)
[Link]
Posted Oct 10, 2015 16:24 UTC (Sat)
by gioele (subscriber, #61675)
[Link]
Posted Oct 10, 2015 16:32 UTC (Sat)
by ledow (guest, #11753)
[Link]
And it does way more than a simple router ever would.
If you want something for a normal home, go buy the cheapest Linksys.
If you want something capable of actually maximising the connection, acting at gigabit speeds on local ports (just because it's a gigabit port does not mean you get transfer rates of 1Gb/s across it when the rest are busy), proper Qos, VoIP, VPN, etc. all at the same time, then you can easily pay several hundred dollars without even blinking.
This isn't replacing grandma's wifi connection. It's replacing business and power-user devices that do a lot more and act as the firewall to corporate networks etc.
Posted Oct 12, 2015 13:45 UTC (Mon)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link]
Posted Oct 12, 2015 14:43 UTC (Mon)
by TD-Linux (guest, #92557)
[Link]
Posted Oct 13, 2015 18:14 UTC (Tue)
by pak9rabid (guest, #37821)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Oct 14, 2015 4:38 UTC (Wed)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link]
http://www.coreboot.org/Supported_Motherboards#Embedded_....
It's quite a bit more freedom-respecting (and customer-respecting!) than Linksys' bait-and-switch announcement here.
Posted Oct 10, 2015 19:26 UTC (Sat)
by faramir (subscriber, #2327)
[Link] (5 responses)
I would prefer to buy products with fully available source code, but I don't personally have the time to certify the source. If Linksys is hoping that this will increase the chances that I will purchase this product then getting it certified by an outside organization is required. Without it, this is simply an assertion by the vendor (Linksys/Belkin).
Posted Oct 10, 2015 21:46 UTC (Sat)
by ledow (guest, #11753)
[Link] (4 responses)
If you haven't noticed, this is more a step towards an officially-supported, manufacturer-config open router than ever before.
Wanting more is fine. Holding it against the product that does more than any of its predecessors just sounds like sour grapes.
Posted Oct 10, 2015 21:53 UTC (Sat)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Oct 11, 2015 8:09 UTC (Sun)
by jeff@uclinux.org (guest, #8024)
[Link] (2 responses)
'We the community' have said that a major factor in OpenSource is that 'anyone' can audit. I don't care a whit for some random RYF audit and cert body that I'm not affiliated with, and neither should you. On the other hand, that isn't the issue here, it's just 'us vs them', where them in this case is a commercial entity. Not helpful.
Posted Oct 11, 2015 13:12 UTC (Sun)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link] (1 responses)
Sure, I can waste my own time doing this kind of thing for everything, or I can delegate at least some of it to an organisation I personally trust (as do many others) whose involvement also adds a degree of credibility to the way the vendor manages their software development and release processes. No-one is moving any goalposts: all they are doing is suggesting that the vendor document their goal-scoring, rather than some random person on the Internet having to do it for them (and writing it up in a lengthy blog post in an exposé of the vendor's software-related practices).
Posted Oct 12, 2015 16:01 UTC (Mon)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link]
Does OpenWRT or Cumulus Linux themselves even meet the definition of 'free software that respects your freedoms' under the FSF's definitions? I really doubt it.
So is RYF going to be something that I consider highly important or relevant? No, of course not. And I don't think most people here will consider it that relevant. It's a 'nice to have' thing, not a requirement. RYF is a nice thing, but it is too narrow in scope and divergent goals from most people means that it's not really that useful as a certification for most people.
If you are a hard-core FSF-type then, yeah sure, it matters to you. But for most people it is probably never going to be that important despite the effort FSF puts into it.
Posted Oct 10, 2015 23:43 UTC (Sat)
by dana44 (guest, #104864)
[Link] (17 responses)
The initial release was off to a very rocky start, starting with this "made for OpenWrt" router not communicating anything with the OpenWrt devs prior to the release so they had no idea what this company was doing. Then it took about a year for drivers, but they were pure binary blobs and could only work with old releases of OpenWrt.
Moving forward to today we still have a binary blob wrapped in source so at least it can work with new kernels. However due to the binary nature it is subpar. Apparently Apple is not 100% compliant with the wifi standards and this causes issues with the marvell binary driver! Personally I've been running the current release for a month with an iPad in the house and haven't had any issues, but I know others aren't happy. Also the speed isn't 100% up to par today. IIRC during RC3 marvell released a faster wifi driver, but it caused stability issues and was rolled back for the final release.
All in all I'm satisfied paying the premium I did to encourage "made for open source" products. The eSATA and USB3 ports work great. I'm very happy with the router and external drive I have attached making it an excellent NAS. The WiFi is fast enough for all the mobile devices in my house and I'm optimistic further work will be done so we can get even better speed. I've had great stability, only bringing it down to install the final release. I once noticed a trunk build and installed this untested build only to discover it was a bad OpenWrt build! I was able to do a power cycle trick to get back to a previous firmware release instead of having a bricked router! Furthermore with a cheap TTL cable I could be certain to not ever end up with a bricked router. The hardware is truly designed for an open source hobbiest to mess around and recover instead of bricking.
It is nice to see Linksys putting out press releases like this about OpenWrt now that we know how the FCC feels about custom firmware.
Despite the short comings of it having a binary blob AFAIK it is still the only 1900 router with even that. I wish there was a perfect router that was 100% open, but I expect Marvell isn't going to open up the driver, in which case I still am happy to support Linksys for creating this router designed to run OpenWRT, even if Marvell isn't really on board with the idea. Without them we probably wouldn't even have a binary blob and would be moving more toward locked down routers. Thank you linksys, you've made an excellent piece of hardware and you've got my money until I can buy a 100% open source device.
Posted Oct 11, 2015 21:38 UTC (Sun)
by lsl (subscriber, #86508)
[Link] (16 responses)
The Netgear WNDR3800 (and 3700v2) has no need for any binary blobs. It's a bit hard to get one but other than that it's a pretty good device. Lacks some of the more fancy features of the wrt1900ac but is also much cheaper.
If the wrt1900acs comes without the need for proprietary drivers and firmware, that'd be nice. I wouldn't find it particularly interesting if it required blobs, though. Not interested in depending on Marvell to fix stuff.
Posted Oct 12, 2015 1:14 UTC (Mon)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Oct 12, 2015 13:08 UTC (Mon)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Oct 12, 2015 13:32 UTC (Mon)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (4 responses)
I have seen a couple recommendations, but I'd have to dig for them . The reality is that most people don't pick one, they get whatever's in the device they buy.
Posted Oct 12, 2015 16:51 UTC (Mon)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link] (3 responses)
As for "viable" I mean "works without external modules and crashes". Even staging would be fine since that has a better hope of getting cleaned up.
Posted Oct 13, 2015 10:46 UTC (Tue)
by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Oct 13, 2015 20:36 UTC (Tue)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Oct 13, 2015 20:38 UTC (Tue)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link]
Posted Oct 12, 2015 6:42 UTC (Mon)
by tao (subscriber, #17563)
[Link] (8 responses)
Whenever there's a choice between "I can upgrade the firmware, but I don't have the source code" vs "The firmware cannot be upgraded at all" (or "The firmware can be upgraded, but only by a service centre" or "The firmware can be upgraded, but only using a Windows-only tool"), I prefer the former. The FSF seems to encourage the latter -- and consider it more free. I still have not understood why.
Posted Oct 12, 2015 7:48 UTC (Mon)
by arnd (subscriber, #8866)
[Link] (7 responses)
The same seems to be true for almost everyone: As you get to higher data rates, the chip vendors slap another CPU core in front of the wireless hardware to offload the host CPU. The WRT1900ACS case is particularly interesting, because it's even the same kind of CPU core (Cortex-A9) in both the host SoC and in the wireless chip, and a lot of the code (from looking at strings in the binary blob) running on the wireless side is also the same as what we have in upstream drivers for older Marvell chips.
Posted Oct 12, 2015 23:05 UTC (Mon)
by rahvin (guest, #16953)
[Link] (6 responses)
I personally believe the FCC has been steering companies this direction because the radio OS is often a proprietary realtime OS that looks like a binary blob and is unalterable. It makes it pretty impossible to adjust any settings or power levels on the radio which is an FCC goal as we recently saw with the recent FCC request for comment.
I personally find this rather scary and a dramatic step back in freedom. That radio OS has ring 0 control of everything, with the host OS running at a higher level. A compromise on the radio OS compromises the entire system and all data stored on it and all data passing through it. It's an NSA wet dream and a hackers gold mine. Sure it's harder to break but given the time and resources I doubt it's an impossible task. Frankly it's just bad design trying to route around something that's AFAIK never been a problem and as a side benefit opens the whole OS to exploit regardless of User OS.
Posted Oct 13, 2015 2:48 UTC (Tue)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (1 responses)
Of course, a compromise in the controller OS will still be problematic, since it can do a lot of mischief (like trying to exploit the host driver by using malicious replies or by diverting traffic to attacker's host).
Posted Oct 13, 2015 23:20 UTC (Tue)
by rahvin (guest, #16953)
[Link]
Posted Oct 13, 2015 8:12 UTC (Tue)
by arnd (subscriber, #8866)
[Link] (3 responses)
Another weird setup that seemed to get more popular for a while was to have multiple SoCs that each run Linux in one box, I think I've seen one case that had three of them (DSL, router/switch, and Quantenna WiFi), though usually there are just two of them.
Posted Oct 13, 2015 23:51 UTC (Tue)
by rahvin (guest, #16953)
[Link] (2 responses)
My understanding of the phones where the radio is integrated with the CPU is the CPU boots the radio OS and code first and the User facing OS (typically a version of android) is booted as a VM on top of the radio OS. This is supposedly a very stripped down VM where everything pretty much runs directly without translation to avoid the VM penalty. Again the point is to prevent any modification of the radio. I'm paraphrasing this, probably badly, but this is my understanding of how it typically works. In the past both OS's were Linux but there has been a recent trend to make the radio OS proprietary so they don't have to release the code for it and can prevent redistribution. They use memory and CPU locks that will only allowed signed code to run.
This is typically why when you obtain hardware access on locked down Android phones you need to turn off the hardware security (typically referred to as S-Off on HTC phones), then flash the new ROM. There are also typically radio ROM's available to update the radio OS portion to newer released versions because the phone maker will typically update the radio a couple times after release to fix reception issues. These ROM's are flashed separately because they run completely segregated in separate memory but IIRC the radio OS has DMA access to the User facing OS. Because the manufacturer will typically apply a new radio ROM at the same time they deploy a new Android ROM the first thing the modding community does is try to decompress the update package into the separate updates so those that don't want to update the Android ROM but want the Radio fixes can obtain them.
Anyway I'm going off track. If you want to understand more about how this works I would suggest visiting the developer forums on xda-developers.com and reading through some of the various forums for the device you are interested in and some of the more general android forums. IMO these are ugly hacks to try to enforce this goal of keeping the radio from being modified.
Posted Oct 14, 2015 2:37 UTC (Wed)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (1 responses)
The higher end multi-core devices aren't that way.
It was never the case that the radio processor ran Linux. If it was a separate chip, it always ran it's own software (and usually nothing as sophisticated as an "operating system" or even QNX)
Posted Oct 14, 2015 10:49 UTC (Wed)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link]
Posted Oct 11, 2015 8:10 UTC (Sun)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link]
The Forum dicussing the problems and trying to make thigns work on this series is now over 8000 posts long. https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=50173&p=323
There is word that a new driver may be released 'soon' that is supposed to fix things, but right now people are having more lockups with CC final than they were with CC-RC3
People on the forum have orderd ACS models and are witing for them to arrive, after which we will see how they actually hold up under use.
Linksys has been claiming that this series was fully supported with each and every release. They may finally be right, but I'll wait and see (It seems that they are closer to fully supported than anyone else, I just wish it actually worked reliably)
Posted Oct 11, 2015 17:47 UTC (Sun)
by luto (guest, #39314)
[Link] (1 responses)
I admit I was sceptical given the low quality of some earlier TP-Link products, but I've now bought five of them and they seem to work better than their more expensive American competitors.
Posted Oct 12, 2015 8:13 UTC (Mon)
by niner (subscriber, #26151)
[Link]
Posted Oct 11, 2015 18:18 UTC (Sun)
by debacle (subscriber, #7114)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Oct 12, 2015 7:22 UTC (Mon)
by arnd (subscriber, #8866)
[Link]
Posted Oct 11, 2015 20:45 UTC (Sun)
by vasvir (subscriber, #92389)
[Link] (6 responses)
I mean if it did have ADSL/VDSL modem I would buy it in a heartbeat. But without DSL capability that means that I would have two simlarly specked machines constantly on in my home network.
I would love to have only one but this is by definition the gateway modem.
The price is steep but a NAS box costs more and the capability to sync your files with ssh and with your remote devices worths the extra money.
Posted Oct 12, 2015 17:19 UTC (Mon)
by Pc5Y9sbv (guest, #41328)
[Link] (5 responses)
If you care about the features and flexibility of OpenWRT you may opt for a separation between the modem that works with your ISP and the gateway router that runs OpenWRT on your behalf. In my more recent deployment, I first switched a cable router into modem mode. It stopped trying to provide a NAT gateway and just exposed DHCP to allow my real gateway to get the WAN-facing IP issued by the ISP. Later, I upgraded to a new cable modem without having to change my OpenWRT gateway router at all.
Posted Oct 13, 2015 7:18 UTC (Tue)
by vasvir (subscriber, #92389)
[Link] (4 responses)
In my office we have separated WIFI from DSL devices simply because DSL routers are bridging the WIFI with the LAN while I need a separate network with firewall rules for proper separation of the WAN, the internal LAN and random WIFI guests. So what you are saying makes total sense not only for decoupling and future upgradability but also for better security.
In my home I don't need to decouple the LAN from the WIFI... Or maybe I should and I just don't know it yet?
I wonder is there any product which can be configured to have 3 different networks, WAN, WIFI, LAN and have a gigabit switch?
Posted Oct 13, 2015 7:42 UTC (Tue)
by johill (subscriber, #25196)
[Link] (1 responses)
I have a few different networks on my systems - some have VPN access, some don't, etc.
Posted Oct 13, 2015 15:15 UTC (Tue)
by brunowolff (guest, #71160)
[Link]
Posted Oct 13, 2015 14:44 UTC (Tue)
by lsl (subscriber, #86508)
[Link] (1 responses)
As an example you might look at the CeroWRT default configuration, that puts Ethernet and Wifi into different subnets, and also adds separate subnets for so-called guest wireless networks with differing firewall rules.
See:
Posted Oct 13, 2015 20:35 UTC (Tue)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link]
The way it's set up is that it is agnostic to what is providing the Internet connection (currently a netbook which gets tries to reconnect to the tether every 15 seconds when it can't ping out 3 times in a row).
Posted Oct 12, 2015 2:34 UTC (Mon)
by bnewbold (subscriber, #72587)
[Link]
This is sort of a late an tangential reference, but I recently found a (relatively) high performance Open Hardware (CERN OHL) home router which claims to run an open OpenWrt stack.
nic.cz's Turris router: https://www.turris.cz/en/hardware
It has PCIe slots for wireless, so even if the default hardware doesn't have appropriately libre drivers once could swap out for a different card. This doesn't seem to be for sale, it's a project of a Czech Repulic entity (business association? non-profit?) which distributed hardware for research, but they seem to be doing a follow-on product:
Posted Oct 12, 2015 13:46 UTC (Mon)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link]
Posted Oct 12, 2015 19:42 UTC (Mon)
by sdalley (subscriber, #18550)
[Link] (8 responses)
From the small print at the bottom of the sales page:
What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away...
Posted Oct 12, 2015 22:28 UTC (Mon)
by roc (subscriber, #30627)
[Link] (7 responses)
Providing support for random hacked firmware is impossible. They'd be crazy to promise to do that.
Posted Oct 12, 2015 23:14 UTC (Mon)
by rahvin (guest, #16953)
[Link] (3 responses)
Frankly given OpenWRT is an advertised feature there are a few jurisdictions that such a cancellation of warranty clause would not be legally valid.
Posted Oct 13, 2015 13:31 UTC (Tue)
by pinkpony (guest, #92373)
[Link] (2 responses)
Still, this shouldn't (and very often it legally *can't*) mean you are not getting any warranty on anything, if you bring the router back because the HW was obviously faulty (say, the power supply short-circuits and kills the entire router), the warranty in this particular case should be honored and the faulty HW replaced or repaired. But you cannot say you can flash the router and still expected it to have everything working properly as advertised on the box and have that covered by the warranty for the device...
Posted Oct 14, 2015 10:41 UTC (Wed)
by sorpigal (guest, #36106)
[Link] (1 responses)
"Warranty" should be read here as "The hardware won't die unexpectedly."
Scenario 1: I buy one of these and a month later one of the wired ports stops working. Hardware defect. No problem, I can get it replaced under warranty.
Scenario 2: Exactly like scenario 1 but I pot openwrt on it. Now I can't get it replaced.
This isn't reasonable. If the flashing had failed that should void the warranty, but the buyer should still have some protection against unrelated defects when using a custom rom.
Posted Oct 14, 2015 11:28 UTC (Wed)
by JGR (subscriber, #93631)
[Link]
Posted Oct 13, 2015 0:44 UTC (Tue)
by luto (guest, #39314)
[Link]
I'm sure I could come up with a malicious image that would brick the device (by destroying the flash chip, for example), but that would be a silly thing to do.
Posted Oct 13, 2015 10:06 UTC (Tue)
by ewan (guest, #5533)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Oct 13, 2015 17:19 UTC (Tue)
by zlynx (guest, #2285)
[Link]
For example, AMD X2 CPUs didn't have Intel's hard-coded temperature management. So if you modified the BIOS code to ignore the temperature sensors and overclock the CPU it was entirely your own fault if it melted down.
Some GPUs have writable clocks and temp sensors as well. If you modify the driver to overclock without regard to the temperature it will melt down.
I lost an AMD laptop to a bug in the Linux kernel and Xorg. It did something that locked the bus and put the CPU in a tight loop while I was away from my desk. When I came back I could hardly touch the case it was that hot. And it never booted ever again. Intel chips won't do that, and for all I know AMD won't either these days.
A lot of embedded hardware does not have the same kind of hardware protection that x86 systems have. Because people expect to be able to install anything on desktop PCs, so desktop PCs have all kinds of firmware coding that you aren't allowed to touch.
You can have software freedom over all of the embedded code but that means you can break everything too, and its your fault.
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
silicon is probably the best -- in fewest errata ever (!), their newer PHYs rock
and both their SOHO and Prestera line are awesome! Sure they've changed
and improved a lot in their software/driver and licensing, but they still don't
fully understand Free/Open Source software.
times and we could see the first DSA and chipset drivers for Marvell SOHO chips
being committed to the kernel. Today it seems we are finally seeing the start of
a common framework for switches (switchdev), which is extremely cool! I hope
the major chipset vendors will realize they need to consider dropping their own
huge corporate snake nests of SW-stacks and upstream patches and new drivers
to the kernel instead -- not just for their low-end SOHO devices, but also for
more top of the line chipsets that we want to use for OpenFlow etc.
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
Wol
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
That router costs $230. You can buy laptops cheaper than that. I like quality hardware which is built to last, but this seems move overdesigned (and overpriced) than pure quality.
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
Wol
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
Is it certified by FSF's RYF (Respect your Freedom) program?
Is it certified by FSF's RYF (Respect your Freedom) program?
Is it certified by FSF's RYF (Respect your Freedom) program?
Is it certified by FSF's RYF (Respect your Freedom) program?
Is it certified by FSF's RYF (Respect your Freedom) program?
Is it certified by FSF's RYF (Respect your Freedom) program?
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
Not really. Usually it has its own RAM and the host<->controller protocol is fairly simple. If anything, it's even better than the current model from the security standpoint.
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
Commodity distribution?
(I'm running Debian on an embedded system with single core ARM, 128MB RAM and 512MB of flash, but at least half of the flash is unused and I did not even care to remove man pages or other stuff.)
Any problems to fear?
Commodity distribution?
Another advantage of that setup is that you can boot the same drive with qemu-sytem-arm on a PC for testing.
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt/wiki/Default_...
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
"Turris" Open Hardware Router from nic.cz
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
> Linksys has collaborated with OpenWrt and Marvell to provide full open source
> support for the WRT1900ACS in OpenWrt's stable and development branches.
> **While Linksys fully embraces the open source community
> and is providing open source use capabilities,
> they do not offer technical support on using open source firmware.
> Installing 3rd party firmware is done at your own risk and replacing
> factory-installed firmware with OpenWRT firmware will void your warranty.
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
You could flash it back to the stock firmware, verify that the port is still broken, and then send it back to them. The manufacturer does not need to know what firmware was on it, only that their approved firmware is currently on it, and it doesn't work.
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router
The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router