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I'm thankful Jeff Atwood posted another article about the commodity router + open source firmware one-two punch [1]. I finally took the plunge and installed To

by pattern 14y ago

I'm thankful Jeff Atwood posted another article about the commodity router + open source firmware one-two punch [1]. I finally took the plunge and installed Tomato (Toastman [2]) and have been thrilled with the features, but mostly excited about the fact I get to tinker with another device :) It is empowering to know that I can circumvent overarching and onerous policies such as this...innovation...by Cisco. [1]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/06/because-everyone-still-needs-a-router.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/06/because-everyone-st... [2]: http://toastmanfirmware.yolasite.com/ http://toastmanfirmware.yolasite.com/

driverdan 14y ago
The N16 is a good piece of hardware. I've been running one with DD-WRT for a while.
- pwelch 14y ago
  Same here. The N16 with DD-WRT is an awesome setup. However, I just moved and got FiOS and have a ticket in to avoid using their crappy router/modem you are forced to use. Also, if you are in the market for an upgrade, my friend showed me the new Asus RT-N66u. I likey n16 but the new one has a faster CPU and more RAM.
  - bugmenot 14y ago
    is this possible? I have FIOS and would prefer not using any vendor gear in my network. Trust no one. Verizon needs to get away from needing a coax port on the router.
j_s 14y ago
Don't miss the previous discussion of Jeff's post here on Hacker News for more details and alternatives: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4127393 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4127393
- pattern 14y ago
  I did indeed follow both the discussion here and the comments on his post closely! I wasted/spent a good 6+ hours reading about all kinds of router features that I had didn't know existed, or never even thought possible (VLANs, VPN, NFS, CIFS, Captive Portal, router CPU overclocking, etc). Some versions of Tomato (Shibby's firmware [1] in particular) allow the router to act as a BitTorrent client! I'm sure it's old news to some, but for anyone on the fence about trying new firmware on their routers - take the plunge. [1]: http://tomato.groov.pl/ http://tomato.groov.pl/
  - AYBABTME 14y ago
    I have an ASUS RT-N16 router at home, which I connected to a hard-drive by USB. Then with Tomato installed, you can SSH into the router and install optware. Then you can configure optware[1] to install its packages on the external hard-drive. From there, you can retrieve and install a bunch of packages, like http servers, bittorrent clients and whatever else you feel like running from the CLI. Pretty convenient! I installed Transmission with a web-gui and I can SSH into it from anywhere in the world to my house's router, load a magnet or torrent in the queue and when I get home, the content will be waiting for me on my hard-drive. I don't pretend Tomato firmware are the first to allow to do so, but I just found it was an interesting and usefull thing. [1] http://tomatousb.org/tut:optware-installation http://tomatousb.org/tut:optware-installation

by pattern 14y ago

driverdan 14y ago

The N16 is a good piece of hardware. I've been running one with DD-WRT for a while.

pwelch 14y ago
Same here. The N16 with DD-WRT is an awesome setup. However, I just moved and got FiOS and have a ticket in to avoid using their crappy router/modem you are forced to use. Also, if you are in the market for an upgrade, my friend showed me the new Asus RT-N66u. I likey n16 but the new one has a faster CPU and more RAM.
- bugmenot 14y ago
  is this possible? I have FIOS and would prefer not using any vendor gear in my network. Trust no one. Verizon needs to get away from needing a coax port on the router.

j_s 14y ago

Don't miss the previous discussion of Jeff's post here on Hacker News for more details and alternatives: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4127393 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4127393

pattern 14y ago
I did indeed follow both the discussion here and the comments on his post closely! I wasted/spent a good 6+ hours reading about all kinds of router features that I had didn't know existed, or never even thought possible (VLANs, VPN, NFS, CIFS, Captive Portal, router CPU overclocking, etc). Some versions of Tomato (Shibby's firmware [1] in particular) allow the router to act as a BitTorrent client! I'm sure it's old news to some, but for anyone on the fence about trying new firmware on their routers - take the plunge. [1]: http://tomato.groov.pl/ http://tomato.groov.pl/
- AYBABTME 14y ago
  I have an ASUS RT-N16 router at home, which I connected to a hard-drive by USB. Then with Tomato installed, you can SSH into the router and install optware. Then you can configure optware[1] to install its packages on the external hard-drive. From there, you can retrieve and install a bunch of packages, like http servers, bittorrent clients and whatever else you feel like running from the CLI. Pretty convenient! I installed Transmission with a web-gui and I can SSH into it from anywhere in the world to my house's router, load a magnet or torrent in the queue and when I get home, the content will be waiting for me on my hard-drive. I don't pretend Tomato firmware are the first to allow to do so, but I just found it was an interesting and usefull thing. [1] http://tomatousb.org/tut:optware-installation http://tomatousb.org/tut:optware-installation