Unleash your router's true power with open-source firmware: 6 options

November 15, 2012

Hackers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but the lousy stock firmware your routers shipped with. Apart from smartphones, routers and wireless base stations are undoubtedly the most widely hacked and user-modded consumer devices. In many cases the benefits are major and concrete: a broader palette of features, better routing functions, tighter security, and the ability to configure details not normally allowed by the stock firmware (such as antenna output power). The hard part is figuring out where to start. If you want to buy a router specifically to be modded, you might be best served by working backward. Start by looking at the available offerings, picking one of them based on the feature set, and selecting a suitable device from the hardware compatibility list for that offering. In this piece we've rounded up five of the most common varieties of third-party operating systems, with emphasis on what they give you and who they're best for. Some of these are designed for embedded hardware or specific models of router only; some are designed as more hardware-agnostic solutions; and some are intended to serve as the backbone for x86-based appliances. To that end, we've presented them with the more embedded-oriented solutions first and the more generic-PC oriented solutions last. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.infoworld.com/d/networking/review-6-slick-open-source-routers-206810