3 ms·

The biggest barrier to entry I've found with this stuff is the hardware, I can't walk into a store and buy something with OpenWrt pre installed and for various

by flukus 8y ago

The biggest barrier to entry I've found with this stuff is the hardware, I can't walk into a store and buy something with OpenWrt pre installed and for various reasons online isn't a a good option. I've looked at various possibilities and the whole scene is a mess similar to phone ROMs where you have to trawl through random forums, pull down random ROMs, trawl through more forums to find out why x doesn't work in $country with $ISP. It's impenetrable to anyone that doesn't want to invest months into the scene and develop expertise in it. Much like phones we really need a PC equivalent in this space.

wtallis 8y ago
> I've looked at various possibilities and the whole scene is a mess similar to phone ROMs where you have to trawl through random forums, pull down random ROMs, trawl through more forums to find out why x doesn't work in $country with $ISP. That's describing pretty much all the alternative firmware distributions, except OpenWRT, which is actually well-organized and delivers real stable releases. If you're digging through forums to find forks and builds made by some anonymous individual, it's almost certainly because you got fooled into buying hardware that requires closed-source drivers. (Or else you bought something that is just too new and not yet supported by OpenWRT.)
- flukus 8y ago
  > it's almost certainly because you got fooled into buying hardware that requires closed-source drivers. Bingo, that seems to be about all that's available. I'm looking at off the shelf hardware I can purchase locally, hardware I know works with local ISP's, I have no idea if we use the same standards as America for this stuff, what connections and adapters I'll need, etc. Buying locally eliminates these variables. If there's a happy path by all means share. I only looked into this stuff in the first place so I could get set up a home server and my current modem/router is woefully out of date and has a very suspect definition of DMZ.
  - wtallis 8y ago
    > hardware I know works with local ISP's Your ISP is irrelevant, unless you're shopping for an integrated modem+router. Rule number 1 is don't do that, and keep your modem separate and just a modem. Then your router only needs the universal standard Ethernet port as its WAN interface, and at worst you might have to configure PPPoE instead of just using DHCP to get your public IP.
    - flukus 8y ago
      > Rule number 1 is don't do that, and keep your modem separate and just a modem I think I'm going to have to go down this path, I was just hoping to avoid it. It means having another device to configure, another set of blinking lights, another weird shaped plug to try and squeeze into the power board and learning whatever PPPoE is just to transform Ethernet packets into the ADSL equivalent. It also possibly means a more complicated setup controlling outbound connections so that a compromised server cannot reach the modem.
      - vel0city 8y ago
        Most modems do not usually have much to configure if anything at all. Most management pages for these devices will have line quality metrics and other network debugging tools and have zero user configurable settings. PPPoE settings are usually all configured by the router/gateway.

by flukus 8y ago

wtallis 8y ago

> I've looked at various possibilities and the whole scene is a mess similar to phone ROMs where you have to trawl through random forums, pull down random ROMs, trawl through more forums to find out why x doesn't work in $country with $ISP. That's describing pretty much all the alternative firmware distributions, except OpenWRT, which is actually well-organized and delivers real stable releases. If you're digging through forums to find forks and builds made by some anonymous individual, it's almost certainly because you got fooled into buying hardware that requires closed-source drivers. (Or else you bought something that is just too new and not yet supported by OpenWRT.)

flukus 8y ago
> it's almost certainly because you got fooled into buying hardware that requires closed-source drivers. Bingo, that seems to be about all that's available. I'm looking at off the shelf hardware I can purchase locally, hardware I know works with local ISP's, I have no idea if we use the same standards as America for this stuff, what connections and adapters I'll need, etc. Buying locally eliminates these variables. If there's a happy path by all means share. I only looked into this stuff in the first place so I could get set up a home server and my current modem/router is woefully out of date and has a very suspect definition of DMZ.
- wtallis 8y ago
  > hardware I know works with local ISP's Your ISP is irrelevant, unless you're shopping for an integrated modem+router. Rule number 1 is don't do that, and keep your modem separate and just a modem. Then your router only needs the universal standard Ethernet port as its WAN interface, and at worst you might have to configure PPPoE instead of just using DHCP to get your public IP.
  - flukus 8y ago
    > Rule number 1 is don't do that, and keep your modem separate and just a modem I think I'm going to have to go down this path, I was just hoping to avoid it. It means having another device to configure, another set of blinking lights, another weird shaped plug to try and squeeze into the power board and learning whatever PPPoE is just to transform Ethernet packets into the ADSL equivalent. It also possibly means a more complicated setup controlling outbound connections so that a compromised server cannot reach the modem.
    - vel0city 8y ago
      Most modems do not usually have much to configure if anything at all. Most management pages for these devices will have line quality metrics and other network debugging tools and have zero user configurable settings. PPPoE settings are usually all configured by the router/gateway.