For years I wallowed in self-induced networking hell. I have been the victim of a self-mutating Toshiba router for quite some time now. I could have, long ago, ended my suffering, but somehow, I always found some other use for my money. Fool! Foolish ingrate that I am! In my library, my router (yes, I put in my own wireless router) was a persnickety D-Link, that only allowed connections to it when you “qualified”, passed a written and oral exam, and sacrificed your firstborn child over stone altars.

Alas, I eschew idolatry. So, I finally cast down the Toshiba beast from its demonic throne (did I mention you had to use Internet Explorer to configure it? Other browsers choked on it). I have seen the pits of router hell, firsthand. I bathed in the boiling depths of its lost packets and poorly configured IP forwards. Now, I have seen the light, and I can proclaim its truth and righteousness.

Behold, the Linksys WRT54GL (the “L” after it is important)! It was once believed to be extinct (kind of like the coelacanth), though reports of its demise were premature. The “L”, my fellow believers, stands for Linux (the Kernel!). This is the best router I’ve ever used. Why, you ask? Because I installed my choice of firmware onto it. It is a hacked-up version of the standard firmware.

Can you pimp your router? I can now do things like SSH into my router and run apps from it. I can set static IPs according to the MAC hardware addresses of every computer in the house. I can…(breath…breath)…I can take over the world! (Not that I would of course. Islam means peace. We Muslims are law-abiding citizens…ahem).

Anyway, I do recommend this router. It is the best, hands down, for home or small office use. Hey, it runs Linux. You cannot go wrong with that.

Anyway, the coelacanth. Scientists thought it was extinct, until they caught one off the coast of Madagascar.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 18th, 2006 at 4:44 am and is filed under Free Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.