[Discuss] Linux box for under $20? TRENDnet

[feenberg at nber.org (Daniel Feenberg)]

On Tue, 8 Nov 2011, Rich Braun wrote:

> On an impulse, I bought a wifi router at Microcenter a few days ago, thinking
> that heck for $25 I wouldn't mind have an upgrade from "g" to "n".  Now I see
> you can get this for $19.99.  It plugged right in and did what I want out of
> the box.  Why bother posting such a pedestrian purchase to this list?  Here
> were the surprises:
>
> * My P3 Kill-A-Watt reports 1 watt (vs. WRT-54G, 5 watts)
> * The vendor supplies full GPL source code on its website
> * It's on the OpenWRT hardware compatibility list
>
> I don't yet see a reason to swap out the vendor's software for OpenWRT but I
> found it interesting that prices for a "Linux box" have dropped below $20.
> Admittedly, it's only a 400MHz CPU with only 32Mb of RAM, but it does have 5
> 100Mbit Ethernet ports and firmware that, off the shelf, does more than my old
> faithful Linksys.
>
> Amazon reviews for the product are lukewarm but I suspect most of them are for
> early hardware revs.  Anyone else here have comments about the TRENDnet
> routers?

I have a couple of these. On the positive side, they are the only 
cable/dsl routers I have seen with the ability to set a "default deny" 
firewall rule. On the negative side, I wasn't able to figure out how to 
set firewall rules without help - there is no explanation and the menus 
are confusing and obscure. Among a score of similar devices, this is the 
only one I had any trouble with.

Dan


>
> -rich
>
>
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