On Thu, Mar 02, 2017 at 09:58:40AM +1100, Alex Fraser wrote: > A long time ago, someone mentioned buying a router/ADSL modem that ran free > software. IIRC they found that their connection was more reliable with it, > and it cost something like $25. Does anyone remember this? Can anyone > recommend a model?
I have a cheap TP-Link ADSL2+ modem that cost $23 from MSY at the time. TP-Link provide source code for most models on their website, although I haven't tried modding mine so am not sure if the source is available for the bootloader and other core components. I doubt they provide a license to the code for the web interface, although there's very little to it and the link is controlled externally anyway (explained below). This modem was an upgrade from an old Neatgear model (the Netgear would insist on being a router and doing PPP itself). The new plan was to have the modem do as little as possible, and shift the heavy lifting to a separate machine with more grunt. For this I have the pppoe Debian package installed on a Xen DomU on my home server and run the pppd daemon there (where I have a spare PCIe NIC passed through to the guest). That VM provides the default gateway for my home network and all firewall functionality. Since it's just a VM running on my existing server, there were no extra costs involved. Since using this setup, my speeds have increased significantly over what I previously had, and I've never had a modem crash since. (The old modem used to crash or slow down to a halt quite regularly when the number of connections spiked (eg. bittorrent)). Since the guest runs a disto of my choosing, administration and configuration management is straightforward. Took some work to get it initially up and running, but worth it. Cheers, Adam
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
_______________________________________________ Free-software-melb mailing list Free-software-melb@lists.softwarefreedom.com.au http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb Free Software Melbourne home page: http://www.freesoftware.asn.au/melb/
