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Comment by atmosx | Hacker News Reader

I recently bought an ADSL modem/router TP-Link 8970 (or something). The thing is awesome, except for that fact that it doesn't support OpenVPN... Supports PPTP or IPSec.

Now if only, I could install OpenWRT on it. Since OpenWRT makes ROUNDS around every custom software I've seen on low-end ADSL modem/routers makes me wonder why on earth companies don't just ship OpenWRT and get over with it?

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Their firmware is the feature they're selling you. The hardware is generic and without their wonderful firmware, they'd be competing solely on price. This is what the skinjobs think, at least.

BTW, openvpn performance sucks eggs on the processors used in consumer routers.

Feels like the same problem that a lot of Android handsets have had. "Look! We added value by making the product worse!"

And the same problem that Windows PCs have had for two decades now. The hardware is effectively equivalent; it's now a matter of trying to "add" value with shitware.

This is especially true of Windows laptops nowadays; you're pretty much relegated to 1366x768 screens, shitty dual-core or hyperthreaded single-core processors, maybe 4GB of RAM, and Intel graphics at best. Anything better is still at the prices they were 5 years ago. You'd think that old technology would get cheaper as time goes on, but it seems like the only innovation these OEMs are going for is "how do we make customers pay for progressively shittier hardware and software?".

> hyperthreaded single-core processors

I don't think Intel has marketed a single core processor since the Core 2 era. You may want to look at Windows laptops again: it's now possible to buy a 1920x1080 13.3", 8GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD for $600 without any bloatware. It does have a weak dual-core hyperthreaded processor, but this allows it to omit fans.

> I don't think Intel has marketed a single core processor since the Core 2 era.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/celeron/ce...

Specifically: http://ark.intel.com/products/74390/Intel-Celeron-Processor-... (a "hyperthreaded single-core processor", as I was describing) or even http://ark.intel.com/products/58667/Intel-Celeron-Processor-..., which is single-core and not even hyperthreaded. These are being marketed unironically under some "Experience Brilliant PC Performance" marketing blurb.

> You may want to look at Windows laptops again: it's now possible to buy a 1920x1080 13.3", 8GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD for $600 without any bloatware.

And I have a garden that grows unicorns on a vine. Got a link to this mythical creature?

The mythical creature is the UX305. You have to apply the promotional code "SAVE100" at checkout to get the price I mentioned.

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/ASUS-Zen...

Yeah, and 1366x768 is only really still around in the very low end or the very small.

The only SOHO router I have seen whose vendor-supplied firmware did not totally suck is the Fritz!Box, and they are fairly expensive for what they do. But people seem to be willing to pay the price if that means they at least get a device that just works (tm), at least most of the time.

At work, we recently got a couple of wifi routers and installed DD-WRT on them to finally get a decent wireless network that spans the entire building, plus a guest network that is isolated from the company network. The freedom and flexibility DD-WRT offers made this both easy and - relatively - enjoyable.

(I do not own a Fritz!Box, and I never have. The last piece of equipment made by AVM I owned was a Fritz!Card ISDN card which sat in an ISA slot, so you can roughly figure out how long ago that must have been...)

AFAIK most lower-end routers have pretty generic firmware (with their logo added) as well. Maybe paying a no-name firmware sweatshop to tweak some reference firmware is cheaper than tweaking OpenWhatever.

Do they even have enough memory for OpenWRT? Maybe DD-WRT.

At the low end, I'd think the chipset manufacturer would do most of the software work, then the device manufacturer just cosmetically tweaks the reference.

Ah, memories of the bad old days when the VxWorks license fee was less than the cost of the extra RAM necessary to run Linux.

Many Buffalo routers ship with DD-WRT, a fork of OpenWRT:

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/wireless/dd-wrt-1

It wasn't a fork of OpenWRT per se. Rather, OpenWRT and DD-WRT are siblings, both having descended from the stock firmware on the Linksys WRT54G. They share some code nowadays, but that's a convergence rather than a divergence.

I wasn't aware, thanks for the clarification!

Asus does ship a open source fork of Tomato (AsusWRT) on at least their high-end routers. I've used it, it's actually pretty decent.

I didn't even know OpenWRT could work on a DSL modem? I wonder what it would take to get it working on the new ATT IPDSLAM based DSL network?

From my experience, you'll also lose DSL functions when you do. It's all proprietary from what I've read.

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