[Gllug] port forwarding and port translation

[Richard Cohen]

On 01/09/05, Mike Brodbelt <mike at coruscant.demon.co.uk> wrote:
[snip]
> If you feel really adventurous, you could buy something like the Linksys
> WRT54g. It supports what you need out of the box, and when you want
> more, you can re-flash the firmware with Linux, and get the full power
> of the kernel iptables implementation to play with. Check out
> http://www.batbox.org/wrt54g-linux.html for more info.

To clarify - they run Linux out of the box, but it's locked down, with
no access to the 'nuts and bolts'.  The batbox stuff is not a reflash
- it's just a way of installing tools to the ramdisk of the machine
which provide telnet access and therefore let you play with all the
goodies you'd expect.

I have a similar class of device here (an ASUS WL500G-deluxe), on
which I've installed OpenWRT, one of a number of replacement firmwares
for these devices.  These are complete reflashes - replacement OSs for
the device - which generally provide all the same functionality, with
a different interface and with the potential to add other stuff in at
will.  For example, the OpenWRT I have on my box provides an ssh
interface which is far more to my way of working than some web-based
GUI thing, and while the ASUS-provided firmware will let you plug an
external hard drive with a vfat filesystem into the USB ports and
access it over FTP, I plugged one in using ext3 and provided access to
it over NFS...

My device cost a little under 50 quid, but I think they cost
significantly more than that in the UK - but it is one of the
higher-specced devices supported by OpenWRT, and cheaper, simpler
devices (without the USB ports, for example) are available.

Can anyone tell I'm quite enjoying the combination of cheap,
low-powered wireless router with complete Linux support on it? :-)

> HTH,
> 
> Mike.

Cheers
Richard
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