Less open than many competitors. But more choice is always nice. Hopefully they get the module FCC/CE certified.
Hardware for OpenWrt
41–50 of 61 posts
Re: Hardware for OpenWrt
#42Is OpenWRT safe to use? The latest release, at least according to https://openwrt.org , was in April 2013. I'm not intimately familiar with what software packages it uses, but it seems like it could, at the very least, be vulnerable to Heartbleed.
Their latest stable/official releases are indeed lagging. One of the things openwrt does (for good and bad) is to spend a lot of time testing and stabilizing before a release.
Many people therefore prefer to run the nightly builds to get a (much) more up to date build. It may sound scary, but it's not really.
Anyway: openwrt is definitely not dead, definitely safe and I consider it about the only routing firmware I fully trust.
Re: Hardware for OpenWrt
#43It seems unusual to pick a Mediatek SoC, if the goal is open source compatibility. It would have made much more sense to go with an Atheros SoC and Atheros modems, which can be used with no proprietary binaries whatsoever.
isn't there binaries burned onto the chip?
Re: Hardware for OpenWrt
#44This is an interesting project, but it's a shame they're using a Mediatek chipset instead of an Allwinner one. Mediatek is one of the biggest GPL violators out there, while Allwinner chips are among the most open hardware out there (perhaps the most open). See: http://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page The only non open hardware on Allwinner chips is the ARM-licensed Mali GPU, but it's been reversed engineered to the point of…
Does Allwinner actually manufacture router-oriented chips? Ralink (now owned by MediaTek) has been making networking parts for over 10 years now.
> The only non open hardware on Allwinner chips is the ARM-licensed Mali GPU
I seriously doubt that any part of Allwinners chips can be classified as open hardware. Just to clarify, this is wikipedias view on what open (source) hardware means:
> The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned. Hardware design (i.e. mechanical drawings, schematics, bills of material, PCB layout data, HDL source code and integrated circuit layout data), in addition to the software that drives the hardware, are all released with the FOSS approach.
> Both are very inexpensive Chinese chip manufacturers that use ARM-licensed MCUs
The chip in this device has a MIPS core. Besides, MCU != IP-core != SoC.
Re: Hardware for OpenWrt
#45A fun comparison: 20 years ago you could spend a large number of dollars (anyone remember how much?) on a dreamy Silicon Graphics Indigo2 Unix workstation. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Indigo%C2%B2_and_Challenge_... its specs included: * MIPS CPUs ranging from the the R4000 to the R10000, with clock rates of up to 250MHz. (This project uses a related MIPS CPU that clocks at 600MHz.) * Up to 512Mb of RAM, equ…
SGI's secret sauce was their 64-bitness and their 3D hardware. Their CPU/networking wasn't really anything special even at the time compared to Sun/DEC.
Not true in my experience. My R4400 and R10000 hardware always ran circles around SPARC workstations of the era and I wasn't a graphics developer.
Re: Hardware for OpenWrt
#46Frankly I'm getting tired of these empty posts.
Where is the source?
Can we stop posting "news" like this unless it is actually significant, ie contains the thing that they claim is open?
Its almost to the point where these posts should be flagged IMO.
Re: Hardware for OpenWrt
#47I'm missing something: where is the source code (design files?) for this "open source hardware"?
They claim they are going to open source it. This is (disappointingly) common practice among "open source" hardware projects. See, for example, most "open source" kickstarters.
Sometimes it's the chipset vendors holding things up, but I agree - it's getting frustrating.
I'm holding out hope for http://www.securifi.com/almondplus
Re: Hardware for OpenWrt
#48It seems very hard to find an high-performance (i.e., not TI's CC3000 module), open Wifi module for a project like this. I assume that's why they choose a chip that requires a binary blob Wifi driver. Has anyone researched the open alternatives? Novena for example didn't integrate Wifi but left it to a PCIe module. Are there open PCIe modules? edit: I should say, TI's module isn't open either. As far as I know the fi…
Atheros AR7010/AR9271 has open drivers and firmware, which is the closest you'll get to "fully open" WiFi hardware today. Performance is decent, although I don't think PCIe is supported by the open firmware (only USB).
Re: Hardware for OpenWrt
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't standard commercial hardware tat you can install opernwrt enough?
Not at all. All successful end user platforms contain provisions for the easy installation of commercially sold software, including at the point of purchase. Tying yourself to OpenWRT prevents this. This is the real reason the GPL has a sort of built in success limit for end user deployments, and why so much of the code in Android is Apache or BSD licensed.
How do you mean?
Re: Hardware for OpenWrt
#50A fun comparison: 20 years ago you could spend a large number of dollars (anyone remember how much?) on a dreamy Silicon Graphics Indigo2 Unix workstation. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Indigo%C2%B2_and_Challenge_... its specs included: * MIPS CPUs ranging from the the R4000 to the R10000, with clock rates of up to 250MHz. (This project uses a related MIPS CPU that clocks at 600MHz.) * Up to 512Mb of RAM, equ…
I have an old SGI catalog, an Indigo2 Impact used to be about USD 30 000 to 40 000 in 1996, depending upon the configuration (Solid, High or Max Impact).
Luckily hardware doesn't have feelings. I use mine as a footrest.
It is a pretty color, though.