Jan 04 2009
my router has a default editor
My home network gateway is a busybox (linux) based openWRT router running on linksys wrt54g hardware. I’ve been playing with its many built in and package based features, via ssh and a web based portal. For my next version I think I can dump the web based portal and go strait for the pure ssh only distribution.
My router is actually not a router at all anymore, it is an embedded computer with a wireless adapter (or two?) and a fully configurable switch, set up in client mode, using its wireless adapter to search for open wifi nodes and connect. Then it nats up a wired network (which my 800 foot condo has 14 ports) for the rest of my computers.
I realized just how cool it was when I was adding a crontab entry to do connection detection and reconnect and it opened up vi. I don’t get vi, and don’t care to understand it. I had to go look up how to exit it. I’m not ashamed to say so, its a horrible, horrible invention. Ok so not a horrible invention, but like the telegraph it has served its purpose. Can we move on?
So I cracked open the global profile in zile (light emacs clone) and changed the default editor.
That is when I realized, this is cool. I have not one, but multiple editors on my router. Other packages that are available are traffic shaping, upnp, various kinds of vpn, torrent clients among other things.
Next I am going to move on to my home backup/file server/torrent machine which will probably be an openwrt box as well. This time its running on a 1 watt solid state linksys NSLU2, spinning up a hard drive when I want to stream or backup something, but mostly relying on a large usb flash drive for torrenting. The NSLU2 and the router combined will be a super low power ‘always on’ computer for my home. Yay!