And they are always kept updated by the community, in perpetuity. (There may be other open source router firmwares out there, but these are the two I saw most frequently.) I learned that these open source firmwares can turn a boring Clark Kent router into Superman. That's right, the truly great routers are available in "awesome" edition. The best router models all run open source firmware! There just isn't much going on.īut in the process of doing my router research, I discovered something important, and maybe even revolutionary in its own quiet little way. To be fair, the router market is not exactly a hotbed of excitement at the moment it is both saturated and heavily commoditized, particularly now that the dust has settled from the whole 802.11 A/B/G/N debacle. (We disallow product recommendation questions as they become uselessly out of date so quickly, but this is a perfect topic for a chat room.) I got some fantastic advice from my fellow Super Users via chat, though much of it was of the far too sane "if it ain't broke don't fix it" variety. So, I asked the pros at Super User, even going so far as to set up a Recommend Me a Router chat room. Frankly, the prospect of three year old hardware with year old firmware gives me the heebie-jeebies. The router is (literally!) the central component in my overall internet experience, and I was growing increasingly uncomfortable with the status quo. There have been some desultory minor updates since then, but clearly the vendor has, shall we say, moved on to focusing on newer models. But it is of late 2007 vintage:Īlthough the DGL-4500 is a nice router, and it has served me well with no real complaints, the last major firmware update for it was a year and a half ago. Since my livelihood revolves around being on the internet, and because I'm a bit of a tweaker, I have a fancy-ish router. If that isn't the definition of mainstream, I don't know what is. Let me put it this way: my mom – and my wife's mom – both own routers.
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