I "upgraded" an old Linksys WRT54G router with the OpenWRT firmware awhile ago and haven't gone back since. It even displaced my Apple Extreme Base station.

Linksys makes a version of their router called the WRT54GL specifically designed to be "upgraded."

In my case I wanted the power of Linux iptables to create outbound firewall rules. Now the only thing that leaves the section of my network with the Warcraft boxes is traffic to and from Blizzard. Unless someone has created a keylogger that communicates thru Warcraft, they should have fun getting the logged keys. With Linux, you can also do things like create rules that raise alerts when any computers tries to send other traffic to the Internet.

I was tempted to pick up another Linksys WRT54G and operate them in a failover cluster, but figured out I was already getting better uptime then some Cisco setups I've been forced to deal with.


I vote to let people brick as much hardware as they are willing to risk - even if they don't understand what they are doing. We need the equivalent of a metal fork and an electrical socket around here.