Airport alternative

[Paul Hänsch]

Allan Irving <allanirving at allanirving.co.uk>, Sun, 13 Jul 2014 18:06:54
> I need something to do what it does, similarly but cannot think of a
> simple solution off the top of my head. Simply a router to work on an
> existing set up that can connect via Wifi and therefore extend the
> network and allow me to have a private sub network with a hard drive
> and printer attached to the Airport alternative, allowing me to have
> my own private network drive and printer on a  university network.

Hi Allan,

the features you describe do not sound unique at all. The German market
for wireless routers for example is largely covered by the AVM FritzBox,
which supports complex network setups and can provide access to
printers, storage devices, and some scanner models connected via USB. I
believe it can even operate LTE modems on the USB port to provide
internet access.

Because parts of the firmware are under GPL there is a small hacker
community around the AVM devices (keyword: Freetz).

Most of the FritzBox models contain a DSL modem for German DSL
connections which are different from those in the rest of the world. I
believe recently they started to produce for the wider European market.
In any case the devices can also work as simple wireless routers.

Beyond that some LinkSys and TP-Link routers are famous for their
hackability. At least in the case of Linksys this is hugely due to the
work of the GPL violations project which forced the company to release
the firmware used on their WRT routers. I don't know which models of
those routers come with native printer support. However there is a
number of small Linux distributions specially made for them.

Only few of the router models run entirely with free software.

-- 
Paul Hänsch                     █▉            Webmaster, System-Hacker
                              █▉█▉█▉
Jabber: paul at jabber.fsfe.org    ▉▉     Free Software Foundation Europe
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