In the last 2 weeks the WRT54G hacking community have found a way to compress the file system in the box. This means considerably more space and so more linux utilities and apps can be fitted in. Most of the work is being done around the Sveasoft who have a forum for discussions and anouncements. We're really close to having a binary firmware upgrade with:-
- A bunch of linux utils like vi, top, sed, wget etc.
- client mode
- ntp time updates
- wondershaper bandwidth management
- telnet and ssh into the box
- nocatsplash captive portal
- power and antenna control adjustment
- Frottle hidden node control
- improved dhcp control
- VPN support

So now the question is what should be put in there? My interest is to come up with a low cost consumer grade AP that can share bandwidth safely so that the owner isn't exposed. So I want to be able to separate out wired connections, known WLAN connections and guest WLAN. Then to give different policies for each. The Guest WLAN connections should be bandwidth limited. They should be forced through some minimal captive portal. And some ports like SMTP should be blocked so that there's no possibility of them abusing your upstream provider. What have I missed here? Apart from ISP's T&Cs of course.

I'm hoping that all this hacking can be fed back into the Linksys-Cisco development. This is the benefit they get from using GPL open source. Let's hope that it's two way and they play fair. The community is effectively saying "keep to the GPL and release the source and we'll do your development for you".

It's become very apparent that one big problem here is the limited RAM and Flash ROM space available. This stuff is dropping in price all the time so let's hope that the V1.2 of the hardware puts in lots more of each. As an alternative, using sockets instead of soldering the memory direct on the board would have opened up all sorts of possibilities.

Are you listening to all this, Linksys? [from: JB Wifi]

My Amazon wishlist brought me a Linksys WRT54G for christmas. Hooray! At £85 this is a steal. Here's some of the things I've found out so far.

Disclaimer: Some of this is questionable. Some of it breaks my ISPs T&Cs. Some of it breaks the ETSI regs on Wifi. If you copy it, you might end up with a useless doorstop instead of a WiFi router. Don't try this at home kids, YMMV. Anything you do is not my responsibility, etc etc.

Initial Install: This was actually extremely easy. Take it out of the box, plug into the mains, connect the supplied ethernet cable to the NTL cable modem, connect another ethernet cable to the laptop. I had to power cycle the modem once and the router and laptop got dhcp and I was on the net. This is all probably made easier because NTL use DHCP to control access rather than PPPOE. With that (used by most ADSL ISPs) I'd have had to put in the user and password.

I pushed in the laptop Buffalo WLI-PCM-L11GP card and it found the network. I also got a 54g Buffalo card for xmas. Plugged that in instead, XP found it and that connected straight up at 54Mbps. It also looks as though Netstumbler works with this though I haven't given it a good test yet.

The next thing to do was to connect to the router on http://192.168.1.1 For some reason this only worked in IE6 and not Firebird. I later found out that this sometimes happens and the solution is to connect to https:192.168.1.1 now I can use any browser. The first thing to do was change the password on the admin pages. Next I changed the SSID to "1trinityrd-open" so if people see it from the outside, they'll know which door to knock on. For the moment, I've left WEP and MAC filtering off. Under security I've left the default firewall in place which blocks incoming (from the internet) connections. Under Admin I set logging to on.

So with that all done I connected up the three computers in the house to direct ethernet connections and they all connected first time. My old Buffalo card went into my daughter's laptop.

Improvements: The first thing I noticed is that my 54G wouldn't wake up properly after the laptop had been suspended. Buffalo have some newer drivers and that seems to have cured it.

Next stop was the router firmware. Linksys have a V1.1 of the hardware. The only indication I had this was the label on the corner of the box. It came with v1.42 of the firmware. There's a UK page of downloads but they only show the same releases. The US page shows a V2.00.8 so I grabbed a copy of that and used the attached upload system to install it. These are always a bit nerve wracking but again it all just worked and I had the latest release installed. I found out later that the only real difference is that the EU versions allow channels 12-13.

Now we get to the fun bit. The whole point of getting this model was that it runs Linux internally and there's a community of people hacking at it. These are mostly around Seattlewireless who have a large page of information. These people have now worked out how to install some Linux utilities and in particular the NoCatSplash system. It turns out that most of this hacking involves assembling a cross compiler and tool chain on Linux before pushing the results up to the router. A lot of the work is also being done with old versions of the firmware. While looking through the FAQ I came across a French guy, Huy Bang VU, who's produced hacked binary versions of the latest firmware. These have the busybox set of utilities built in.

So I got a copy of the hacked EU V2.00.8 and with my fingers firmly crossed, uploaded it using the web interface. It worked for me, but you're modifying the internal ROM so this is the point where you could turn your box into a heap of junk if it goes wrong. Don't blame me, ok! Apart from the Linux utils, this adds a few fields and modifies others on the web interface. Key is transmit power control and a Telnet daemon. So now I telneted to the box, using id=root and the admin password and I'm in and wandering around the file system.

Tuning and Tweaking:
- I've given my main machine a static IP and told the router it's in the DMZ. This means that all incoming ports are forwarded to this machine. That should make things like VoIP and Video more reliable as that machine is effectively direct on the net.

- I've set up a DynDNS account as the router has direct support for this. Now I can contact my home machine from anywhere using a consistent domain name.

- For the moment, I've left the transmit power at 15dBm(30mW). There are people apparently running 17dBm with no problems but also reports of the boxes burning out when run at higher rates. It goes up to 19.25dBm (85mW). Note that the legal limit in the UK is 15dBm.

Wishlist:
- What I'd like to do is to block all use of SMTP port 25 from the WLAN. I use our own SSL controlled SMTPS so this wouldn't affect me. The wired machines can use NTL's SMTP server but stopping use on the WLAN would stop occasional visitors from getting me into trouble over spam. This is almost possible with the built in firewall but you can only address machines by IP address. So that would mean giving all the wired machines static IPs. I shouild be able to do this by manipulating the iptables directly over telnet but I haven't yet figured out the correct commands. I think it would be a good thing if Linksys allowed you to setup rules for "All wired" and "All Wifi" in their user interface.

- Nocatsplash is still too hard to install for us desktop windows users. I'm really hoping that someone puts together a binary firmware upgrade for this based on recent Linksys firmware. This would then mean that Wifi incomers would be presented with a web splash screen and maybe I could arrange that they've got to knock on my door to get a password to get passed it.

- As far as I can see the incoming logs (Internet to local LAN) simply don't work. Assuming this is actually a bug, linksys ought to fix it.

Anyway, so far so good. I'll let you know more as I discover it. [from: JB Wifi]

How to Save the World is one of those blogs with just too much content. Lots of good stuff here. Thanks for the pointer, Accordian Guy. [from: JB Ecademy]

On die puny humans:, my current favourite SF author Cory Doctorow nails it in an end of year commentary. He say it better than I can so I've quoted his post in full.

The last twenty years were about technology. The next twenty years are about policy. It's about realizing that all the really hard problems -- free expression, copyright, due process, social networking -- may have technical dimensions, but they aren't technical problems. The next twenty years are about using our technology to affirm, deny and rewrite our social contracts: all the grandiose visions of e-democracy, universal access to human knowledge and (God help us all) the Semantic Web, are dependent on changes in the law, in the policy, in the sticky, non-quantifiable elements of the world. We can't solve them with technology: the best we can hope for is to use technology to enable the human interaction that will solve them.

On that note: I have a special request to the toolmakers of 2004: stop making tools that magnify and multilply awkward social situations ("A total stranger asserts that he is your friend: click here to tell a reassuring lie; click here to break his heart!") ("Someone you don't know very well has invited you to a party: click here to advertise whether or not you'll be there!") ("A 'friend' has exposed your location, down to the meter, on a map of people in his social network, using this keen new location-description protocol -- on the same day that you announced that you were leaving town for a week!"). I don't need more "tools" like that, thank you very much.

An important note for 2004: stop trying to build an Internet without malefactors, parasites, freeriders and inefficiency. There is no such thing as a parasite-free complex ecology (thank you Kathryn Myronuk for this formulation). Some organisms lamented the existence of mitochondria. Others adapted to exploit them and integrate them. Some lament the existence of spammers. Spammers will always exist: stamping your foot and demanding their nonexistence won't change that: adapt or die.

ps. If you've never seen it check out Cory's (and Mark's) main blog, bOING-bOING.

Die Puny Humans also had this post from Mark Eris from Wasp Factory Records (one of the more interesting independents),

The year (2004) in which all intellectual property (All? No. One small village in Gaul still.....) goes digital, and thus becomes thievable within 5 seconds of being available. Download the record of the book of the film of the comic and the delete it after one view, because it`s a crock of shit and you`re glad you didn`t pay any money for it anyway. The robber baron cartels find themselves having to run fast enough to keep up with people, as sitting on the sidelines calling the consumer a thief won`t cut it any more, no matter how many 5 year olds they take to court. And they can`t take it. It`s been too many decades since they had to go outside the house, and all that rich food, slave girls from the ghetto and colombian health products have taken their toll. Come off the accelerated culture curve for a second and listen. Really strain your ears. And you can hear them wheezing, coughing up blood, collapsed to the floor shouting abuse at the customer who is always right from somewhere back in the last decade.

Quite! [from: JB Ecademy]

This is so cool!

Molecular Expressions: Science, Optics and You - Powers Of 10: Interactive Java Tutorial : View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons. [from: JB Ecademy]

Auto-aggregating RSS from Blogrolls
A request to anyone who runs a Blogroll management system or code. eg Blogrolling.com, bloglines.com, Typepad.

When a new site is added to the blogroll, use RSS Auto-discovery to capture the corresponding RSS feed. From this, generate three things.

1. An aggregated html view of the feeds
2. An OPML list of the feeds
3. A single composite RSS feed of all the items.

A lazyweb request

The real cost of offshore outsourcing : THERE APPEARS to be a general assumption that dramatic savings can be made by sending software development to countries where IT salaries are 10% or 20% of similar IT professionals in the USA or Europe. That assumption is quite invalid according to those who have tried it, in fact they claim that savings rarely reach 30% and it can take years before even that level of savings materialise. According to them, a multitude of other costs, beyond the obvious cost of salaries, are often forgotten when considering sending work offshore.

So remember Stubbs, keep it local. [from: JB Ecademy]

Slashdot | Spain, Morocco To Build Undersea Rail Tunnels

The immediate question this brings to mind is when Morocco will join the EU. I happen to think this would be a *good* thing. I'm all for extending the EU to N Africa round both ends of the Med. [from: JB Ecademy]

David Weinberger: The Dean Campaign and the Internet (IT Conversation)

I can highly recommend these interviews. Doug has got a whole range of experts talking for 20 minutes or so and is then streaming the interviews over the web. It's like having a radio program specialising in Net Gurus. That makes it a great example of the democratising nature of the web. [from: JB Ecademy]

Mobitopia reports on GNER on train Wifi All Change to WiFi, Please, All Change... Looks like it almost works.

There's some good stuff on Mobitopia so I've added it to Dailenews. [from: JB Wifi]

iStumbler is a netstumbler clone for Macintosh. They've got one good suggestion which is that if you deliberately open your access point to the public add ".public" on the end of the SSID. This seems like a good plan to me. Please note though that their recommendations include:- get a good dsl provider which permits bandwidth sharing I'd hate for anyone to get into trouble with BT or NTL because they shared their bandwidth outside the ISP's T&Cs. [from: JB Wifi]

Spam to email ratio soars in 2003 : MessageLabs expects that by next April about 70% of email traffic will be spam.

Email is terminally broken. So what next? [from: JB Ecademy]

del.icio.us. A social bookmark manager. With an especially tasty RSS feed. [from: JB Ecademy]

Wifi Planet has got a tutorial on implementing the NoCatAuth Gateway Server (via dailywireless)

Now aybe we can get all this packaged as a consumer friendly add on to a commercial AP. Like the Linksys WRT54G. I'm convinced that this is the way to go to do deliberate and controlled broadband sharing. Shame it's so hard. [from: JB Wifi]

Daily Wireless - Barbie's Wireless VideoCam The mind boggles! Now that Jennicam is going, has anyone got barbiecam.com? [from: JB Wifi]

Business week - U.S. Programmers at Overseas Salaries. I'm not sure I should even be pronmoting this idea as it feels like cutting off my nose to spite my face. Whatever, the story is about a startup who could potentially halve their programming costs by using offshore (India) programers. Instead he offered the work at the same rate to US programmers and was flooded with quality applications from out of work programmers. Two of the contractors have now become full time employees at normal US rates so the story does have a happy ending.

There's some serious implications here.

First is that the lack of hassle of using onsite or at least onshore contractors is worth a signififcant amount. So the savings from going offshore need to be large for it to be justifiable.

And second is that we're rapidly heading into a global employment market if we haven't already. Which means Western salaries dropping to match offshore salaries without the same drop in cost of living. That has serious consequences for global economics. And a lot of personal pain. This is one of the drivers behind the current US (and UK) decline of the middle class. [from: JB Ecademy]

The focus so far on public hotspot access has been all about a client (laptop) getting access outwards to the internet. Indeed some hotspot vendors have gone to lengths to restrict the laptop's vision of other clients connected to the same AP. Is anyone doing any work on software and facilities that are deliberately aimed at getting hotspot connected machines to talk to each other? Since they're all on the same local WLAN, it should be possible to share disks, printers, run multi-user games, remote control presentations, check presence and so on.

As I typed "Printers", I wondered why there's never a printer a public hotspots. I've already had a time when it would have been handy to be able to print a paper downstairs at Cafe Grandprix. [from: JB Wifi]

Mozilla Thunderbird V 0.4 has been released. This email an news client is looking better and better. Even tough it's only 0.4, it's impressively stable.

If you absolutely must have a calendar as well before you can switch from Outlook, try the Mozilla Calendar project.

And of course there's Firebird as well for browsing. [from: JB Ecademy]

10 hottest wireless applications for 2004

1. Multimedia messaging
2. Voice over WLAN
3. Localized content
4. Multicasting
5. Group press-to-talk
6. Remote networking
7. Wireless printing
8. Mobile blogging
9. Mobile community services
10. Industrial productivity

IMHO they missed one. P2P comms. That's Phone 2 Phone comms. We're seeing the first inkling of this in Bluejacking. Now if my phone has Bluetooth, and maybe Wifi, why shouldn't it connect direct to phones that are physically close to share music, ringtones, games and act as a walkie-talkie? Conceivably some of these functions could also work via GSM/GPRS/CDMA/3G. There's a prize here to the first phone manufacturer that starts building this stuff in even if it does impact the carrier's revenues. [from: JB Ecademy]

Slyck News - Sharman Exterminating Kazaa Lite K

Ah, the horror, the horror... I can't even begin to express the irony of this. Sharman Networks, which is the commercial arm of the Kazaa file sharing network, has used the DMCA to force the Kazaa Lite program off the web. Using a ridiculously powerful Copyright protection law (for the protection of dinosaurs from small mammals) to protect a program who's sole purpose is the circumvention of copyright.

For those who don't know KazaaLite was a hacked copy that eliminated all the spyware. It looks as though KazaaLite is now dead. While it still works for the moment we can expect Sharman to increasingly isolate it via upgrades to the main program and network protocols. Personally, Kazaa is so laden with Spyware that I won't use it on it's own so I've just downloaded DietK that appears to do a least some of what KazaaLite used to do. We'll see.

I think the net effect of this will be to increasingly fragment the music sharing networks. It won't go away but each one will be smaller and less effective. Looked at like that this action looks counter productive. But then Sharman has shareholders and investors just like the music companies. [from: JB Ecademy]