[clug] ADSL modem woes

[Hal Ashburner]

Robert Edwards wrote:
>
> Normally you wouldn't ping the modem but the router or PC behind it. 

Off topic plug for a device I really like. I can't remember if I've 
mentioned it here before, sorry if I have.
ASUS WL600g. Combined ADSL2+ modem and wireless router. Firmware is 
linux, you can configure via ssh and get a busybox shell to see exactly 
what is going on with the interfaces and routing tables etc.
They run to about $100. Add whatever you want to pay for storage (usb 
key, usb disk enclosure) and you have a pretty cheap, pretty low power 
consumption home server right there. You can install debian (probably 
other distros for all I know) run your samba, mail, web servers on it. 
There's a whole community that makes firmware for it and the WL500g 
routers. It'll do WDS to those too.
If you've got to power a modem & router anyway, combining all 3 into a 
server makes some sense to me. Good fun. Such a thing probably would not 
be possible without Free software. (Without linux, they probably could 
have used one of the BSDs)
Now it would be even nicer if the wireless drivers were fully open but... :(