On 2/19/07, Bruno Wolff III <bruno@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, Feb 18, 2007 at 20:26:25 +0100, Andras Simon <szajmi@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 2/18/07, Wade Hampton <wadehamptoniv@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >Slightly OT, but what version of firmware should I try on a WRT54GL? I > >see I have multiple choces including: > > > >Stock/Linksys -- not an option > > Why? (I've been using this for a few weeks now, with no problem at all.) You can do more stuff (e.g. complicated traffic shaping) using the various open software firmware.
Fair enough. And I'll shop for a new firmware as soon as I feel the limitations of the default one. But I was wondering about the reason for the OP's outright refusal to go with the Linksys firmware.
You might not trust the supplied firmware to not have a back door to allow snooping of your local network traffic. The FBI wanted a similar feature built into routers in the past (e.g. Private Doorbell), so it is not unreasonable to expect they have at least talked to home router manufacturers about building something into their routers.
I'm not losing too much sleep over this. Knowing next to nothing about networking, I'm just guessing, but couldn't such a backdoor be found out pretty easily? And if not, how about the hardware (of the router/network card/adsl modem): can you inspect them all? But then different folks have different concerns :-) Andras
