HonoraryOrange

Awesome thanks for the find! Though there's one troubling review:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...R2W697FXOOX6OJ

Something about it not working well with WiFi that has no password required (like most hotels, which would have a captive portal, but no actual wifi password).

I'll do some digging around to see if that is true or just someone who shouldn't be allowed around technology

Then again, if that OpenWRT thread is right it doesn't matter because it'll support it just fine with OpenWRT running! Hmm guess I am in for one.

docbert

I've been using the Netgear Trek routers for over 2 years (far longer than they have been released - I was one of the original beta testers for that model) and I've never hit this problem. Based on the comments in that thread the common theme seems to be people using it to connect to a home network (with WPA) rather than a hotel network (with no security).

I posted a mini-review of this router some time back in a thread here - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/22672687-post422.html and over a year later I'm still using it fairly frequently.

If I've got one complaint it's the time that it takes to re-connect to a network - every time it's powered on it goes through a full cycle of looking for what networks are available, and the connecting to one that matches your configured profiles. This is great in that it'll remember multiple configs and automatically connect to them. It's less than great in that if you power it off for some reason (bump it out of the socket, power goes off when you walk out of the hotel room, etc) then it takes a minute or two to reconnect because it goes through the whole scan/configure/restart process every time.

However, from a VPN perspective it does NOT have a built-in VPN. Any mention of VPN will be related to VPN passthrough. OpenWRT does apparently work on it now (I haven't tried), so that would be the only option if you wanted a VPN.

gfunkdave

Adding: it does support OpenWRT.

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=53014

PTravel

For those looking for VPN, here's a list of TP-Link routers that support dd-wrt, which has a built-in VPN client:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database

unmesh

The images for the TP-Link travel routers are from 2013!

PTravel

True, but they work.

unmesh

My fear is that recent security related fixes won't be incorporated compared to say TomatoUSB or OpenWRT

unmesh

A security bug has been made public in the GNU C Library (glibc) though a poster at the link below says that dd-wrt does not use it. I thought dd-wrt was closed source so I don't know how he knew that. Another reason to use open source, actively maintained distros.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2016...es-vulnerable/

gfunkdave

Like how the open-source OpenSSL had multiple vulnerabilities nobody found for years?

docbert

DD-WRT is open source, and always has been.

unmesh

Good point. Does it have any value that the source is at least available to be inspected?

Wow! I've been using dd-wrt since my Linksys WRT54G days and did not know that! I've only recently started playing with OpenWRT and slowly coming up the learning curve.

gfunkdave

Oh, sure. But you still need people to inspect it. OpenSSL had I think two overworked developers on it.

DD-WRT and Tomato are offshoots of OpenWRT, I believe.

docbert

I run ASUSWRT-Merlin on my home router.
Which is a fork of the ASUS firmware (a commercial product)
Which is a fork of Tomato
Which is a fork of OpenWRT
Which is a fork of the Netgear firmware (a commercial product)

(Or something like that - I forget the exact path)

Interesting to see how it's progressed over the years since the good old WRT-54G was released.

gfunkdave

Come to think of it, I think the original was Linksys, not Netgear. The WRT54 firmware was technically under the GPL, which is how the open source router thing got started.

docbert

Err.. yeah. Of course it was Linksys. Not sure where I got Netgear from.