[lug] Seeking recommendations on router for SOHO

[Bear Giles]

> I have a BEFSR41.  On the whole, it is a nice device.  I like that it
> took me about 45 minutes to get it out of the box, connected and
> configured.  It has a fairly straightforward web interface for
> configuration, so you don't have to have a Windoze box for that.

I had some highly odd behavior from my box, found Linksys support
less than friendly ("We only support Wind'oh, sir!"), eventually
tracked down the problem to the fact that they had gratituous use of
javascript without a

<noscript>
  Please enable javascript before attempting to change any
  information on this page.
</noscript>

clause, and when I suggested this I was basically blown off.

This was over a year ago, and I know that they've released several
firmware upgrade since then, so they may have fixed this problem.

> However, Windoze is required for firmware upgrades.

I thought I found a Linux TFTP tool that could push the firmware
upgrade.  I know that they gratuitously broke the TFTP standard
with their password.

(If I'm using "gratuitiously" a lot, it's because I take a hard
line on hardware.  If hardware is standalone (routers, printers,
etc.), it should *not* be dependent on any OS-specific drivers.)

> The DHCP server leaves something to be desired.  I cannot reliably get
> the hostnames for all the machines on the LAN.  Unless I'm mistaken, it
> does not run DNS.  Right now, each host has the other hostnames
> hardcoded in /etc/hosts.

The DHCP packets include the DNS addresses provided by the upstream
provider.

Since I started running my own DNS server a long time ago (because
@Home's DNS servers kept flaking out), I don't need it and just
set up my own DHCP server as well.  That way I also get static
IP addresses, by mapping MAC -> IP.

It also guarantees *very* interesting calls to AT&T customer support.

Bear