Some weeks ago I bought an Asus WL500gP wireless router. The idea was to make use of the machine's two USB 2.0 ports to connect external hard drives, wirelessly sharing data across the house. Moreover, the little critter could be connected directly (over ethernet, I mean) to my softmodded Xbox, for some XBMC sweetness.

Though the machine itself seems like a spiffy piece of hardware, the original Asus firmware was a nightmare. Whimsical at best, a buggy mess at worst. Fortunately there are alternatives. Now, my choice of a WL500gP was not accidental; I had previously installed DD-WRT (a Linux-based open firmware for wireless routers) on a Linksys WRT54G, and I was quite impressed by it. Therefore, before buying a new router I looked at those that would be easily supported by either DD-WRT or OpenWrt (another open firmware; I'll come back to it in a second).

This time I opted for OpenWrt. While DD-WRT is probably easier to configure for most typical scenarios (its web interface is quite comprehensive, allowing you to do almost everything you'll ever need), in the end it's still essentially a firmware replacement for wireless routers and little more. OpenWrt is different. It feels a lot more like a fully-fledged Linux distribution, which so happens to be geared towards embedded router-like appliances.

Among its coolest features, OpenWrt features ipkg (Itsy Package Management System), a package manager very reminescent of dpkg/apt-get (all you Debian and [K|X]Ubuntu fans will feel right at home). Now, there are hundreds of packages available for OpenWrt, either from their official repositories or from third parties (check ipkg.be for an ipkg search engine). The range of applications is impressive: pretty much anything even vaguely related to networking can be found there. There's even a Bittorrent client available!

In the end, for any hardcore Unix person, the coolest feature of OpenWrt is being to ssh into the router and feeling "right at home" (TM). But even if you're not into Unix, do yourself a favour and look into OpenWrt's hardware compatibility list before buying a router. Nothing beats the freedom of open software.