Contest For a Better Open-WRT Wireless Router GUI 217
Reader RoundSparrow sends word of a contest, with big cash prizes, being mounted by a commercial vender of open source Open-WRT routers. You have 10 months to come up with "the most impressive User Interface/Firmware for Ubiquiti's newly released open-source embedded wireless platform, the RouterStation." Entries are required to have open source licensing and will all be released. First prize is $160,000, with four runners-up receiving $10,000. RoundSparrow adds: "Could be built on top of existing X-WRT or LuCI OpenWRT web interfaces. OpenWRT Kamikaze 8.09 was just released. Now is perfect timing for OpenWRT to get some kick-ass interface and usability ideas. I'm not affiliated with the contest vendor."
X-WRT? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's wrong with X-WRT?
OpenWRT is something you set up, then forget. It doesn't need "themes" or "skins", or 3d effects. This is not "pimp my router".
Re:X-WRT? (Score:5, Funny)
hmm, Crysis with 60 fps on a Beowulf cluster of OpenWRT routers?
[bye karma, I will miss you :)]
Re:X-WRT? (Score:4, Funny)
raytraced. You forgot raytraced.
Re:X-WRT? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:X-WRT? (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't a theme competition, it's a user interface competition - usability counts much more than the style of the buttons.
Also, it's a genious move. When the clients are released, you'll have plenty to choose from. Also, being open source. you can merge the best bits of all the clients into one really good one.
Whoever came up with this idea should get a massive pay rise.
BTW, we could adopt the methodology in other areas too.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think we should encourage other companies to join in the contest. Best idea I have is solicit router companies to do $25,000 donations - and allow them to independently judge and reward their own winner.
That way maybe someone who didn't make the top place could get a chance at another income boost. Would supplement the interest in people fearful of not making 1st place.
Also note that a single person can enter more than ONE entry - so if they come up with different design cocepts - they don't have to cho
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You are assuming that good ideas are harder than good integration.
More and more, I don't think so.
Re:X-WRT? (Score:4, Insightful)
People who think "user interface" is synonymous with "themes, skins or 3D effects" are a large part of the reason so much software has a terrible user interface.
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How do you nullify and change that cert? If the answer is "you don't", then how do you deal with someone breaking that cert (either through cryptanaylisis or getting access to the machine)?
OTOH, do you really need to secure wireless networks at all [schneier.com]?
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Re:X-WRT? (Score:5, Funny)
This is not "pimp my router".
Yo Dawg! I heard you liked security, so I put a WPA2 in your WRT so you can feel safe whenever you browse porn!
Re:X-WRT? (Score:4, Informative)
Noting wrong with X-WRT, I use it. The OpenWRT developers recently choose LuCI as default for Kamikaze 8.09 release.
I also forgot to mention there are other up to date alternate such as Gargoyle http://www.gargoyle-router.com/ [gargoyle-router.com] that is GPL license and could be uses as basis for contest entry.
You can view this as fit and finish challenge - but will you win the contest if you put the least effort in?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"This is not "pimp my router"."
If enough customers will spend sweet, sweet monies on a pimped router there is every reason to give them that option.
Slashdot has already provided a suitably artful theme:
http://armish.linux-sevenler.org/blog/wp-content/pembeslash.jpg [linux-sevenler.org]
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This is not "pimp my router".
No, but this PIMP MY INFRASTRUCTURE [youtube.com]
Easy and Good to look at (Score:2)
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you're confusing "GUI" and "eye-candy".
A good GUI, as opposed to eye-candy, is all about ergonomics, helping the user see the choices and make the right one...
Usability? (Score:2, Informative)
I use a wireless router as a repeater, and upon searching for which firmware version I would like to use, I found that:
DD-WRT you click repeater, set the SSID of the source network, the SSID of the new repeater network, and assign it a WPA password. Done. Happy point and click. (source: I did it.)
OpenWRT I found that you have to edit the
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
How terrible for you that someone spends money on what matters to them instead of what matters to you. These guys deserve better than your blinkered dismissal.
The sponsors and the OpenWRT team in general are people who care about use of low-footprint routers in much more complex circumstances than the average Joe's SOHO router. They deploy huge meshes of routers and manage them as a service, sometimes as cooperatives and sometimes as full-blown commercial endeavors.
It is great to see these self-funding OSS
Modern Linux hackable routers, 802.11n support (Score:5, Informative)
Other OpenWRT news. The newest Atheros 9xxx radio chips is available in a number of OpenWRT supported routers now. I have been working to help organize new 802.11n support in OpenWRT. I have compiled a list of consumer routers that work with Linux ath9k driver and ar71xx CPU. In order of current recommendation:
Planex (PCI) MZK-W04NU, 32MB RAM and 8MB flash, USB port, 10/100 Ethernet
Trendnet TEW-652BRP, 32MB RAM and 4MB flash, 10/100 Ethernet
Trendnet TEW-632BRP, 32MB RAM and 4MB flash, 10/100 Ethernet
D-Link DIR-615 revision C1 (ONLY!), 32MB of RAM and 4MB flash, 10/100 Ethernet
TP-Link TL-WR941N WR941ND, 32MB RAM and 4MB flash, 10/100 Ethernet
OpenWRT team is pretty close also on the Netgear WNR2000.
These listed above all come from a common Atheros AP81 reference platform. see http://wiki.openwrt.org/AtherosAR9100 [openwrt.org]
In USA and Japan, the Planex is available on Amazon.com for $59.99 with free shipping... it has more flash and USB port. 3 removable antennas, is a nice hacker system. In the USA, the Trendnet routers have been on sale from Newegg, Fry's, buy.com for only $25 a few times. I will try to post on Reddit / my Slashdot journal when I see them on sale for $25 next time.
The ath9k driver for Linux is not yet mature but is moving along... in 2 to 3 months I expect we have a very nice platform... and the router interface and ease of use of OpenWRT is getting attention with this contest! Now is an exciting time for OpenWRT and Linux routers - finally moving to some new N devices.
Modern Rosewill hackable routers, 802.11n support (Score:2)
You don't have openfirmware for this [newegg.com]* router.
*Clue: This is a house brand.
Re:Modern Rosewill hackable routers, 802.11n suppo (Score:2)
The brand doesn't matter. What chipset is inside matters. And even though there are thousands of different routers to choose between, there are less than 10 chipsets they are based on.
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I have a suggestion ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Too bad it still doesn't support ipv6 properly. But personally, I love Tomato. I have bought a WRTGL router because of my problems with other routers(very crappy firmware) and tomato runs like a sunshine with options that I didn't even comprehend would benefit me.
It's simply another case of FLOSS to the rescue.
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IPv6 has some really nice features. I have deployed IPv6 on my networks (6to4 rules!) and now I can SSH into _any_ computer from _any_ computer - all computers have public IPv6 addresses.
Additionally, reverse 6to4 provides fully automatic reverse DNS delegation.
All for free.
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I don't have enough computers at home to need ipv4 either but that's included.
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Tomato is 99% of the way there on the UI
I agree. However, that makes it better than 99% of the open source offerings out there, and 100% better than the commercial firmware offerings from the likes of Linksys. I mean, there's a reason that Tomato is so popular.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I don't have enough computers at home to need ipv6.
I take it you're not developing software that needs to support IPv6 either.
Tomato is great, but I need/want IPv6 autoconfig on my home net. A spare Cisco 1700 handles this nicely. One of these days when I have some spare time, I'll get a v6 tunnel set up on it.
Re:I have a suggestion ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I don't have enough computers at home to need ipv6.
It's not just about your computers at home. Your home is connected to the Internet. The Internet is growing at an exponential rate. It only has 4 billion addresses. Thus, IPv6 is useful if you plan to continue connecting to things as we approach the not-so-distant future.
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I don't think anyone here has enough computers at home to need IPv6. I mean, if you have more than 253(*) computers in your house, you have more problems than needing IPv6.
(*) Number of possible nodes on a Class C subnet minus the router itself.
The only reason I could see myself having to move to IPV6 would be if my ISP forces me to.
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So why don't the guys who make Tomato port their UI over to OpenWRT and enter it in contest?
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So why don't the guys who make Tomato port their UI over to OpenWRT and enter it in contest?
Actually, it's one guy. He was heavily involved in a number of other open-source alternate firmware packages, before coming up with Tomato.
Re:I have a suggestion ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I second the GP poster. Tomato rocks. Clean interface, lots of functionality, good documentation.
I've been many times at the OpenWrt. It sure looks like a full featured linux dist, but they sure forgot to put clear simple instructions to get my router running it. They seem to try to be so many things that they forgot to cater to, what seems to me to be, their most plentiful potential users: Linux users that would like to run OpenWrt in a router.
No, I don't want to edit /etc/network files, I want a simple GUI that does the job.
Re:I have a suggestion ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure Tomato is nice - as long as you can still get hardware for it.
Sure OpenWrt may lack documentation or tries to do too much stuff at once, but right now it's the only fucking router distro that makes actual progress besides tuning the ui.
DD-Wrt, Tomato, CoovaAP etc. are all stuck with binary drivers that require an ancient kernel to operate them and more and more devices that are supported by this software are already end of life or will be soon.
The point of the challange this article is to make a user friendly interface for OpenWrt (besides the three projects already working on it). If Tomato satisfies your need - fine, but if you rely an modern hardware you're out of luck. And at some point it makes more sense to spend 25$ for a cheap-ass Draft-N device with gigabit instead of being stuck with ancient Broadcom gear for 60+$ just to install Tomato.
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Sure Tomato is nice - as long as you can still get hardware for it.
Well, Tomato is a GPL'ed product, so you could take it and update it if you wanted to. But that's not the point. I was just noting that Tomato is an excellent example of a clean, minimalist GUI. He puts in a fair amount of glitz, true, but it's not gratuitious. And, since this contest is all about the user interface, that seemed appropriate.
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Tomato is garbage. OpenWrt is a full featured Linux distro.
Ever heard of using the right tool for the job?
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Bah... shiny gui painted over an ancient half-proprietary sdk pulled straight out of the stone age and limited to a few broadcom based router platforms.
Fine for the typical end user but not exactly suitable for many of current devices.
Sure, but this contest appears to be all about the GUI ... and how do you define "the typical end user"?
Slashdot Editor: OpenWRT not Open-WRT (Score:5, Interesting)
You guys altered the name to Open-WRT :) Anyway, thanks for spreading the world on this and Kamikaze 8.09 release. the OpenWRT devs work hard.
Please.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh god no.....no Web 2.0 Crap. the router GUI is supposed to be fast, small, and compatible with EVERYTHING.
DDWRT has a problem with Firefox on the latest builds because of the stupid Web2.crap to make things more flashy instead of working right.
I am really tired of the "ooh shiny" becoming far more important than functionality lately in both projects.
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I am really tired of the "ooh shiny" becoming far more important than functionality lately in both projects.
I do netmgt for a living (client and server side, both) and I've turned down jobs that emphasized glitz over actual *needed* functionality.
I still maintain that a simple forms/cgi interface with NO javascript is all you need to get the job done. I wrote an entire NMS on form/cgi (1998 era) and it didn't have 'active stuff' but who the hell cares! the only lacking I had was no dynamic graphs - and I
Re:Please.... (Score:4, Insightful)
CGI doesn't scale well.
and since when does netmgt need to support LOTS of concurrent connections?
see, that's my point - unless you know the *problem space*, you are likely to over-engineer the solution.
most netmgt solutions are WAY over-engineered. they are not going to be hit by thousands of clients. likely they'll be polled frequently by a few NMS's and by frequently I mean a few packets of query every 15minutes, TOPS.
you do not need 'scaling' at the client. you just don't for this problem space.
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for a few seconds, I took 'flash' to mean flash ram.
at least if you needed more ram, that's sort of defendable. non-volatile storage makes sense.
but adobe flash never EVER makes sense in *this* context.
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But that flashy stuff, and the web2.0 is what gets the users, if you don't like it, just use telnet, that'll solve your issues out right wouldn't it ?
If i'm not in the office, and the dsl connection has an issue, it's alot easier to tell someone to click on the red button or green button etc. trying to tell a non tech person a command for iptables or something like that is just outright stupid. I'd rather have the office administrator implementing the rules she puts in place so i can get onto more important
Says who? (Score:2)
Says who? If it is cheap enough (and energy efficient enough), why not throw a damn Core Duo in the damn thing and use powerful statistical magic to figure shit out?
"Fast and small" for "fast and small"'s sake is old school man. Nobody gives a rats ass about wasting CPU or memory. The computer works for us and what you should really be concerned about is saving *our* CPU cycles and memory--not the computer.
<blockquote>I am really tired of the "ooh shiny" be
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I'll treat your response as one from ignorance, rather than from stupidity or insanity.
#1 it's for a cost-sensitive market, not gamers. USD $0.20 MATTERS, because by the time the costs are multiplied up the distribution chain, it will make a real difference in sales volume. You want to put in the least-expensive hardware that meets the target requirements (with a bit of headroom for last-minute spec changes). No one will see the GUI until after they've bought it, and if the cost delta is too much, they s
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The rules require W3C valid entries so if a browser doesn't work, it will be a browser bug.
If one uses standard W3C standard to increase usabiility like ''click here to show advanced options'', why not?
Quote from my router ''We suggest that you use Internet Explorer 5.5 or above at a minimum of 1024x768 resolution. ''
That is old good US Robotics for you which their analogue modems came with 130 page manual explaining every single detail. That is the shape of things in home router world now. I don't think th
Re:Please.... (Score:4, Insightful)
In theory, yeah.
In practice, I just checked my mail on my phone, saw a slashdot reply notification, and clicked the link. Then stared at the screen in disbelief, as the phone showed me that to show me a message maybe 2KB in size it had to download 1MB worth of crap.
Reloading the page is something that takes a very small fraction of a second, when the server isn't doing any heavy lifting, and the page doesn't have half a megabyte of javascript.
And a much larger amount of devices can show that simple page. The router interface shouldn't be flashy. It should be neat and simple, something you could deal with from a cell phone if it was needed in an emergency. I can't tell you how much I hate the websites of various device manufacturers that require hunting the link for the drivers download in the source, because the only available browser I had was lynx, and the link is impossible to find in it.
IMO, don't bother with the flashy stuff. I'll be the one who is going to mess with the router settings, and I want it stable, functional, and usable on all devices. If it prefers form over function I'll go with another product.
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I know your pain, so I wrote AvantSlash [fourteenminutes.com] to get around this very issue. When the Slashdot developers see fit to produce a decent mobile/PDA friendly site then I'll retire this - but i've been saying that since 2001 and it still hasn't happened.
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That's with a full keyboard, but plenty phones can render HTML competently and have a standard keyboard. SSH is certainly technically possible, but a pain.
It's a nice gimmick I guess, but I'd rather have it come preconfigured for easy interfacing with Cacti, then I can make my own, better graphs.
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I explained already, depending on the type of device you're using, a commandline interface may take a very long time to use.
Picture trying to use vi to edit network settings config files with a standard (numeric only) phone keyboard. If you just have to fix the IP address, you'll get it done a lot faster from a web browser.
Email is much different, in that it's something people use often
quick question (Score:4, Funny)
interesting contest, but I searched and couldn't find an answer to my biggest questions:
does it run linux?
are there any requirements to use it in a beowulf configuration?
any requirement to be resistant to, and remain working, after having hot grits dumped on it?
should it support QoS by streaming naked photos of natalie portman at top priority?
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I'm going to become rich and famous after i invent a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet -[SA]HatfulOfHollow
Bah. Why send a machine to do a man's job? If you want something done right ... do it yourself.
It is amazing how negative everyone is about this (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like it's your money! I currently use Tomato on one of my routers. I love the interface. I don't log in very often, mostly to check those fantastic real-time usage stats.
But when I do log in, it is nice to be able to find things quickly. I respect developers who take into account usability and style. In fact, I have basically no respect for those who discount it.
You probably can code circles around me. But in the end, the customer or user only sees the interface. They only see those "useless" graphics, and that "Web 2.0 Crap". Yet, a well designed interface will allow new users to appreciate the product faster, and hopefully keep them around.
Just because the majority of web developers suck at designing "web 2.0" interfaces doesn't mean that the problem lies with the "web 2.0" part. We'd have a lot less technology if we used that metric to measure a tools value.
Re:It is amazing how negative everyone is about th (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, I have basically no respect for those who discount it.
You probably can code circles around me. But in the end, the customer or user only sees the interface.
Actually you've hit on a major problem of programers that we don't like to talk about (well, except me, obviously..). The thing is, GUI design is a complex art, one that takes a long time to learn to do well, so its hard to be good both at visual interfaces and the often very complex code that they control.
I know this from my own work. I'm a pretty good coder (gosh, how modest of me). I can write code to just about anything, and charge a pretty penny to do so, but my ability to code a user interface is rather poor. Sure I know all the theory, but there's something extra you need, that 'eye for the visually pleasing' thats hard to cultivate unless user interfaces are what you do all the time.
I've used plenty of applications where the guy who wrote the backend code also coded the gui, and as a rule the gui is somewhat lacking. This is't just restricted to single coder projects, it also occurs when a project is full of able back end coders, and they build the gui to suit their own level of ability to use the code.
You can see this if you use Emacs. Nice though that software is in features, the interface is godawful, and actively prevents anyone new to computer usage or programing from using it.
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You can see this if you use Emacs. Nice though that software is in features, the interface is godawful, and actively prevents anyone new to computer usage or programing from using it.
What would you honestly change? 99% of the feature set is packed up in control sequences. If you're using the GUI at all one would have to wonder why you are using Emacs. Vi doesn't even bother.
I understand the point you are making but Emacs is really not the program to pick on because it has a *fantastic* User Interface for programmers--which is the entire point of the program. No your grandma will not be able to point-and-click her way through writing a new database application, but I think that is ok
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As far as "new programmers" go, I would say (i) if they can't easily get through the included Emacs tutorial, programming is probably not going to work out for them (ii) they should not start off in Emacs anyway. Emacs solves a lot of problems but until you've written your first big program you're unlikely to have much appreciation for its features.
I get where you're coming from but when I was a post grad teaching first year students my experience was that that they found Emacs to be uncomfortable and used it only when the tutorial sheets required them too. Most of the time the dominant linux text editor in use by students I taught was kwrite.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing is, GUI design is a complex art, one that takes a long time to learn to do well, so its hard to be good both at visual interfaces and the often very complex code that they control.
You hit the nail on the head. It's an art, and that means that, when all is said and done, it's the guy with the eye who polishes the job. Programmers can follow all the user-interface design rules laid down in the multitude of books on the subject, but if they don't have the touch, what they'll come up with may be functional, but will still look like crap. It's as inevitable as the tide. Good coding can be an art as well ... it is by no means always thus, but some developers do carry their work into the re
It's even more complicated than that (Score:2)
>> there's something extra you need, that 'eye for the
>> visually pleasing
Not only you need "an eye" (i.e. the discriminative system in learning theory parlance), you also need the ability to come up with something new (i.e. the generative system).
I have "an eye". I can tell whether something is good or not, and can convincingly explain why. I can suggest improvements to an existing interface and explain how they will improve matters. I just can't roll a good UI from scratch.
open source and usability (Score:5, Insightful)
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The usability of a device has NOTHING to do with being able to skin it or apply themes. Usability is all about making the device simple for someone with limited knowledge or experience to use.
The usability of slashdot seems to be in decline, while the reliance on javascript increases. Now maybe there isn't really a causal relationship there, but correlation is enough for many people.
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Couldn't agree with your more.
Also as a systems administrator, i like gui's, generally good ones allow me to get my job done faster, not slower, if I have to, I'll drop to cli, but in a good gui you don't have to, if the gui is written well for usability, you'll be able to cover 95% of what you need to do, and beening able to do that quickly and efficiently is the important thing
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Couldn't agree with your more.
Also as a systems administrator, i like gui's, generally good ones allow me to get my job done faster, not slower, if I have to, I'll drop to cli, but in a good gui you don't have to, if the gui is written well for usability, you'll be able to cover 95% of what you need to do, and beening able to do that quickly and efficiently is the important thing
I take it that you're a big fan of Regedit.
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Who doesn't enjoy a program that, when you hover your mouse over an option, you get a description of what the option does and why you should use it?
"Contextual help" makes even the most alien programs a dream to use.
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I think the comments so far some up one of the major issues with the open source world and usability ... Usability is all about making the device simple for someone with limited knowledge or experience to use
No it's not -- that's merely one aspect of usability (other aspects include efficiency of use for an expert, etc). Whether it's the most or least important aspect depends strongly on the context.
Sadly, many UI creators do seem to emphasize this aspect way too much, often with strongly detrimental effects on other important attributes of the UI. Sure it's great to make your program accessible to beginners -- but if it's a program they'll use every day, and your UI is "expert unfriendly" (inefficient/lim
"Simplicity and intuitiveness for the end user" (Score:5, Insightful)
"Simplicity and intuitiveness for the end user (both newbie and expert)"
Maybe this will be won by the most blinged-up interface but there's hope here that the competition organisers get some well thought out entries which help guide the users through the configuration of their routers.
Some installs are jargon heavy and just assume you know what all the options mean, little to no explanation or help. I've spent many hours sweating over some WRT GUIs that have (to me as a relative beginner) had meaningless options. I really really want to use these excellent installs but I get really put off by zero-to-poor documentation or explanations of what all the options are.
A simple interface with excellent documentation and guidance would be worth the prize.
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I suspect that for $160k there will be some competent thought put into the judging.
Flash based (Score:5, Funny)
Can it be Flash based? I've got some cool ideas involving fancy animated text effects and transitions that would be really useful for a router interface.
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Can it be Flash based? I've got some cool ideas involving fancy animated text effects and transitions that would be really useful for a router interface.
Gah. I think I'm going to be sick. Yeah, you earned that +5 funny.
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Yes, the router has 16MB of flash memory, just like a SU SLINUX Disk (SSD).
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Duh, I'm slow tonight. I almost started typing a reply asking wny it matters how much memory it has, since flash runs in the browser, not on the server.
If you really like CLI and have decent knowledge (Score:2)
If you really like CLI and have decent knowledge in networking then give Vyatta a try. No GUI at all.
I've tried it and it's not too hard. Just have to pay close attention to the syntax or you'll screw it up.
GUI in routers do provide a quick glace as to what is going on. High end Cisco routers do NOT have a nice web-gui as it is entirely CLI based except for some home versions of the PIX.
I personally use DD-WRT v24 SP1 in all of my wireless access points (they're really routers but I turned those function
Re: (Score:2)
RE: "If you really like CLI and have decent knowledge in networking then give Vyatta a try. No GUI at all."
OpenWRT has "no GUI at all". it is an optional piece when you build the firmware. It has all the settings in /etc/config/ tree. There is a command-line program called UCI that allows you to easily edit them. The GUI's get built on top of that typically.
There are at least 3 installable package GUI's available that I know of: X-WRT, LuCI, Gargoyle. But people have used it for years and years witho
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Well, the PIX isn't really a *router*. But as long as you mentioned the Cisco firewall product line (which includes the ASA), have you tried ASDM? It's maturing into a pretty useful way to admin a Cisco firewall through a GUI.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6121/index.html [cisco.com]
When you said "home version of the PIX",
160k could hire them a good designer (or ten) (Score:2)
It's cute that they're doing this the open-source way, but realistically they'd be better off hiring a few designers and letting them fight it out. Maybe I'm jaded from years of Linux adminning, but I have absolutely no faith in the graphic abilities of network geeks, myself included.
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but realistically they'd be better off hiring a few designers and letting them fight it out.
I heard someone say that "Nobody ever made statues of committees".
I think the money would be better spent one one good designer and what's left over on doing good usability tests and iterating the design and implementation process.
- Jonas
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I heard someone say that "Nobody ever made statues of committees".
Well, there was that whole Iwo Jima [iwojima.com] thing.
Know what SOHO means? (Score:2, Insightful)
The majority of the posts seems to be sneering down in elitism to these poor folks that don't know how to setup a router in the CLI and, god forgive them, try to setup their home network by themselves, without paying a sysadmin to do the work.
Yes, a sysadmin that can't configure a router without a good GUI should be hanged by the neck until death, but last time I checked, the majority of the routers supported by OpenWRT were SOHO ones.
Do you really expect people that just want to setup a minimal network of
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It is too bad the protocols all suck. Ideally the access point and the wifi cards would auto-configure in a way that allowed for the strongest encryption possible between the two. However, 802.11a/b/g doesn't offer that, instead forcing you to pick one.
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I can see defaulting to WEP from the hardware standpoint, but the "enter a HEX key"? Does it still do that? it would seem to me that the second I have to write down a hex key, I'd just can the whole thing and go unencrypted. That or call support.
In other words, doesn't the fact that WEP sucks to configure increase support calls?
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It's not that easy (Score:3, Informative)
It looks like the overall discussion quickly drifted away from the actual topic and the further degrades into insults and endless discussions about cli vs. gui / enduser vs. professional etc. But hey, this is slashdot so I think it's expected.
Anyway, I think that most people miss the point here. The challange is about to implement a (new) gui for the Ubiquity Router Station, based on AirOS which is actually a snapshot of the OpenWrt Kamikaze trunk with some patches added for board support and another proprietary hal to drive the Atheros cards used with the board.
The RouterStation [ubnt.com] is not exactly a SOHO device, it's a bare embedded board featuring a fast MIPS cpu and three MiniPCI slots, POE and some other fuzz.
It has higher specs then the average Broadcom gear and is intended for larger infrastructure deployments, like wisps etc.
So far on the target hardware. Since one requirement is to use OpenWrt/AirOS as base operating system, one can rule out Tomato (which ppl quickly suggested) since it's built on top of the former disclosed Linksys SDK for WRT54G devices and relies heavily on a Linux 2.4 kernel to use bcm43xx wireless phy. Part of the original Linksys firmware design was the use of nvram as central configuration storage which is abandonned in nowadays Kamikaze releases. Anyway - I think it's nearly possible to rip the gui off an existing firmware project and refactor it to run on top of OpenWrt, it would be easier to just start from scratch.
Now the list of required features [ubnt.com] is pretty long and includes stuff that's not present in (half) open source firmwares like Tomato, DD-Wrt or OpenWrt. It includes things like bgp/ospf routing, bonding, snmp or layer 2 firewalling (ebtables, arp nat ...) just to name a few. That are things a normal ui designer can't draft without the support of one or more networking experts who actually know whats this about and how it's done properly. Some of that features also are inherently complex and can't be fully abstracted away with some fancy ui elements and a short help text on each page. On the other hand an ui allows to present complex relations like traffic flow, qos behaviour, wifi signal stength etc. in a visual way that can't be accomplished with a cli-only interface.
The to-be-developed ui is not intended for casual users that just want to hook up a bunch of computers and get into the internet. It's also not intended to be used by people who don't have a clue about networking or don't want to learn about the principles of the involved technologies. You have to keep in mind that the interface should be able to handle multiple wifi cards with multiple wireless networks each, that it should ease the setup of complex network configurations without limiting the amount of possible options. It's also not about a fancy web 2.0 portal or shiny flash interfaces, just to please possible customers.
Imho the ui should also be designed in such a way that it allows a smooth coexistance with cli-based workflows. Neither Tomato nor DD-Wrt provide such abilities since the underlying system is optimized to be used by the ui and hardly intuitive to use via the cli. Think of it like the relation of Linux and Xorg. You can uninstall all X related stuff and still have a functional system where you can access all resources etc.
Another fact to worry about is the portability of such an ui - if one wants to make it into a generic interface for OpenWrt, it would have to support a wide range of hardware from simple Linksys boxes to X86 gear like Avila or Alix boards, tt would have to support wireless configuration for madwifi, legacy broadcom and mac80211 based wireless drivers, each with different ways of configuration. Oh - and it should support kernel 2.4 and 2.6 which becomes a real pain if one relies on sysfs for state information.
Also the choice of the programming language and framework matters, one could go ahea
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A great response. I wished you hadn't posted anon so there could be follow-up to your experienced insight. I think it would be very helpful to the OpenWrt community as a whole to really detail what hard tech the project requires that is absent from current Trunk. For example, the bonding you mention.
I personally encourage anyone to build this on OpenWRT trunk and not the AirOS fork. I don't see a single mention of AirOS on the pages, did I miss it?
The contest, at minimum, is free marketing for OpenWRT.
It's not that costly. (Score:2)
All good points and one left out. One needs to purchase the hardware in order to be in the game.
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Man, people are so jaded here. Stop spreading misinformation. The company is giving free routers to contestants. These guys clearly seem to GET IT. But the attitudes of some in the Linux community make it seem like nobody should even try new ideas and all open source work should only be done traditional ways.
An yha, as soon as you start giving away free routers for entering a contest - guess what happens. People sign up for the free router with no intention of doing any programming. So they rightly have
Copyright (Score:2)
The rules [ubnt.com] of the contest say this:
Required elements for web interface pages:
Does this mean entrants do not own the copyright to the web design portion of the contest?
(Btw, in case you thought this was just about adding a web-based front-end to an existing product, think again: this is about designing intuitive user interfaces for complex networking options. Not a trivial task.)
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This has had considerable discussion on #OpenWrt IRC. I am not a lawyer or a certified license person. I just been in field and try to get along with this like most educated users.
My take on this:
1) They want you to transfer copyright as an employee or contractor would in USA. This would allow them to add additional licenses or what if they wish (fork the project), as they would be the official copyright holder. There is plenty of stuff in the Linux kernel that is copyright Atheros or IBM. So I don't s
some suggestions .... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:needs an easy way to edit firewall rules (Score:5, Insightful)
Not everyone should be administering a network either. Any literate adult meets all of the requirements necessary to learn how to do so but there are plenty of people who should not perform this task. The system is self-correcting however; the ones who shouldn't have done so are the ones who have most of the problems. If you a) don't know how to properly do something and b) refuse to learn how to properly do it, then it makes sense to ask (or hire) someone else to do it for you.
The people who think that this simple observation somehow does not apply to them, or that getting pissed off at someone like me who points that out is going to change the reality of the situation, well, I bet they wonder why they have such bad "luck" with these things. You attempted something that you don't actually know how to do and experienced undesired results; what a surprise, it must have been those evil elitist geeks! Seriously though it's amazing how upset people get sometimes when you dare to suggest that there are tasks which require a bit of skill and that doing them without that bit of skill can cause problems. You'd think that this were some kind of highly controversial position for which there was no conclusive evidence.
To more directly answer your post, I think iptables itself is rather irrelevant. The story is about a router GUI, which would probably be a front-end to iptables. There are some very nice GUI tools available for iptables; if Open-WRT's offerings are on a par with them, then they would provide a way to edit firewall rules that's about as easy as it's going to get. I do think that a firewall is one of those few applications where there is some inherent complexity that cannot be made much simpler without severely compromising the device. It's like that Albert Einstein quote (paraphrase): "Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."
For that reason, I question the type of "easy to use" to which you refer. If you have a solid working knowledge of TCP/IP, then you should be able to handle any firewall and "easy to use" would mean automating what can be automated to save you some keystrokes and to avoid some unnecessary tedium. If you don't have a solid working knowledge of TCP/IP, it would probably mean dumbing things down to make up for your lack of understanding, which of course would result in a less thorough or a less accurate configuration.
Given the security issues that can arise from a misconfigured firewall, I would suggest that this is one area where enabling people who don't really understand what they're doing is asking for trouble. You're not really doing the less-knowledgable any favors by setting up a situation, in the name of convenience, where they are likely to have problems that they won't know how to solve. The good news is that there is abundant documentation on both TCP/IP and iptables, so anyone who is interested and motivated can easily learn how they work.
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If you a) don't know how to properly do something and b) refuse to learn how to properly do it, then it makes sense to ask (or hire) someone else to do it for you.
This is something I've never entirely understood about computing. Why should it be easy for someone with no knowledge of computers be easy to do relatively complex tasks, like a complex OS install or configuring a firewall?
Most people are too terrified to open the bonnet of their car to check the oil, and rely on paying someone to fix it when it
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Naw... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the task is needlessly complex? Why should somebody connecting to a access point need to configure which encryption protocol to use? Why should the damn WiFi card and the access point negotiate automagically and *pick the damn best one they both support*?
^ this space reserved for replies telling me that the protocol doesn't allow it. Well you know what? The user isn't broken, the protocol is. 802.11/whatever is horribly insecure because the protocol doesn't fucking handle the encryption for you. Let me pick a key on the router, type it into the laptop, and the damn things can pick WAP, WPA, WEP, WAZOO or whatever the fuck some encryption dudes dream up all on their own. As long as it works and is secure, I dont really care what the hell protocol is used.
Blame the user is arrogant, stupid and is increasingly a black mark on employment. The world expects the programmer and the designer to do everything for them. That is the market. Deal with it. Programmers who design usable stuff will find their skills highly desired. Programmers who say users are spoiled children will rapidly find nobody wants to hire them.
You know who to blame? Blame the designers and programmers for not understanding what the goals and tasks are. Blame the designers (or lack thereof) and programmers for not removing all the roadblocks in the way of accomplishing said goals and tasks.
Honestly, the real reason programmers get bent out of shape (*cough*aside from the weird vibes coming from those still in the computing stone age like RMS*cough*) is that programming a usable interface is very hard. Lots of edge cases and you can't catch all of them. Really, the shit is hard and no silver bullet will ever be found that makes the hardness go away.
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I guess the hard part is the "working and secure" bit then. I think you are generalizing too much.
Networking used to be horrible. Different protocols, different hardware. Lots of fads, each as much as a pain to set up as the last. No point and click email server wizards. Site-to-site was by modem, not VPN. When men were men and the cable was coax, that sort of thing.
It has gotten to the point now where you have a router, modem, AP, and switch in one, for $50 or something. Network speed is automatically nego
Re:needs an easy way to edit firewall rules (Score:4, Interesting)
1) If your router is also a switch/hub, it can analyze the internal network traffic and learn computer names (if windows file sharing is enabled anyway).
2) It can tap the internet to look up stuff like mac addresses and other statistical traffic patterns to identify things like your Tivo or XBox.
3) You can invent an internal protocol that enables your household computers and devices to communicate to the router what the fuck they are. Odds are good you can use fancy crypto to make sure that the computers and devices can't lie if they get compromised.
4) Make a training mode that lets everything go through and when you are done, the router uses the wealth of statistical bullshit it collected in steps 1->3 to give the user a report outlining the househouse hold traffic.
5) The user can then "lock" the router and not let anything but what was configured in #4
6) If something odd happens, or the router detects new computers (say a laptop, etc). The magic protocol in step 2 would send some kind of alert to a computer, your email, your phone... something... basically saying "hey man, something changed... you might have to retrain me".
My idea, obviously, is a very crude outline. But you get the idea. Everything can be simplified if you focus in on exactly what the task at hand is and leave the rest of the bullshit out. In fact, I bet you can design the firewall configuration in such a way that the user never needs to see IP addresses or port numbers. All they see is friendly computer names (deduced from #1->#3) and descriptions of the traffic.
Nerds, obviously, wouldn't like this--instead wanting some geeky bullshit. But they can piss up a rope as far as I'm concerned. This is a mass market device intended for people who just want to feel secure that nobody is hacking their shit.
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Problem is, it's either friendly, or it's secure.
You can have sort of that, with UPNP. Except there's no auth, so any device, including that trojaned unpatched box can ask the router to open a port for it to receive commands from the botnet.
You can't invent a "fancy crypto protocol" to prevent compromise, because if the device is compromised, the key probably is as well. Crypto is so that Alice can talk to Bob without Eve eavesdropping on them, or modifying the contents of their conversation. But it's of ab
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Only if you design the interface in a way that obsures all 15 leeches. The traditional router guys would shove all 15 computers into a listbox and call it a day. Of course people wouldn't bother to remove the 15 devices under that regime.
Remember I said if you take away traditional constraints, a lot of stuff is possible. Ideally it would present you with a map-like interface with an icon for every
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Yeah. There is also Link Layer Discovery Protocol [wikipedia.org], which is used by Vista to figure out what the fuck is on my network. The protocol stack is evolving in such a way that it could make SOHO firewall configuration easier.
But I was told that making a user friendly firewall might be possible. I never ran it through the engineering staff (you) first. Obviously you'd come back to me with a list of what is wrong and we'd reach something better then t