[GTALUG] Router advice sought

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 01:40:29PM -0500, Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:
> Thanks! The Asus looks neat, especially with the even more special deal
> at Canada Computers this week taking it to $84. It's not supported by
> LEDE, though.
> 
> The Linksys WRT1900ACS that Lennart mentioned looks solid, but it's
> still a bit pricey refurb at $170. Still, it's supported by OpenWrt and
> LEDE, and Linksys seem to be cool with using third party firmwares.
> 
> Perhaps niftiest deal of all at Canada Computers is the TP-Link Archer
> C2600 on special offer from $250 to $130 this week. I'm getting mixed
> messages whether this uses locked and signed firmware, because LEDE say
> that it's supported. I remember that Lennart and Hugh had an exchange
> about the Archer C7. Hmm.

Well 32MB flash is pretty small (compared to 128MB), and the CPU a bit
slower than the WRT1900.

Signed firmware seems to mostly apply to US models, which so far we seem
to have mostly been spared in Canada, surprisingly.

So hard to say which model you get here for the C2600 though.
The firmware download page has Archer C2600(CA)1.0 listed versus
Archer C2600(US)V1 so I guess make sure it says CA and not US by the
serial number.

At least for the WRT1900ACS it is simple.  NCIX for example
lists the model as: WRT1900ACS-CA so clearly that is a model made
for Canada, not the US.  Of course Linksys has already said the
WRT1900 is not locked down even in the US since they worked with
Marvell on the chip design to make sure they would not have to
lock down the whole firmware to comply with the new FCC rules.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/linksys-wrt-routers-wont-block-open-source-firmware-despite-fcc-rules/

-- 
Len Sorensen