Many customers ask for Webconverger to have advanced networking features.

For example, a seemingly simple requirement:

Either accept Verizon wireless connection (default) or wired broadband connection (preference would be for this to be automatic).

Wireless is actually really complex. Getting Wireless cards working in Webconverger or Linux is a bit of a nightmare. Switching between different Internet connections depending on their quality is also tricky.

So I usually beg customers to use something like a Linksys WRT54G to act as a wireless networking client.

Then some customers want more. A WRT54G isn't quite plug and play. You need to (often flash it and then) configure it, which most customers aren't prepared to do. Nevermind the difficult part of getting them to buy it and to ensure to get the more expensive WRT54G-L version...

Then customers want Webconverger to be able to do filter or be able to cache upgrades. Implementing such features in Webconverger would be a big detour from the initial design goals. They are once again, better fulfilled by a clever router.

However what clever router can do?

1. Advanced networking like being able to provide a Web interface for Wireless, 3G and other broadband options
2. Squid caching proxy for making upgrading less painful
3. Filtering

The dd-wrt firmware shows the most promise. It has support for keyword filtering, though not a caching proxy (it needs a much bigger disk!). dd-wrt does support quite a lot of hardware. Though can it be bought off the shelf from Amazon, Ebuyer or Dabs? Not yet.