Just a quick note: I received my FON router today. It’s a brand new Linksys WRT54GL with DD-WRT installed. With shipping it only cost $33. If you want a WRT that is guaranteed to run Linux, this price can’t be beat (if you’re in the first 3000).
P.S. I also received a big order from Jameco. Their “100 asst. sockets” doesn’t seem to have a single straight pin in it.
So what is the final verdict on hacking these/using them personally? I got my you-can-order-now email a while back but I find it tough to bite if it means that the Fon kids would hold me liable for keeping that part of their network up.
What will they do if I disable DHCP or put a different firmware on it (even the stock Linksys firmware)?
I have hundreds of different Turned IC Sockets if you are interested via ebay? Good quality – not tin flimsy pins – Machined metal.
Got mine today…
I’ll set it up when I get home.
And report back
the license says you have to keep it on the fon network for 1 year, or they reserve the right to charge you the difference on the router price
What if I move and want to take the router with me? What if I go broke and can no longer afford anything more than 56k? Are the fon police gonna bust in and hobble my knees?
How in the hell do you register this damn thing?
Thats what I’m not sure about either. Besides, if they do start giving you a hard time about it, you can just revert back to the fon firmware for a bit. I’m not sure how they would keep track of so many people.
I ordered mine as well, btw. How long did it take you to get it from the time that you placed your order?
Wow you actualy agreed to let them take back there hardware should you fail to provide access to the internet threw the router. I was going to get one tell I read there TOS agreement and then I was like screw that.
Heh.. you get what you pay for, or don’t.. as is the case of both Fon and Digikey.
How and why did yours come with dd-wrt?
Actually using FON probably violates your broadband provider’s terms of service.
Meh.
Can Canadians get in on this? I have a US shipping address.
It depends; fon isn’t exactly a paid service, and as far as I (and my local CableOne reps) are concerned, the “Linus” profile is all okay. With the others (Bill and Alien), it’s not.
For the record, the “linus” profile is where people share their network freely with other Fon users, and then you can use other people’s Fon networks freely.
With the Bill and Alien profiles, though, money is being paid to Fon, and paying Fon for using CableOne’s (or Comcasts, Quests, whatever) is strictly not allowed.
Besides, I believe that the Linus profile is all that should be allowed, anyways.
It depends; fon isn’t exactly a paid service, and as far as I (and my local CableOne reps) are concerned, the “Linus” profile is all okay. With the others (Bill and Alien), it’s not.
For the record, the “linus” profile is where people share their network freely with other Fon users, and then you can use other people’s Fon networks freely.
With the Bill and Alien profiles, though, money is being paid to Fon, and paying Fon for using CableOne’s (or Comcasts, Quests, whatever) is strictly not allowed.
Besides, I believe that the Linus profile is all that should be allowed, anyways.
I got mine 10 days after the confirmation mail (UPS from sapin to belgium). I took a look at the router over the lan connection to configure it to my needs. I then plugged in the wlan to the lan on my other router and changed to the FON wifi connection. I needed to wait 2 days before the register page came up. Now it all works well. I have it turned off most of the time as I still want to have QoS and much more security. For the moment its in a DMZ of its own so Fonites cant access my local network. I must say that im quite happy with the service. I too can share my internet connection but not for money.
I have to agree – it is cheap, but don’t forget EU taxes (atleast for me) + shipping. The approx. price was almost the same as buying from a computer shop over here.
Are you free to play around with Linux on the router? Could you for instance install Asterisk?
dave: technically, no. You’re not supposed to fsk with settings on the router for one year.
from what i read on the fon site, They have there own wrt54g firmware fron openWRT but you can also use dd-wrt firmware. From what I understand all you really need to do is provide access to other fonites (who login via the fron website) and have an ssid of “fon”. I am now looking at the different firmwares available.
lolersticks, are you sure of this? not that it matters, i got the router to be able to share my connection.
bodwin , where is the register page?
these damn instructions did not clear anything up and I looked all aver the fon website.
If you want to do router linux for cheaper, I’d scour the web for the Motorola WR850G. This is the router that I use. It handles open-wrt and dd-wrt.
steven, here is what I did.
opened box,
powered up and connected to the router
LAN port with dhcp ip address on my laptop.
looked at all the pages and configured it for my existing network.
unplugged and connected the WLAN from the FON router to the existing LAN port of my existing router (which is then connected via WLAN port to modem).
powered it all up. connected to the new wifi ssid “FON”. I did this within the 1st 5 mins to be able to get the registration page on any website i access in browser. this was the tricky part as the fon router needs access to the net to register the FON router ( and then allow access to any fonite afterwords).
now when I have a friend comme round, he sees the fon wifi signal, connects to it (there is no encryption/passwd) he opens up a browser and sees the fon login page (login created on the fon website).
it all works the way it should, but I put the fon router in a DMZ so as to seperate my networks from each other. I am working on securing the whole thing.
I hope all this helps.
good luck
=)
Fantastic projet…and…fantastic idea…..I have in my home ;-)
(Italy)
Eros
I just registered my “WRT54G” and became a fonite… i like the idea and hope to spread the fon nation across the globe… wireless internet anywhere would put most cell phones out of buisenuss and who knows fon will prolly get a “fone” out soon for cellular use
so far it seems to work fairly well…hmmm… it makes me happy :)
I just got mine and installed it onto my network. I probably will throw another ethernet card into my pfSense box to put it on its own subnet through and run it aside my other ap.
btw: i think it would be a great idea for hackaday forums… you could have a thread generated for each post and it would allow for a much more continous discusion.
From: http://www.twindx.com/node/109
This is a true hack, its so wrong on so many levels, esp the one where fon, inc claims to be the “people”
Just the other day I wrote about my research into what makes the FON-supplied WRT54GL routers tick. Now I’ve got mine at home, set up and with FON’s firmware removed. I haven’t registered it with FON – if they come crying to me about having taken delivery of the router but not setting it up for FON, then I’ll back it up, stick on their firmware, register and then go back to OpenWRT with my ‘heartbeat’ being faked by a cron job.
Hi Guys…I have a question about the fon router.
I can connect the fon to my modem and then hook up a second
router to the FON router which in effect gives me a third
network. I can access boththe fon router setting and the
second router setting, and all works well.
how ever this creates a problem when gaming online
what I want to know is if you can creat a DMZ on the fon router
and if so how?
if not would it be better to swap roud the router, put the fon
in the DMZ then have my PCs connect to the internet via the
first router, and my gaming machines connect via the Fon router?