Frustrating experience, advice requested

[ericbenjamin]

Hi every1,

To begin I want to introduce myself and thank everyone for reading my posts. And special thanks to the ones who respond.

I purchased an ASUS 700ge and the it arrived DOA. I have now completed the RMA process and received the replacement. After testing the unit I have become unsatisfied regarding its performance. I have tested it using the stock bios and the newer 2.0.7 bios. My gripe is that it is slow. The included "download manager" is garbage!

I have noticed that many people realize performance gains using custom firmware in combination w/ a different DL manager. I am interested in trying out one of these options. Can anyone help me choose the best or point the way? I have read about kfurge and kamikaze and mldonkey.

PS, I have never used Linux, I guess now is the time to take that step. Can anyone suggest the easiest distro for a beginner? I have just now finished burning my Knoppix LiveDVD (thx for the rec kfurge). I am going to check out this liveDVD now.

thanks,

ericb

[WillemB]

Custom router firmwares are different that linux distro's as in custom firmwares are stripped down linux versions. I would advise installing linux on a PC just to get an idea on Linux.

Disto's which are nice to start with are UBUNTU, CentOS (Redhat) and my favorite but more hardcore Gentoo.

If you would like to go custom on firmwares I would advise OLEG firmwares. They are based on the original ASUS firmwares with added stability and application support. I'm not 100% sure OLEG has a firmware for your router.
I'm using OLEG firmwares with great success.

Routers are crappy nowadays since all router builders like Linksys are reducing RAM to make more money and sell inexpensive product. I myself have 2 ASUS wl500g premium which I had to debug with a soldering iron to bring up the performance by 10db-15db and then even had to add 2 10db antennas to get a satisfactory WDS link. ASUS routers have good potential to be good routers due to RAM, CPU and support from communities like this.

Custom firmware has given my router more possibilities and options and to me it's a little linux system. I hope your quest will lead you to a good working system.

[dalanik]

There's no Oleg firmware for 700ge, but there is kfurge's modification which has dlmonkey and some improvements, I'm now totaly satisfied with my 700gE. It still is a bit slower for file operations than the NetCenter, but it is fast enought to watch AVIs from so I don't care. Don't go with 2.0.0.7, it is a test firmware only without real security, several people wrote that it's open to the ouside and is security risk. Go for kfurge's firmware:

http://wl700g.homelinux.net/drupal/?q=node/134

[ericbenjamin]

Well I loaded the ubuntu 7.10 distro on my computer.

I am even writing this post on it.... as it dl's the 206 updates...

ericb