Over the last couple of years, the WRT54G has still remained popular due to the support of the open source community. Linksys, now owned by Cisco, has long since released a new version of their firmware for the original device, yet the hardware thrives. Why? One good reason is the Tomato firmware. I went to great lengths to find an early revision WRT54G for just this purpose. Tomato offers excellent stability, speed, and some other nice features to complement your router like:

• QOS
• A bandwith monitor
• Ability to run custom scripts
• Survey your areas wireless networks
• DDNS Support
• A WOL Utility
• SSH administration

Some of this feature set can be found on standard firmware, but I have found that Tomato, and the other community driven efforts (DD-WRT, FreeWRT, OpenWRT, Tarifa, and X-WRT), have far surpassed the performance and stability that the factory firmware can offer. Besides, the admin page is much more intuitive, and much cleaner. Tomato has come a long way and now supports a wider range of routers which you can check out here. Give it a try, and let us know what you think!

Virtualization refers to virtualizing hardware in software, allowing multiple operating systems, or images, to run concurrently on the same hardware. There are two main types of virtualization software:

• Type-1 Hypervisor, which runs ‘bare-metal’ (on top of the hardware)
• Type-2 Hypervisor which requires a separate application to run within an operating system

Type-1 hypervisors usually offer the best in efficiency, while Type-2 hypervisors allow for greater support of hardware that can be provided by the operating system.

As much as virtualization sounds like it should be relegated to 3D Sci-Fi movies viewed through bulky helmets, it has a much more practical use. For the developer, power user, and small business IT professionals, virtualization offers the same basic idea of collapsing multiple physical boxes into one. For instance, a small business can run a web server and an Exchange server without the need for two boxes. Developers and power users can use the ability to contain different development environments without the need to modify their main operating system. Big businesses can also benefit from virtualization by allowing software maintenance to be run and tested on a separate image on hardware without having to take down the main production system.

So what’s the big deal you ask? Two weeks ago, VMware made its entry level Type-1 hypervisor (ESXi) available for free, possibly in an attempt to take market share away from Microsoft’s upcoming Hyper-V technology. This announcement opens the floodgates for venture constrained businesses, developers, hobbyists, and consumers alike to tinker with such an advanced technology on relatively cheap hardware. While most will avoid the new technology for a while, it is only a matter of time before we see some very unique uses, and products, for this technology. Dye-in-wool open source advocates may not want to choose this product due to is closed-source license, but at least this is a cheap option for those that don’t want to delve into the complexity of the open source competitor: Xen