Several LinuxDevices readers have reported that a thriving user community has sprung up around a line of inexpensive wireless routers from Asus that run Linux. The Chupa forum hosts user hacks and firmware downloads for the Asus WL-500g, WL-300g, WL-HDD, and WL-series WLAN cards.

(Click for larger view of Asus WL-500g)

The forum was started in November, 2003, by Joep van Boekel, and now has 1,947 members. Says Boekel, “I started the forum [because] I could not find any forum supplying me any information about this particular device and eventual hacks.”

The Asus WL-300g is available in North America
Boekel adds, “The most interesting things currently are IPv6 tunneling support in one of the upcoming firmware, NFS, and full LZMA support for the firmware.” LZMA is a high-compression algorithm featuring low memory footprint and code size, making it suitable for use in embedded devices.

The WL-HDD has an ATA-100 interface for a 2.5-inch (laptop sized) harddrive
The Asus WL-series wireless routers support 54Mbps networking with WPA2 security. They include integrated 4-port LAN switches, a USB host interface supporting webcams, hard drives, speakers, and more, along with integrated print serving capabilities. They include 32MB of RAM, and have low space and energy requirements, according to Chupa forum members. All firmware is available from Asustek as source code under the GPL license.

In addition to community-developed firmware for the Asus devices, the Chupa forum hosts a number of internal photos of the single-board computers inside the devices. The forum is located here.

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