Re: Query : seeking a (low cost & secure) turnkey plug-and-play appliance to report network outages

[Roy <r.engehausen () gmail com>]

I will second the WRT54GL with OpenWRT.  I have a number of them 
deployed.   I run an OpenVPN tunnel from the WRT54GL to a Linux server 
at our shop so I can remotely log into the box and carry out any tests 
or changes needed.


On 11/17/2011 6:21 AM, Jon Lewis wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Nov 2011, A. Chase Turner wrote:
>
> > I am seeking a $100 turnkey micro hardware appliance to plug into a 
> > LAN hub (behind a consumer-level cable modem) whose only purpose in 
> > life is to send heartbeat (and simple quality of service metrics) to 
> > a pre-configured central aggregation service on the WAN.
>
> It sounds like all you need is a preconfigured device that can boot 
> up, be plugged into their LAN, do DHCP, and then talk to a "remote 
> monitoring station" at configured intervals.  If you're willing to do 
> a bit of work pre-deployment, you could probably pick out an 
> inexpensive DD-WRT/OpenWRT compatible device (i.e. WRT54GL, or maybe a 
> more modern variant with more RAM/Flash) and with a tiny bit of 
> scripting, you're done.
>
> Appneta looks even more appropriate, but I couldn't find anything 
> about pricing on them.  The WRT54GL is definitely sub $100.  The 
> trouble with this sort of thing is that from the docs, it seems alot 
> of the hardware kind of sort of works mostly, and the manufacturers 
> like to make serious enough changes with product revisions, such that 
> you can't be sure a device will work based solely on the model 
> number...you need to know what revision it is.
>
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>  Jon Lewis, MCP :)           |  I route
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