[ale] New Linksys router on its way

[Alex Carver]

On 1/7/2014 17:43, Chris Fowler wrote:
> On Tue, 07 Jan 2014 20:34:35 -0500
> Paul Cartwright <pbcartwright at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I have a wr54 that I had dd-wrt on, but I took it out when I got the
>> Uverse. Are you saying I have a choice of what modem I can use?? I
>> have Uverse TV & phone, so I have a wireless  endpoint going to the
>> Uverse box feeding my DVR ... but all my computers are wired from the
>> netgear switch, which is fed from the modem. what would I gain from
>> adding dd-wrt to that mix?
> 
> I have DSL, not Uverse so I do not think you have a choice.  Uverse is
> not really DSL is it?
> 
> Wiki has some info.
> 
> Uverse is either VDSL or ADSL2+.  If it is ADSL2+ then you can use your
> own modem.
> 
> The TP-LINK W8980 has a ADSL2+ modem.

I believe you have a choice if you are not receiving VoIP and IPTV via
AT&T Uverse.  If you have either of those services you have to have
their endpoint device (one of the 2Wire units).

The advantage of having DD-WRT (or Tomato, OpenWRT, etc.) would be that
you can use that as your firewall, port forwarder, etc. which is more
flexible than the 2Wire.  The 2Wire has a very limited firewall, the
number of rules is limited to something like 30.  I'll have to log into
mine (3800 HGV-B) but I don't recall being able to do arbitrary port
remappings, just one-to-one forwards (i.e. I can't port forward external
8080 to internal 80, I can only do 8080->8080 or 22->22, etc.)

I was still able to use the TV boxes going directly to the 2Wire box and
all my other machines going to the Linksys.