How Linux is Inadvertently Poised to Remake the Telephone and
Internet Markets
/By Robert X. Cringely/
One of the cheapest Linux computers you can buy brand new (not at a
garage sale) is the Linksys WRT54G, an 802.11g wireless access point and
router that includes a four-port 10/100 Ethernet switch and can be
bought for as little as $69.99 according to Froogle. That's a heck of a
deal for a little box that performs all those functions, but a look
inside is even more amazing. There you'll find a 200 MHz MIPS processor
and either 16 or 32 megs of DRAM and four or eight megs of flash RAM --
more computing power than I needed 10 years ago to run a local Internet
Service Provider with several hundred customers. But since the operating
system is Linux and since Linksys has respected the Linux GPL by
publishing all the source code for anyone to download for free, the
WRT54G is a lot more than just a wireless router. It is a disruptive
technology.
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http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040527.html