[ale] Asus NT-R16 running tomato

[Charles Shapiro]

Colt -- my homebrew, hard-driveless firewall//router machine running
SentryCD ( http://www.sentryfirewall.com/ ) -- died Tuesday.  After
talking it over with a local guru I decided to get Out of the Hardware
Business. I acquired an Asus NT-R16 (
http://ca.asus.com/Networks/Wireless_Routers/RTN16/  ) at Fry's for
$85 with a $10 rebate. I flashed Tomato USB ( http://tomatousb.org/ )
onto it and configured it to be just like colt.  One of the many great
features of TomatoUSB is that it has dnsmasq built in, so I can even
respond to local network dns requests with real ip numbers.  Fun and
simple!  After about 2 hours of messing with it, the Asus was a
drop-in replacement for the old colt.

Alas, my wife's computer ( an Intel Macbook Pro running Macbook OS X
10.7.4//Lion ) will no longer connect to my wired local network,
claiming that the cable is unplugged. My own laptop -- and her old
Apple powerbook -- connect just fine over the same cable, so I think
that her machine is lying to me.  It also won't connect to the network
over a USB->Ethernet interface (an "Airlink 101 USB 2.0 Ethernet
Adapter" ).  It recognizes the device and loads some kind of USB
driver for it, but no power or link lights ever appear on the
interface box itself and the GUI claims the same thing about it
("Network Cable Unplugged").  The USB port works for other devices.
The USB->Ethernet device lights up and connects flawlessly on my linux
laptop when used there.  I have my wife's machine connected over wifi
now, but since her machine is part of the server chain going to the
inkjet printer that means I can't print pretty.  The MAC OS 10 GUI
seems to lack any way of enabling or disabling the built-in ethernet
port, and googling has so far proved useless.  I'm gonna try to
connect her Mac to another wired network Monday, but my suspicion is
that something is munged in the software which I lack the background
to untangle.

-- CHS