The wrt54g router is good fun for all geeks, such a versatile network component with a lot of great feature coming from the open-source scene. Learn about its history if you don’t know yet, it’s one of the greatest GPL success after its use in a commercial product (win-win situation for Linksys and open-source communauty).

I’ve tried most of 3rd-party firmware to customize my router: dd-wrt (best solution for most cases), tomato (great appealing interface), and since yesterday night, openwrt

Openwrt is just a command line interface to configure the router, with a linux-type system to manage files and services. With great simplicity comes great power.
But it’s sincerely not a point and click interface. At least, you’ll be forced to understand the concepts under network interfaces, which is why we all want to try these complex tools, and it’s free education for anyone 🙂

Once your router is stable, the fun begin. Openwrt comes with an itsy package management system, with a lot of software ready to deploy: kismet, ruby, apache…
Then with some easy soldering, you can plug a MMC/SD card on it, then you just need to have some imagination to create some fancy stealth network box!