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La Fonera
Posted on Monday, May 07 @ 08:48:17 PDT by lincomatic
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I've been a member of FON, the global WiFi sharing community, for over a year now. Recently, I received an email from them, offering me one of their newer La Fonera wireless routers for free, including postpaid shipping. Why would anyone say no? ...
For those who are unfamiliar w/ FON, it is a worldwide WiFi sharing community. Anyone can sign up as either a Bill or a Linus. If you choose to be a Bill, you get a cut of the profits generated by paid users on your FON hotspot. If you choose to be a Linus, you get to use any other FON hotspot for free. Sharing your connection violates the Terms of Use of many ISP's so be sure to check your contract. I am lucky to have an ISP who has an agreement w/ FON to allow its users to share their bandwidth (Time Warner).
When I joined FON, I was issued a Linksys WRT54GS for a mere $5. Subsequently, FON decided to build their own router, and all further development of firmware for the WRT54G ceased (which is probably why they sent me La Fonera).
I received my La Fonera surprisingly quickly after placing my order. When I received it, I was truly shocked at its diminuitive size. The supplied wall wart is actually bulkier. Here is a shot of my La Fonera stacked on top of the WRT54GS that it's replacing:
Here are some close-ups of it:
 
What's nice about La Fonera is that it supports dual SSID's. This allows you to use a secure WPA-PSK connection when connecting to your network (default SSID=MyPlace"). The FON clients all connect via an unsecured connection on a different SSID (default SSID=FON_AP). La Fonera runs a specially modified version of OpenWRT. The admin screens are relatively simple. The default settings shield your private network from the hotspot users, but there are settings which allow you to give them access, should you so desire (not recommended). There is also a screen which allows you to configure port forwarding. One big pitfall of my unit, at least, is that I am not able to configure the 802.11g channel. No matter which channel I select, it always runs on Channel 2. I suspect that it will be fixed in a future version of the firmware, however.
I used NetStumbler to measure the signal strength of La Fonera vs my WRT54GS in the outer edges of my 12000 sqft yard. Interestingly, despite the small, single antenna, it registered 21dB for the private SSID, and 19dB for the hotspot SSID, vs 14dB for my WRT54GS. Now, although SNR measurements are illuminating, the real test is connection quality. Despite the lower SNR registered by the WRT54GS, at the fringes of my yard, I was able to connect at 36Mbps vs only 11Mbps on the private SSID of La Fonera. Both AP's however, yielded reliable connections. Since La Fonera has an external antenna, it's easy to swap its tiny antenna with a bigger one if you need higher gain. Inside the house, I ran some simple speed tests, and found the transfer rates to be about the same between La Fonera and the WRT54GS. However, my WRT54GS has a another big advantage, in that it is running DD-WRT, which allows me to tweak all sorts of advanced parameters, such as clock speed, radio power, static IP's, etc., etc.
La Fonera is completely locked down by default. The only modifications you can make are via its config pages, including firmware updates. If you want to get an ssh console, however, there is a simple hack available at Hacking La the Fonera. The FON folks have been closing up the back doors one by one, but for the version of the firmware shipped in my unit (0.7.1 r3), the Kolofonium hack worked. The simple procedure entails setting your La Fonera DNS to the IP of a special DNS server set up by the hacking folks, which opens up the SSH port via an exploit in an unprotected RADIUS script on La Fonera. Please, if you open up the back door, use it for experimentation only; keep sharing your connection via your unprotected FON SSID, so that the FON community can expand, and remain viable.
All in all, I am happy w/ my La Fonera. It works well, it's easy to configure, and it was free. It runs a bit hot to the touch; we'll see how reliable it is after I run it for a year or two. Hopefully, there will be a firmware upgrade at some point, which will fix the channel setting bug.
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