The article doesn't say which wireless chipset it is using (only that it's Broadcom).

> Yes it looks like Belkin actually understands what the word “open” means and why. Yay!

I will believe that only once I see that the wifi chip is using a vanilla kernel driver and not some binary Broadcom driver that will tie you to a specific kernel for years to come (as has been the case with the WRT54 for years until the b43 open source driver was matured).

And I would have liked to learn how much RAM this thing has. Some routers currently come with quite a lot of it, eg TP-Link WDR4300 with 128 MB (http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wdr4300) — that's one of my current favourites for building appliances with OpenWRT.

>On the back of the device there are four GbE ports

I really wish at least 8 LAN ports would become the standard rather than 4. The stock response is "LOL it's not a problem because WiFi." But I don't want a dozen devices contending for the WiFi of the router. I want most of my devices to be on wired connections with (ideally) the only WiFi devices being phones.

So far the only router that seems to feature 8 GbE ports --and has support for flashing OpenWRT or Tomato or whatever-- is one from Mikrotik under the "RouterBOARD" brand: http://routerboard.com/RB493G ; casing, power adapter, and antennae sold separately. Does anyone know of any other, better, options?

edit: wrong link. fixed.

I can't provide any other options. But I can 'vouch' for Routerboard. We use their products in a carrier grade environment, for almost consumer-prices. The RouterOs isn't 'next next finish' you have to put some time in it. But check out the leaflet which features there are available. If you want a 'cheap' high-end router with some nice features available (SFP's, true port-mirroring, vlans and integrated hotspot functionality) Routerboard are definitly worth exploring. http://www.mikrotik.com/pdf/what_is_routeros.pdf

The answer is to get a cheap 5 or 8 port switch.