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Developer's Corner / Re: Tomato Custom Router Firmware question
« on: November 21, 2017, 10:57 AM »
Shades, that was very insightful. Thank you!
So, I feel I need to be clear as to why I am asking this question.
I work for a company that buys routers from a source in Asia. This source sells the routers and builds firmware for them, but they are NOT the manufacturers of these routers as they outsource them from ANOTHER source in Asia. Part of our deal with them is that they design custom firmware for us that feature several methods of backup or constant contact. However, like I said, the routers
are custom jobs that they outsource and then sell to us. To make matters worse, the original manufacturers of these routers do not design firmware at all. We are considering building our own firmware in an attempt to cut off that lifeline, and become more independent.
This is merely an experiment to see how steep the learning curve is. Everything I am learning from the router I have gained from using telnet and firing various Linux commands at the pid's, but I'm not exactly sure what is going on. The company we buy from has obviously recycled code from other sources and it amazes our IT guys that they can build the firmware in the first place as they seem to be somewhat clueless with certain programming concepts. A good example of this is when we tried to approach them about firmware that allows the APN for the cellular network to be applied dynamically as the router dials out. I showed them a rough outline with a series of "if" statements that would evaluate whether the dialing process was successful or unsuccessful and, if successful, when to apply the proper APN. They were kind of clueless. They claimed they could not do it, when there is clearly JavaScript code in the www directory of the router that does something similar.
I'll save you the rest. Thank you for your time.
So, I feel I need to be clear as to why I am asking this question.
I work for a company that buys routers from a source in Asia. This source sells the routers and builds firmware for them, but they are NOT the manufacturers of these routers as they outsource them from ANOTHER source in Asia. Part of our deal with them is that they design custom firmware for us that feature several methods of backup or constant contact. However, like I said, the routers
are custom jobs that they outsource and then sell to us. To make matters worse, the original manufacturers of these routers do not design firmware at all. We are considering building our own firmware in an attempt to cut off that lifeline, and become more independent.
This is merely an experiment to see how steep the learning curve is. Everything I am learning from the router I have gained from using telnet and firing various Linux commands at the pid's, but I'm not exactly sure what is going on. The company we buy from has obviously recycled code from other sources and it amazes our IT guys that they can build the firmware in the first place as they seem to be somewhat clueless with certain programming concepts. A good example of this is when we tried to approach them about firmware that allows the APN for the cellular network to be applied dynamically as the router dials out. I showed them a rough outline with a series of "if" statements that would evaluate whether the dialing process was successful or unsuccessful and, if successful, when to apply the proper APN. They were kind of clueless. They claimed they could not do it, when there is clearly JavaScript code in the www directory of the router that does something similar.
I'll save you the rest. Thank you for your time.