About OpenWRT

OpenWRT is a great example of how a company who complies with the OSS licenses can spawn a community. OpenWRT started as a fork of the GPL components that Linksys released for their WRTG-54g router back in 2003.

The community took this code and extended it with a custom user interface and tools that took the product far beyond what the engineers at Linksys first imagined.

Since the first release back in 2006 the number of devices supported has exploded to over 300 types of consumer and commercial grade routers.

Configuring OpenWRT

OpenWRT has two main configuration options UCI a command line application that is accessible with SSH or the console and LuCI the web interface.

UCI

luci command line interface 
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config 'wifi-device' 'radio0'
    option 'type' 'mac80211'
    option 'hwmode' '11g'
    option 'htmode' 'HT20'
    option 'country' '00'
    option 'channel' '11'

UCI gives a structured view of the key/value pairs of each configuration file. The tool can read and write values to a temporary instance of each configuration file and then commit to the physical file when all of the edits are complete. Since the UCI tool is a command line utility it makes it easier to script things for dynamic operations.

LuCI

luci web interface

LuCI has a more visual approach where properties of a configuration are edited in a HTML form and then applied once editing is complete. Unlike the UCI tool the HTML interface gives a richer amount of feedback to the user at the expense of automation.