CALEA (Computer Assistance Law Enforcement) is quietly in the background of current news again, because the FBI is pushing congress to mandate that all future routing equipment manufactured will include back doors for law enforcement. Like in CALEA mandates for telephone switching equipment, such back doors require no warrant to activate, and hence can be secretly enabled at will.

In my last blog post, I started writing about OpenWRT, a free software firmware replacement for many off-the-shelf home broadband routers. I received an email last week from a reader who had some of the very same questions I had about the whole process of installing a new firmware. I’ll address some of his points here.

I returned from a wonderful vacation in Florida to discover that my broadband cable service was no longer working. After some troubleshooting, replacing some coax lines and connectors, I ended up having to replace my Linksys cable modem/router combo unit.