After some looking around, I ended up buying a
GL-iNet 6416A Travel Router from Amazon for $24. What intrigued me about this router was the (1) OpenWRT based system and (2) the ability to reflash it with a new version of OpenWRT if I wanted. So the first thing that I did after getting the router was to reflash it (instructions
here) with the latest Chaos Calmer version. This eliminated the tweeks that the company had placed on the router, but I wanted to customize my own. BTW, the company provided a very nice suite of abilities for the novice. This router was also the basis for the nefarious TOR routers that showed up on kickstarter a couple of years ago. Those routers were tossed because they claimed original prototypes and manufacturing when in fact they were just repackaging the GL-iNet 6416A. The following is an image of the router from rednerd.com (his site has a very good description of
how to add TOR to this router).
I also immediately set the system to allow ssh connections on the LAN side. The next tweek was to update the software listings and setup LuCI for web interface. I did that through ssh (instructions
here). I next setup the router with my own SSID and WPA2 password (without enabling the wireless). The interface allowed me to choose between putting the wireless on the LAN or the WAN side of things, I chose LAN. After all that, it would appear that I have about 11.95 MB more space for software. That means that I can do a lot with it.
My main thought is to setup some standard configurations with some kind of selection through the web interface to easily set the router to what I want. That may take some doing. More Later.
