Securifi Community Forum

Securifi Products => Almond+ => Topic started by: MrAkai on September 07, 2014, 11:58:34 am

Title: Ancient underlying code?
Post by: MrAkai on September 07, 2014, 11:58:34 am

Aside from the weird locking problem (which is hopefully software and will get resolved soon) I'm very happy with my A+.  I'm also very impressed with their involvement with the community and responsiveness to issues. 

Please do not take this post as a criticism, since I am happy with the product and SF as a company, I'm just curious about this situation and like to "be in the know" as they say.

That said, I've noticed (after it being pointed out to me) that the underlying base of the A+ firmware is surprisingly out of date.

Linux Kernel 2.6.36 was released in October of 2010, and is not even the newest 2.6 version.  I'm fairly surprised than any 802.11AC SOC would provide a BSP that would include such an old kernel.

OpenWRT Kamikaze was released between 2007 and 2010.

Both of these predate the 802.11AC technologies used in the A+ (Ratified at the end of 2013)

Out of curiosity, what is the reasoning behind shipping with such old code, and is there a roadmap to move to something more modern (the TCP and wifi stack improvements in the 3 series kernels seem to be worth it, but I am most certainly not an expert).

Thanks!

Title: Re: Ancient underlying code?
Post by: summat on September 07, 2014, 01:00:00 pm

A lot of the underlying stuff is old as they are the latest that are supported by the vendors of the chipsets used, so Securifi are limited by them.

There is an ongoing thread talking about later versions of the kernel and OpenWRT *HERE* (http://forum.securifi.com/index.php/topic,1739.0.html)

Lars from Securifi mentions sources for what we currently have (aside for some proprietary code) will be released soon. Additionally he mentions that Cortina (Who manufacture that arm CPU used in the A+) are working on a 3.4.x kernel release that Securifi will upgrade the A+ to as soon as they deem it stable enough.

Upgrades will come. The main thing is the hardware is now out in the wild, and as far as I'm concerned the hardware is quite impressive. Yes there are software issues to put right but I'm certain that this will all be resolved in due time as the platform matures.

Title: Re: Ancient underlying code?
Post by: MrAkai on September 07, 2014, 09:00:05 pm

Thanks for the quick answer.  Like I said I'm happy now, just as a tinkerer I was curious :)  Thanks!