Access Points with intelligence!
I am very impressed with this project, and like to see technology like this hitting the commodity mainstream. Linksys has implemented an Access Point with a mini-Linux running inside. These guys have now started to create distributions of additional tools, etc. that can run inside the AP.

What I really like about this is the possiblity of putting additional authentication code inside of the AP for controlling access through it. I am currently involved in a project where we require a PC dedicated to provide this type of functionality. The PC siots between the Internet and the Access Point and provides the authentication and access control. If we could embed our code inside of this AP, we could eliminate the cost of the Access Point.

I might have to go buy one of these and take a look at what’s possible!

Linux on the Linksys wrt54g 0.2. A Linux distribution for the Linksys wrt54g wireless access point. [freshmeat.net]