Welcome to Of Modems and Men

 

The purpose of this site is to provide the files and information necessary to easily convert a cheap router into one that supports 3G and 4G modems plus provide access to the modem to display signal and cell tower information.

To accomplish this, we have created special firmware for the routers based on firmware from the OpenWRT project and its fork, the Lede project.

The Firmware

 

In keeping with the Australian roots of this project the versions of the firmware have been code named after spiders, with names like 'Redback', 'BlackWidow', 'Huntsman', 'FunnelWeb' , 'MultiWeb' and the latest, 'GoldenOrb'.

 

 

The 'GoldenOrb' release is the only version now provided as it is far superior to the older builds.

A router flashed with this firmware is known as a 'ROOter', again keeping with the project's Australian beginnings.

This site contains guides to installing the ROOter firmware on the router, guides to customizing the firmware and the software required to complete the package. Other guides and files related to this project are also available.

Use the links at the top of the page to browse our list of supported routers and modems and download the ROOter firmware for your router. Also available is a link to tutorials on installing and using the firmware.

ROOter has been available since April 2013 and has proved to be a popular download for improving routers. In 2016 there were 252,000 firmware downloads of ROOter images. Since its inception there have been over 500,000 firmware downloads of all the different ROOter versions. It has been used in nearly every country in the world as shown by the ClustrMaps link below.