distro and routing pages

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+
+Most likely rooter will run a variant/flavor of debian linux, with significant
+improvements and new software pushed upstream.
+
+### Linux Firmware Distributions
+
+These Linux-based distributions are all designed to run on very light-weight
+hardware. They use special filesystems optimized for mostly reads from a static
+archive with a few small writes to persist configuration information.
+
+* OpenWrt: Most popular and best maintained community project. Has an entire
+  packaging system for add-ons. Very wide hardware support.
+* DD-WRT (non-libre, not recommended)
+* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato_(firmware)](Tomato): elegant, well
+  selected feature set, pleasant UI. Vanilla version has had little recent
+  development or porting, many forked variants. 
+
+### BSD Firewall Distributions
+
+There are a series of "network appliance" firewall distributions oriented at
+business and enterprise networks. They usually run on dedicated hardware more
+powerful than commodity home routers, scaling up to multi-unit high performance
+rack mounted machines:
+
+* pfSense
+* m0n0wall
+* Smoothwall
+
+It's also worth noting that Juniper Network's junos router operating system is
+based on FreeBSD. Juniper equipment isn't as widespread as Cisco's iOS-based
+(not to be confused with the Apple operating system) routers, but is used for
+many of the most crucial 40Gbps+ routers at submarine fiber shore stations.
+
+### Debian/OpenWrt Hybrids
+
+A lot of people have thought about mixing the kernel, drivers, and
+configuration system from OpenWrt with the mainstream packages from Debian.
+
+Eg, [http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWRT](DebianWRT).
+
+### Genode
+
+Interesting nested resource-deterministic operating system "framework"; sort of
+like a generalization of a hypervisor. Strong ideas for minimizing the
+potential for security bugs and non-recoverable crashes. Might be appropriate
+for ensuring that "essential" network services keep running even if higher
+level apps crash or are compromised.
+
+[http://mailman.rooter.is/pipermail/talk/2012-June/000023.html](More thoughts
+here).
+
+### Other
+
+* http://librewrt.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
+* https://www.freewrt.org/trac/
+* http://wiki.debian.org/Embedded_Debian
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+
+Tunnels, VPNs, and meshes are treated as virtual network interfaces, so
+firewall rules and routing policies can can be applied on top of and between
+them.
+