Linksys Resurrects WRT54G In a New Router

jones_supa writes "A year after purchasing the Linksys home networking division from Cisco, Belkin today brought back the design of what it called 'the best-selling router of all time' but with the latest wireless technology. We are talking about the classic WRT54G, the router in blue/black livery, first released in December 2002. Back in July 2003, a Slashdot post noted that Linksys had 'caved to community pressure' after speculation that it was violating the GPL free software license, and it released open source code for the WRT54G. The router received a cult following and today the model number of the refreshed model will be WRT1900AC. The radio is updated to support 802.11ac (with four antennas), the CPU is a more powerful 1.2GHz dual core, and there are ports for eSATA and USB mass storage devices. Linksys is also providing early hardware along with SDKs and APIs to the developers of OpenWRT, with plans to have support available when the router becomes commercially available. The WRT1900AC is also the first Linksys router to include a Network Map feature designed to provide a simpler way of managing settings of each device connected to the network. Announced at Consumer Electronics Show, the device is planned to be available this spring for an MSRP of $299.99."

Still running my WRT54GL with Tomato

[dugancent]

Bought it in 2004 or 2005 and am still using at my main, and only router. Thought about upgrading but I still haven't found a reason to.

Belkin, eh?

[J'raxis]

Never trust a product made by this company. "Belkin Routers Route Users to Censorware Ad" [slashdot.org], reported by Slashdot:

The Register has a story today about Belkin routers redirecting their users' network traffic. To me, this seems like the logical next step after top-level domain name servers piping ads to your browser. Now the routers themselves hijack the traffic they are supposed to, uh, route -- and you'll love where they send you instead. But it's OK because you can opt out. Incidentally, the Crystal Ball Award goes to Seth Finkelstein, who in 2001 quoted John Gilmore's famous aphorism about the internet, and asked "What if censorship is in the router?"

This company has been on my shitlist for ten years and always will be.

Re:Cost?

[Scragglykat]

Yeah, the ASUS Black Knight AC router is half this price and also able to run open source firmware. Sure the CPU and other specs seem very nice, but that's a lot of dough for a consumer router where one half as expensive will work basically just as well.

Re:Cost?

[SJHillman]

Normal use is around 35 watts (as measured by a Kill-A-Watt), although it will spike as high as 50 when powering up. It's not as competitive on that front, but it makes up for it in expandability. You can easily slap a couple of HDDs into it and have it fill NAS duties without the cost of a separate NAS. Full blown OSes usually give more options for power management as well, so I could set it up to go to sleep during the night or while I'm at work if I wanted to.

For me, the deficiencies in power are well worth what it makes up for in expansion/upgrading/ease of fixing if it breaks. I could have probably shaved off another 10 or 15 watts if I used something like an Atom without driving the price up too much. It's all a matter of what you want to do with your device; I have a full server rack in the basement and electricity is pretty cheap where I live, so it makes sense for me but I'll be the first to admit it's not for everybody.

For anyone interested, I originally had ClearOS on it and later switched to Sophos. Both are about as user-friendly as something like this gets for installation, maintenance and flexibility to easily add more roles to the device.

Re:How is the IPv6 support now?

[Anonymous Coward]

With OpenWRT or another Linux-based up-to-date router firmware (which you'll install on this specific device if you have anything worth mentioning between your ears), it has first-class IPv6 support, snmp included. Heck, OpenWRT can even do BGP and OSPFv3 if you add the appropriate packages...

Re:Cost?

[the_B0fh]

Shit. I could buy an Apple AirPort Time Capsule with 2TB storage for $299. It also comes with 802.11ac

Re:Cost?

[SJHillman]

To answer your questions:
- It runs at about 35W under normal load.
- The $200 included brand-new from NewEgg power supply, RAM, CPU and motherboard as well as a used 2U rackmount case w/ CD-ROM drive and fans. The SSD was new from a local PC shop.
- It's 1 port on the mobo and a 4-port PCIe NIC

Sure, there may be bottlenecks, but pretty much every home router has bottlenecks too. I can't tell you how many 802.11n routers I've seen with only 10/100 wired ports. If just comparing on price, a DIY jobbie will almost always beat a store-bought router. In the end, all you're truly paying for is convenience. It's worth it to some people, but not to others.