Linksys Resurrects WRT54G In a New Router 310
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."
Cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, my jaw kind of dropped there at the price.
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
And it is almost to guaranteed to drop over time.
Don't forget you're getting: The A/C radio standard , a huge amount of space to store/program in, and support. Yes, support. So if you brick the thing with your endless tweaking of it, they'll try to get it back to working condition.
That stuff is going to cost early adopters. Like it always does. So chill out, have a cool beverage of your choice, and wait awhile. Let the other people absorb the early costs. Wait some for others to figure out the traps.
But for heaven's sake, shove the whining about the price right up your ass.
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Interesting)
Considering I built my current router is a low-power dual core 2.0GHz x64 CPU with 4GB DDR3 RAM, 16GB SATA-III SSD and 5 gigabit Ethernet ports for ~$200, it shouldn't be too hard to add a wireless card for around $100 and call it a day.
Re:Cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as you don't count labor.
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are buying a router to screw around with DD-WRT, you almost certainly aren't counting labor anyway.
Re:Cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm failing to see your point. SJHilman made a router for $200 that could easily be expanded with a wireless card for $300 total. The retort was that his setup does not include labor. I replied that labor is silly to include in a discussion where people are dicking around with the firmware anyway.
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I have no idea what such a beast would cost. It's entirely possible that SJHillman is way off.
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You do realize network engineers in real companies, multi-billion-dollar companies, make $50k-$80k, which is around $25-$30/hr, right? Or do you still live in the fantasy world of $200k programmer salaries?
Re:Cost? (Score:4, Interesting)
First, 80 grand is $40/hr.
Second, the fully burdened COST of employing someone at a salary of $40/hr is at least $80/hr. THAT is the COST of the labor.
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You have never heard of newegg or amazon? I just did a quick search on newegg and found 802.11ac cards as low as $40 Not MIMO, but I'm sure you can find something for a bit more.
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But I wouldn't do all that. I would either ask Hilman for a list of the parts he used, or go to a forum where they do this sort of thing.
Barring that, I would buy one of the many under-$100 routers which work well with open-source firmware.
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What people do (or don't do) with the firmware has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion.
It has a lot to do with this discussion, because this product is only interesting because it can be dicked around with. It is a product meant for people who intend to spend some time setting it up. Joe Average is going to drop $40-70 on a regular router, not $300 on this open source job. IMHO, snapping a few boards into a case absolutely pales in comparison to getting an OS loaded and configured. I totally get that people don't want to build a PC and are willing to pay for that privilege, but lets not prete
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Heh. Guessing you've never had employees at a small company?
Don't forget an allowance for sick time, holidays and vacation days (that adds at least 10% right there). Add conservatively another 10% for their portion of payroll taxes and unemployment taxes. Office space can add another 5-10K per employee per year all by itself. A few thousand for HR costs, share admin employees, et cetera and you can easily be looking at a 50% burden just as a starting point.
That's still a blended rate too, when it comes
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I agree that someone might not "want to", and that very well might be worth the extra cash for that person. But using the labor argument against a solution where you are going to spend a lot of time dicking around anyway is weak, IMHO.
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
I could sit on the sofa all evening watching telly or reading books, or I could assemble a computer. Does one have more worth? As long as I enjoy either, does it matter which I pick for my downtime?
And I definitely won't be working all evening. No one can (or should) work every waking hour of the day- if you do, I pity you. Everyone has downtime- you can pick which hobby you want to fill that time with to your heart's content.
Being a workaholoic is nothing to brag about.
Re:Cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering I built my current router is a low-power dual core 2.0GHz x64 CPU with 4GB DDR3 RAM, 16GB SATA-III SSD and 5 gigabit Ethernet ports for ~$200, it shouldn't be too hard to add a wireless card for around $100 and call it a day.
How much power does it use? Power consumption is an important factor in a device that's going to be running 24x7. 20 watts of difference in power consumption could be costing you $20/year or more depending on how much your power costs.
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Sure, that makes sense in theory, but.. Show of hands here: How many people have buried more than five "simple SoC" routers in the past five years? I’m counting parents & friends that I support in that number, admittedly, but there’s nothing the least bit difficult about making SoC simplicity with crap quality standards that lead to crazy-high failure rates.
OK. Hands down. Now how man
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Y'all can keep rationalizing, but the fact remains that the WRT54g was interesting at $120 ten years ago, and fun at $60. There is NO WAY that this is going to see similar market penetration at $300.
Besides, high profile item prices seldom go downward between the vaporware stage and release, but they've been known to go upwards: what if it gets released at $450?!
A decade later, under $200 is only slightly interesting, and $100 makes me smile. 300 just annoys the fuck out of me: I won't spend 300 when the
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802.11AC 4x4 MIMO card? Good luck finding that under a hundred mate.
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Interesting)
Power consumption would be an issue with desktop hardware. I bought a brand new Alix kit (board, case and power adapter) from Ebay for less than $200 and run m0n0wall on it. It might not scale well with higher speed connections on the order of 50+ mbits but for my 20mbit cable, its more than enough. The only drawback is you need a mini-pci WIFI adapter if you want built in wifi and support is somewhat limited. I simply use an external WAP which is connected to a separate LAN port. I can filter traffic between the LAN and wifi networks to give me a bit more security as the wireless network can't talk to the LAN save for a few ports (SSH and http). I also disabled the router management for the wifi network, you must be on the hard wired LAN to configure the router.
Up time can be measured in years if there is no power loss. And the power consumption is around 5 watts. That is around 50 cents a month in electric costs, less than LED or CFL bulbs. Its even a bit smaller than the WAP54g. You can't go wrong for the price.
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With... a netbook? Depending with the onboard chipset it's very possible. $300 is a lot of money for a computing device. What we're talking about here is a glorified Raspberry Pi or Beagle Bone Black with some extra RJ-45 ports and a quality radio in a themo-injected plastic casing.
Even if you bought the Beagle Bone Black ($50), SD card ($15) and 5 port netgear gig-e switch ($35) that's only $100 worth of hardware leaving you $200 (retail) to buy a special chip and antennas.
And that's the o
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Even if you bought the Beagle Bone Black ($50), SD card ($15) and 5 port netgear gig-e switch ($35) that's only $100 worth of hardware leaving you $200 (retail) to buy a special chip and antennas.
But then you'd be left with a single core 1 Ghz ARM CPU with 512MB of RAM rather than a dual-core 1.2GHz ARM with 256MB of RAM (plus USB3.0 and eSATA).
Whether it's better depends on which you need more - CPU or RAM.
They stopped making netbooks a year ago (Score:3)
With... a netbook?
If only manufacturers made those anymore [slashdot.org]...
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see my post, above.
install intel 802.11ac mini pci-e card into a board that takes pci-e (laptops, itx boxes) and you're there.
$30 for that intel card. linux 3.11 and forward supports it.
even a 3 yr old laptop will BLOW AWAY anything in a consumer plastic router.
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Yes if you find the right MiniITX board with a soldered on processor. but nothing that will have 4 or more ethernet ports. honestly you need 3 network interfaces just for a basic router.
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Yes if you find the right MiniITX board with a soldered on processor. but nothing that will have 4 or more ethernet ports. honestly you need 3 network interfaces just for a basic router.
You really only need 2 ports for a basic router. If you need more, you can use tagged VLAN's.
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In that case you could do with just one port on the router. Of course with only one port you only get half the bandwidth of two ports. But if you have 1Gbit/s between router and switch chip, I doubt that is going to be a bottleneck for many private usages. The port you saved on the router of course means you'll have to use one of the ports on the switch chip for WAN instead. So you gotta ask if the extra port on the
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In that case you could do with just one port on the router.
I don't trust tagged VLAN's enough to leave the tagged port open to the world, so I always keep the unsanitized public internet traffic on a separate port.
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Yes if you find the right MiniITX board with a soldered on processor. but nothing that will have 4 or more ethernet ports. honestly you need 3 network interfaces just for a basic router.
You can - the MiniITX/Atom-based routers that I build and sell to my clients have 5 gigabit NIC's on them. But MiniITX is niche, and the parts are not cheap. If you just need a cheap multi-port router, put in a Mikrotik, and then run your pfSense 'on a stick' with as many VLAN's as you need, unless you need wirespeed gigab
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You just add a switch for the extra ports.
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Not if it Just Fucking Works. JFW is a very valuable feature.
Additionally, it looks like performance will be a priority. With gigabit connections to the home finally becoming reality, the next generation of home routers needs to kick it up a notch. This one seems like it might have a shot at handling serious bandwidth. Gigabit wired ports, gigabit-capable wireless, dual-core processor, etc. I'm looking forward to seeing the benchmarks on this thing when it's ready.
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But you can buy better hardware that is more open right now for less money. There are lots of options for a DIY router, boards that even have card slots so you can put on your own wireless card, etc..
Alix boards, and lots of others out there both ARM and even X86 based. Plus those boards you can run a real router like pfSense or IPCop on them instead.
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But you can buy better hardware that is more open right now for less money. There are lots of options for a DIY router, boards that even have card slots so you can put on your own wireless card, etc..
Alix boards, and lots of others out there both ARM and even X86 based. Plus those boards you can run a real router like pfSense or IPCop on them instead.
I'm waiting for the new Alix APU [pcengines.ch] board to be available for my next firewall. I've been using an alix2d13 Alix board with pfSense and have been very happy for it. My current firewall has enough CPU power to route my full 50 mbit comcast connection, but I'd really like more RAM so I can load the pfBlocker list.
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Informative)
Shit. I could buy an Apple AirPort Time Capsule with 2TB storage for $299. It also comes with 802.11ac
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Re:Cost? (Score:5, Funny)
At first I was like "This could be my next router upgrade!"
Then I was like... [imgur.com]
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I concur, when a FLAGSHIP home router can be had for 199, I can't see spending 300. People could afford to have two of the old WRTs, one for experimenting, and one for "Production."
I get that more radios / Antennas, and a dual 1.2GHZ processor alone all add up. A dual 1.2 isn't going to be as cheap as a whatever was in that wrt... (IIRC it was like 400mhz?) It's just that you can get a router w/ up to 5 separate networks (Plus V-lans) for $200. Maybe that was a typo, and was supposed to be 199?
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$40 tablets at the dollar store often have a dual core processor these days and they have to include a battery and screen as well.
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What are you smoking?
Asus' proprietary hack is exactly the same one used here. It's a pseudo-standard addition to 802.11n by Broadcom in their second-gen ac radios. Netgear also does the same thing with their flagship.
The quoted 600Mb/s are for 2,4GHz only, and thus do not apply to ac. Channels are still 20/40 MHz.
ac is still nominally 1.300Mb/s. Channels are 20/40/80 MHz.
That said, it does have some unusual features:
eSATA (not typical for a router)
4 antennas (though it's still a three-stream solution - fou
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Netgear R6100, does 867Mbps on 5GHz for $99.
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Funny)
Find another router with 600Mbps AC for under $399.
How about this one for $199: http://store.apple.com/us/product/ME918LL/A/airport-extreme [apple.com]
I realize it's from a somewhat obscure company, so I'm not sure how easy it is to find one near you...
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Funny)
I am just dying to hook one of these up to my 1.5 mbs cable modem!
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Don't need a router for NAS or sharing and there are plenty of cheap GB switches out there. The router usually on the edge.
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Clearly you don't do a lot of networking between home computers like a NAS or something.
If your internal home network is so large that you need a router, and you're worried about speed, then you're not going to be buying a SOHO router to manage it. And since you probably don't need a router, you'll buy a full-duplex gigabit managed switch for $100 or so like the HP1810-8g. Then you'll buy a $50 or less wireless access point if you need wireless, and a $50 or less router to the outside, and still be $100 ahead.
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$300, YIKES!
Especially when other options exist at sharply reduced cost. I bought one like this Buffalo a few years back and use it as a NAS for my home network, and dd-wrt is natively supported by the company! [newegg.com]
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Informative)
+1 (Score:2)
I've bought over 40 of these and yet to see one die that wasn't from trying to skip steps flashing it. Even then they're recoverable.
By far the best consumer router out there IMHO.
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I use Tomato from Toastman on mine (RT-N66U) and it's been rock solid stable for over a year now. Note: Tomato doesn't currently work on all variants--specifically the AC66U and AC68U because it requires a MIPS processor.
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For not much more than three hundred bucks I can put together a MicroATX router with dual NICs and a WiFi card that will have a lot more RAM, a lot more CPU power and even a reasonable bit of storage.
I have three of them, sans the WiFi, that are fanless with 60gb SSDs, that are the gateway/VPN routers running full Debian installs for our three offices. Admittedly they are el-cheapo chipsets, all of them running VIA x86 CPUs and 512mb of RAM, but for the kind of load we have, they do just fine.
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Actually you can do it for less.
Yea you might want to better power supply and replace the spinning disk with an SSD but it can be done.
http://pcpartpicker.com/user/lwatcdr/saved/3mfV [pcpartpicker.com]
PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2wK3Y [pcpartpicker.com]
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2wK3Y/by_merchant/ [pcpartpicker.com]
Benchmarks: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2wK3Y/benchmarks/ [pcpartpicker.com]
CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 250u 1.6GHz Dual-Core Processor ($33.70 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ECS A960M-M3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($28.49 @ Newegg)
Memo
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Plus, you could mod it pretty well ... :
http://bjdouma.home.xs4all.nl/SD-mod/ [xs4all.nl]
$300?!? (Score:2)
That makes an AirPort Extreme seem like a bargain ... And it's no bargain.
(I do own one though!)
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For that price, you can probably add two-three decent separate access points for far better coverage to a budget router and still stay under the price.
That is awesome (Score:2)
Then the other part of me says "Shut up and take my money."
I think Cisco is going to win out even though I just retired my old WRT54G 6 months ago and have no need for a new router. The one I got is fine but I can't put DD-WRT or Open-WRT on it, and it's a pretty low-spec model.
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Great but... $299! (Score:2)
A lot of AC routers are half the price. $199 maybe but $299 is just too much. You can run OpenWRT on much less expensive hardware. Too bad because I really want one.
missing it (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they are missing the main reason that router sold so well..
At least the reason I bought them, and recommended them for others....
IT WAS CHEAP AND good.
It was a moderate priced option, that I KNEW would work for people. The fact that it had all the hackable benefits was gravy for me to have my own versions.
I didn't trust a lot of the other low end units to not constantly have problems. I could also talk someone into spending 50-75$ instead of 40$.
There is no way I could get someone to spend 300$ instead of 20-50$ now days..
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There is no way I could get someone to spend 300$ instead of 20-50$ now days..
$300 is crazy, but I remember spending ~ $115 for a 54GL. That's also about what I spent on my first few WNDR3700's. Actually if you price that 54GL in food or energy, it's pretty close to $300 now. Obviously, Moore's Law, so that's not reasonable now, but the value is relevant.
While I love the guts of the WNDR3700's, having to solder and dremel in an antenna lead sucks, so for antenna-sensitive placements, Belkin might actual
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I think they are missing the main reason that router sold so well..
No, they didnt. They are simply at the next stage. Taking old cult classic objects name, slapping it on modern hardware and selling to suckers for a premium.
Look at Ford Mustang. In 1964 it sold at 2/3 of Average car price. It got popular because it was CHEAP. Todays Mustang is a modern pimped piece of shit sold to hipsters at a premium.
$300? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yikes. Could build a really small fan-less PC and run pfsense on it AND have storage..
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YOU could, maybe. Most people can't.
I have my own VPS, and I'm not even sure I can.
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Not that I agree with the price but the unit has eSata and USB ports- I assume you could add storage.
Still running my WRT54GL with Tomato (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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I don't have any TiVos newer than S3s and S3 HDs, and they're on analog cable, but I'm successfully using a flashed 54G in wireless bridge mode to let the main room TiVos communicate with a stock 54G that's daisy-chanied to the cable modem by way of a BFSR41, both of which have all available ports used by other TiVos.
I give everything that doesn't leave the house a fixed IP address and use old CPU cooling fans installed internally in all that Linksys stuff and it works pretty well.
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There is that, but maybe he doesn't have any devices that will use 802.11n or ac.
I just recently retired my 54GL because I wanted 802.11n, gigabit Ethernet, and IPv6 support; the latter could be done in software but I didn't see any third-party firmwares that could do this with the 54GL's 4MB of flash while doing other things I wanted.
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My (and only available) internet speed is 3/384 no NAT speed doesn't matter. I don't transfer data over wireless enough to matter, so wireless speed isn't an issue. I have a Roku, laptop and phone, and none of those have any problems.
Belkin, eh? (Score:5, Informative)
Never trust a product made by this company. "Belkin Routers Route Users to Censorware Ad" [slashdot.org], reported by Slashdot:
This company has been on my shitlist for ten years and always will be.
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Maybe, but you couldn't with confidence buy a D-Link router and know that it would be relatively trouble-free.
Netgear for instance, might be a decent model or might be complete trash. I've had fairly good runs with a few different TP-Link models and Belkin - compared to all of the non-WR54G Linksys models and D-Links that ha
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My main point was "vote with your dollars" against sleazeball behavior from companies like this. Some of their products may work fine, without incident, but that doesn't mean I want them to have a single dollar from me.
Re:Belkin, eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
I always blast the software the router came with. Even router software from a company with an otherwise untarnished reputation I don't trust; if it's closed source, you may as well assume it has a backdoor in it.
But I will never give this company another dime for what they did back in 2003, and I will take every opportunity to inform people about that incident, so they may make the same decisions.
How is the IPv6 support now? (Score:5, Interesting)
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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...
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Recently brought an old out of retirment (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_WRT54G_series
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Main problem of old design is ~20Mbit max routing speed. This is not enough outside of US, we in civilized places routinely get 120Mbit home connections.
re wrt54g (Score:2)
trouble (Score:2)
Real Geeks... (Score:3)
How about a non-wireless version (Score:3)
I don't need a wireless radio that's going to crap out after a year to jack the cost up through the roof. I hate wireless, and I have access points already.
On the other hand, if they're going to offer a router-only version, then it might just be enough for me to overlook their past misdeeds [slashdot.org] long enough to give them another chance.
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I had a WRT54G for many years, but finally had to replace it after the last of the internal Ethernet ports died. A router with only one network interface is not particularly useful to me.
I replaced it with one of the nice Linksys/Cisco E4200 home routers (before they released their insanely stupid "management in the cloud" V2 firmware, which I refuse to install.) However, I've never completely trusted that it was backdoor free. Now, with the NSA revelations, as well as some recently discovered Cisco backd
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Only supported on WRT54Gv3/v4 or WRT54GL routers. May work on a v2 and will likely brick a v1. v5-8 not supported on any linux distro.
I've been running it on a number of locations without a single lockup for months now.
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Disposability is exactly what concerns me about Linksys being acquired by Belkin. Over the years, I've used two products by Belkin: a USB to serial adapter (1999), which apparently had a dead short and caused my whole computer to shut off instantly as soon as I plugged it in for the first time, and a Wi-Fi router (2007-ish), which crashed under any actual traffi
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...
BTW, just out of curiosity, as somebody who has never had the need to install OpenWRT, DD-WRT, or Tomato on a router, what features do folks use that necessitate doing so?
I don't know enough about networking and routers to take advantage of probably most of what the replacement firmwares offer, but I picked up an already flashed 54G and activated "wireless bridge mode" (which the stock Linksys firmware doesn't offer), and it sits in the main room near the TV and allows some of my TiVos and one of my "TiVo overflow" PCs to use the wired part to talk to each other and the wireless part to communicate back to the stock 54G which is connected to the not-wireless but in the same
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Ten years now. Slashdot [slashdot.org] covered that story, too. Belkin has been on my boycott list ever since.