Linksys WRT54G drops Linux

avorobiev writes "WiFi Planet is running a story on all the advantages of Linux-based firmware for the Linksys WRT54G router. Little do they know that as of v.5 of the router Linksys dropped Linux and switched to VxWorks. And yes, they crippled the hardware (halved the RAM) so that third-party firmware can not be installed anymore."

Comments

Re:Bad economics

[Kevin Burtch]

How do you know they are paying more for the firmware now?

Because you can't get cheaper than "free", and anything else costs more.

Maybe they license VxWorks for a flat fee that is less than what it costs to have a staff of engineers working on constantly porting the Linux kernel to different chips, and then doing QA on that firmware.

• No need to port, it's already been ported. The microcontrollers in these devices are MIPS based, which has been supported for many years. This is why there are so many firmwares available... it's relatively easy to build the entire system by cross-compiling.

• Modifications to a specific configuration (chips external to the microcontroller) are required even with VxWorks. If you make something custom, just because it's commercial doesn't mean it's automatically supported any more than if I were to solder together my own ADC board and expect ms-windows to support it.

• QA is required no matter what you use. VxWorks isn't an instant wireless router, it's only an OS... you have to add EVERYTHING else, just as you do with Linux. Actually, you might even have to add more to VxWorks... does it have an equivalent of iptables/netfilter?

That costs a lot of money, too. Not to mention, if a memory chip costs $5 and VxWorks costs $3 per unit, it makes sense to use VxWorks and eliminate one memory chip.

This is possibly a valid argument, although as I stated in another posting, the pre-v2 models had half of the RAM of the v2 and newer (so the same as the v5 model). From what I understand, they aren't using the RAM anyways.
Just look at all of the extras you can add in (on top of the existing software) in the various firmwares... even a full Asterisk voicemail system, and it all fits in the tiny memory available in the v1.x models. If they were starved for RAM, that would not be possible.

I've worked in Corporate America long enough to know that decisions like these are nearly always purely political, made by those with zero technical expertise. Likely someone with an anti-open-source bent got hired or promoted, and in standard Corporate America fashion, decided to make major changes for the sake of making changes - to make himself "a name". I've seen it too many times to count in many companies... happens every time a "new boss" is brought in. It must be written down in some "how to be a successful manager" book or something. ;-)
I'd bet that the argument was made in the manner indicated in the article summary "People are hacking our hardware! Look at how much money we could be making if we could force people who want more features to by something that costs 10x as much! We're losing money!". This, as I pointed out, completely ignores the fact that someone who can afford a $60 device won't necessarily be able to afford a $600 device (nor would they want to pay that much if they could).

As I stated before, they're just going to drive this very tiny portion of their customer base to the competition (others already posted a link to a hardware compatibility list for one of the firmwares, openwrt, I believe).