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."

Comments

Cost?

[Anubis350]

Part of the appeal of the 54g was its relatively cheap cost for a nicely hackable router (I have serveral of the first gen ones lying around, the ones from before they got downgraded and the old version rebranded as the "gl" with a higher price tag), $300 kinda kills its usefulness

Re:Cost?

[MightyYar]

Yeah, my jaw kind of dropped there at the price.

Re:Cost?

[CastrTroy]

Yeah, keep your eyes open at the thrift store and you can get decent routers there for $10. Just remember to bring your internet enabled cell phone to check for model numbers so you know how to distinguish the ones with a 4 MB ROM from the ones with a 1 MB Rom. I've picked up a couple of routers this way. Amazing what these little boxes can do with some custom firmware.

Re:Cost?

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

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?

Re:Cost?

[avandesande]

I am just dying to hook one of these up to my 1.5 mbs cable modem!

Re:Cost?

[H3lldr0p]

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?

[spire3661]

I could build a x86 based router for less. $300 is absolutely ridiculous for this kind of hardware.

Re:Cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Prove it. You can't do it - not supporting the 802.1AC standard and actually routing at a decent speed.

Re:Cost?

[mcrbids]

$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!

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?

[FooAtWFU]

Clearly you don't do a lot of networking between home computers like a NAS or something.

Re:Cost?

[Lumpy]

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.

Re:Cost?

[SJHillman]

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?

[Lumpy]

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.

Re:Cost?

[GameboyRMH]

At first I was like "This could be my next router upgrade!"

Then I was like...

Re:Cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Find another router with 600Mbps AC for under $399.
And no, Asus' proprietary hack (3x3 MIMO with nonstandard channel width) doesn't count.

Re:Cost?

[NatasRevol]

As long as you don't count labor.

Re:Cost?

[hawguy]

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.

Re:Cost?

[bill_mcgonigle]

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 gigabit processing.

Re:Cost?

[hawguy]

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 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?

[MightyYar]

If you are buying a router to screw around with DD-WRT, you almost certainly aren't counting labor anyway.

Re:Cost?

[Hadlock]

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 one-off price. In bulk and after cost reduction you're probably looking at $150 in hardware, max, so yeah $300 is pretty high. I paid $35 for my last 802.11-n router with 4 gig-e ports and it also runs openwrt. This new router is almost ten times the price.

Re:Cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because someone wants to mess around with networking doesn't necessaryily mean they want to mess around with assembly and shopping for parts. I'm capable of designing and soldering together circuit boards, but these days when I want to mess around with a microcontroller or FPGA I buy an already made dev board.

Re:Cost?

[MightyMartian]

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.

Re:Cost?

[hawguy]

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?

[MightyYar]

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.

Re:Cost?

[Wookact]

Making a circuit board by hand is much harder then browsing Newegg/Amazon and installing a card in a desktop.

Re:Cost?

[hawguy]

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.

Re:Cost?

[MightyYar]

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

A 802.11AC 4x4 MIMO wireless card? For $100? Link?

Re:Cost?

[Seumas]

Yeah, that's a ridiculous price when you can still pick up a WRT54G for under $50.

It might not do N or AC, but so what.

Re:Cost?

[kasperd]

You really only need 2 ports for a basic router. If you need more, you can use tagged VLAN's.

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 router is worth the cost compared to an extra port on the switch chip. (I know switch ports don't come in increments of one, so really the question is, did you need that last port on the switch chip?)

If you happen to base your setup on a router with a SoC that has two 1Gbit/s interfaces from the start, then you may as well put both of them to good use. One possibility, that costs a little bit extra is to just connect both of them to the switch and choose a switch with 4 more ports, than you would otherwise have done. Then you get lots of flexibility. You can configure the two connections independently on different VLANs, or you can bundle them and use tagging to have perhaps three or even more VLANs where the 2Gbit/s of bandwidth can be used for whatever VLAN currently need that sort of throughput to the router.

But if you already have a managed switch with VLAN tagging support, it might not cost much extra for a switch with a chip that can also do routing. Routing is not much more complicated than switching. It is almost as simple as just matching the destination IP against a CAM instead of matching the destination MAC against a CAM. That is something which has been implemented in hardware before. I think you can buy a complete switch with that sort of support for under 200$. Whether you can get one, where you can tinker with it as well, I don't know.

That sort of routing hardware doesn't do NAT though. So it is plausible you might run into hardware where you can get 1Gbit/s as long as you don't do NAT, but as soon as you do NAT, throughput drops to half or less.

Re:Cost?

[MightyYar]

I have no idea what such a beast would cost. It's entirely possible that SJHillman is way off.

Re:Cost?

[Archangel Michael]

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.

Re:Cost?

[Mister Liberty]

Plus, you could mod it pretty well ... :
http://bjdouma.home.xs4all.nl/SD-mod/

Re:Cost?

[Kagato]

802.11AC 4x4 MIMO card? Good luck finding that under a hundred mate.

Re:Cost?

[Obfuscant]

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.

Re:Cost?

[hawguy]

You really only need 2 ports for a basic router. If you need more, you can use tagged VLAN's.

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.

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:Cost?

[ericloewe]

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 - four-stream access points are extremely rare and expensive, with no equivalent client devices available)
The CPU seems to be the fastest around (Netgear's is clocked at 1GHz and Asus' at 800MHz)

Re:Cost?

[LWATCDR]

You just add a switch for the extra ports.

Re:Cost?

[afidel]

$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.

Re:Cost?

[Lehk228]

smaller than a shoebox, silent, and runs on a few watts?

Re:Cost?

[afidel]

Netgear R6100, does 867Mbps on 5GHz for $99.

Re:Cost?

[ediron2]

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 special features it has beyond the 54g are diminished by most of USA's shitty residential broadband rate limitations.

Re:Cost?

[Seumas]

Nobody is "whining" about the price, so calm the fuck down.

Also, do you really expect the price to drop that much or do you expect them to milk the sales they can out of it and then roll out the next replacement for this, end this, and continue on with the next $300 device? That seems to be the way routers have gone the last few years.

Re:Cost?

[LWATCDR]

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 part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2wK3Y
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2wK3Y/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2wK3Y/benchmarks/

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)
Memory: Crucial 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR3-1066 Memory ($26.96 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 160GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($29.99 @ Microcenter)
Wired Network Adapter: TRENDnet TE100-PCIWN 10/100 Mbps PCI Network Adapter ($5.96 @ Mwave)
Wireless Network Adapter: Asus PCE-AC68 802.11a/b/g/n/ac PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Diablotek CPA-0170 ATX Mid Tower Case w/400W Power Supply ($29.99 @ Microcenter)
Total: $255.08
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-06 15:52 EST-0500)

Re:Cost?

[93 Escort Wagon]

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

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?

[hawguy]

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.

Who would want to use their border router as a NAS? In any case, the eSATA and USB 3.0 ports on the Linksys router mean you could do the same thing with it. Dual and quad USB3.0 enclosures are readily available.

Not everyone lives where power is so cheap that they don't need to look at power costs. My power costs around 15 cents/KWh and if I used more power and ended up in a higher rate tier, I could be paying over 30 cents/KWh for it (or $50/year for 20W), so the cost of power is no small consideration. (but even at my power cost, I wouldn't run an internal NAS on the same hardware as my firewall).

For me, the deficiencies in power are well worth what it makes up for in expansion/upgrading/ease of fixing if it breaks.

The advantage of a simple SoC system with soldered in components is that it's less likely to break.

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.

But your price is already at $200 not including the 802.11ac card and antennas, so if you drive it up any more, you'll be beyond the street price of this router.

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.

Yes, if you need a more power than this device offers, you're not going to find it useful. But if it costs you nearly as much to put together your own device (that uses more power and may cost more in the long run), then there's little advantage to build it yourself.

Re:Cost?

[anagama]

Why would you count the cost of labor? Most people don't work for an employer that will allow them to work unlimited hours -- most people hit 40 hrs and that's it. Some people get overtime, but more than about 20 hours of OT is pretty rare. Some people get paid salary so there's no way for them to get more for some of their time. Some people get second jobs, but for the most part, moonlighting jobs pay less than one's regular gig, and most moonlighting jobs are low skill low pay.

Yes -- somebody out there will be the __rare__ exception to all that. You are an outlier.

In other words, the time a person has after work is not worth what their employer pays them -- it may be worth more or less depending on whether one is severely under or over compensated but ultimately, your time is worth zero dollars if you can't work extra hours. Stated otherwise, your time is priceless, and what matters is the joy you derive from it. That joy might come from assembling legos, growing carrots, DIY routers (and hey, pfSense http://www.pfsense.org/ is a great option for that), or whatever, but because your free uncompensatable time isn't worth anything monetary, don't count that in the cost of a DIY system -- it is perfectly valid however to count the joy value and for you, that is apparently a negative number, and you should probably spend $300 on a router. For others, a DIY system could prove cheaper in a monetary sense, and provide substantial joy, which in essence lowers the cost further (because that person did not have to spend money on hookers or books or ski trips -- that's a monetary savings).

Re:Cost?

[hawguy]

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.

I think that's a given -- even if it were released at $100 it wouldn't see similar market penetration because the market is much more saturated now.

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?!

And what if it gets released at $10,000!?

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 special features it has beyond the 54g are diminished by most of USA's shitty residential broadband rate limitations.

Well yeah, if you don't need the power that this router offers, you're not going to buy it at any price, but I thought that went without saying.

Why would you spend even $100 for it if you're not going to take advantage of whatever special features it offers?

Re:Cost?

[NatasRevol]

Your time may be worthless.

Mine isn't.

Re:Cost?

[LoRdTAW]

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.

Re:Cost?

[AdamHaun]

Find another router with 600Mbps AC for under $399.

Netgear Nighthawk (R7000), $200, currently working great in my house.

Re:Cost?

[rsborg]

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.

Warning: Anecdote ahead: I have one of those, and it died on me after I tried to reset it back to factory specs. It simply would not wake or route after that reset. I haven't had time to call support, and in the interim am using my 5-year old Apple AEBS. I haven't noticed a major change in speeds or bandwidth, though I do admit I only have one AC capable client so far.

YMMV, but I'm pretty disappointed with the experience on my RT-AC66U.

Re:Cost?

[Patch86]

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?

[bluefoxlucid]

Done in one. "We're re-releasing a popular low-cost router, the immensely popular $50 FiftyBuxBox. The new FiftyBuxBoxDuo will cost $3000."

Re:Cost?

[bluefoxlucid]

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?

[Solandri]

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.

I actually built my own NAS/server using a quad core i5-2400. With 16 GB RAM, 3x2 TB green drives, and a 512 GB SSD, it draws about 35 Watts idle, 97 Watts at load (as measured by a Kill-A-Watt).

I found a lot of variance in power consumption depending on the OS. Windows was actually the best, coming in just above 30 Watts idle. Ubuntu was worst at 55 Watts. I eventually settled on ESXi running a bunch of virtual machines, which ran at 35 Watts idle. The idle power of modern CPUs is pretty amazing, if the OS takes advantage of it.

Re:Cost?

[Aaden42]

The advantage of a simple SoC system with soldered in components is that it’s less likely to break.

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 many have buried more than one “old PC” based router in the last five years?

Re:Cost?

[jtownatpunk.net]

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.

Re:Cost?

[Grench]

As a network engineer, I'd just like to say that I wish I got $100/hr :(

Re:Cost?

[phorm]

Seriously, low-power dual-core x64?
I use an "E" series quad-core for my home server, but even that's stretching the definition of "low-power", at least from a power-consumption standpoint. If you just want a router and NAS you'd probably be a lot better off with either a multi-core ARM (or possibly atom/VIA CPU if you want X86).

Power consumption of a multi-core x64 CPU is definitely going to be a fair bit higher.
That said, you could probably accomplish something similar with the aforementioned consumer hardware for a similar price or less.

Re:Cost?

[hawguy]

The advantage of a simple SoC system with soldered in components is that it’s less likely to break.

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 many have buried more than one “old PC” based router in the last five years?

It's been quite a while since I've used a PC based router, but I finally had to retire my last one because it kept locking up for no good reason. I was going to replace it with an old laptop that had been sitting unused in a desk drawer for 2 years, but then I found that every time I moved the laptop, it would reboot, if I lifted up the front and dropped it one inch, it would reboot every time. I tried reseating the RAM and/or CPU in both cases with no change.

Years ago, I gave my old WRT54G to my parents and they are still using it, it's about 8 years old now.

Re:Cost?

[fnj]

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.

Re:Cost?

[MightyYar]

The point is that not all screwing around is equal, especially to different people.

I think your point is that some people are willing to pay for a pre-assembled kit because they don't want to screw around with hardware. I agree with that.

But we weren't discussing whether it would be fun to build your own or not, we were discussing whether or not you should include labor costs when comparing the home built vs the packaged unit. My opinion is that no, time is not an issue here since the thing is meant to be screwed around with. If your time is so valuable that it needs to be considered, you probably aren't in this market at all.

Re:Cost?

[Guspaz]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320173

$100, same 1.3 Gbps AC speed as the WRT. But then, there's a value in having an ultra-low power and ultra-compact router, which takes up way less space than a desktop PC...

Re:Cost?

[PopeRatzo]

$300 kinda kills its usefulness

That's the whole point.

Belkin didn't spend all that money buying Linksys just so people could run open source router software.

But to be fair, it's only five or six times more expensive than it should be.

There are much cheaper ways to get good routers that will run OpenWRT.

Re:Cost?

[Trentula]

How big is it? How much power does it draw?

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?

[the_B0fh]

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.

Re:Cost?

[MightyYar]

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.

Re:Cost?

[Guspaz]

Since it's still a 3 stream device, it's not clear if a 4x4 setup offers much improvement.

Re:Cost?

[MightyYar]

Aren't you angry? Yes, I meant OpenWRT.

Re:Cost?

[kasperd]

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.

It really comes down to whether you can trust your switch. Configure the switch such that the port you connect to the outside world only has access to the one VLAN, it is supposed to have access to. The job you are trusting the switch to do is a lot simpler than what you are trusting your router to do, so there isn't much of an attack surface.

If the switch does not have the necessary configuration options to do what I described, then it is obviously not suitable for a setup as the one I described. It may still be a great switch, which could serve the inside or the outside of your router, just not both at the same time. At that point it comes down to cost, the cost of an extra port on the router may cost less than the additional cost needed to get a switch with sufficient VLAN capabilities.

If your switch does have a VLAN configuration, but you still don't trust it, that can only mean you think the switch vendor has given security so little thought, that they managed to introduce worse security holes than in the router, in spite of the switch needing to do a simpler job than the router. It is of course possible, that the switch vendor did a poor job at security. For example if the configuration interface on the switch is accessible through any port, even if that port is restricted to your external VLAN, then it shouldn't be trusted security wise. However I wouldn't expect switch vendors to do such a bad job at security.

Re:Cost?

[NormalVisual]

Attic is usually a better place for electronic equipment...

Not where I live. You'd be looking at $300 or so each month just trying to keep the equipment from frying in the 100+ degree heat up there during the summer unless you spent a ton of money putting walls and insulation in. Of course flooding is a concern with a basement installation, but there are ways to mitigate that risk.

Re:Cost?

[demonlapin]

Not to disagree with your broader point, but for those who are still young enough to be deciding on careers, it is worth noting that health care is a notable exception to the rule that moonlighting jobs pay less and are rare. A substantial number of people work multiple jobs.

Re:Cost?

[MightyMartian]

I have a hard time believing anybody who needs high end networking gear is going to be buying a WRT54G, new version or older ones, anyways. If you're looking for high end performance, you're going up the price ladder a helluva lot more than $300. For me, building my own routers based on Mini or Micro-ITX hardware delivers a pretty damned powerful router that can, if I want it, become a web server or mail server if I want it to.

Re:Cost?

[SJHillman]

" then I found that every time I moved the laptop, it would reboot, if I lifted up the front and dropped it one inch, it would reboot every time"

If you find yourself picking up and dropping a router (which it would be used for) on a regular basis, then I think you're doing something very wrong.

Re:Cost?

[LWATCDR]

Compared to a WRT54G? Maybe wireless but wired I really doubt. It is an ARM and it is not like they have a ton of PCIe lanes for network interfaces.

Re:Cost?

[SJHillman]

Basement is a constant temperature and humidity, year-round. Attic swings from below freezing in the winter to three quarters of boiling in the summer. And the attic is three feet high at the tallest, with the only access through a hole I can barely fit through, nevermind a rack. Every house and apartment I've lived in has been much the same way.

Re:Cost?

[steak]

You forgot to include all the labor costs. I'm sure linus torvalds, bob metcalfe, bill yeager, and samuel morse want their cut.

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.

Re:Cost?

[SJHillman]

So you're saying you're paid for every hour of every day? 100% of research and build time came out of my leisure time, and I damn well enjoyed it. So you might say it's worthless, but as a leisure time activity it came out significantly cheaper than going to the movies and I got something to show for it - and that's before deducting the cost of a router that I would have had to buy anyway.

Re:Cost?

[SJHillman]

I consider a 25W TDP to be "low power" when talking dual core x64 processors (the entire box draws 35W under normal load). Sure, it might not compete with some of the more specialized processors out there, but against other dual-core 64 bit processors, I think that counts as "low power". I did consider Atom processors and similar, but settled on an Athlon X2 as the best combination of performance, price, upgradeability and power consumption.

Re:Cost?

[bluefoxlucid]

The fully burdened cost of employing me is not $85k/year above what I make in salary. I mean seriously, I pay like $80/mo for health insurance that the company picks up a $350/mo tab on... that's like $4000. The cost of HR and payroll scales very well per-employee. My total compensation and amortized maintenance (cost of all the legal/payroll/HR stuff divided by employee base) is less than $10,000 above my salary.

Re:Cost?

[hairyfeet]

Except what we've seen lately is companies simply quit making the device when they can no longer command premium prices, thus making sure the only way you can get one is to take your chances on the used market. Just look at how many of the first gen dual core tablets are still being sold, you'll find companies like Asus simply quit selling the unit when it can no longer get $300+ per unit.

Personally I hope I'm wrong but sitting here at the shop it looks like the market is gonna end up split in 2, with one half getting premium gear at premium prices and the other getting Cheapo Chinese Crap at affordable prices but shitty support and high failure rates. For those of us that got to enjoy cheap PCs and routers that you could really tweak? Kinda depressing.

Re:Cost?

[Wing_Zero]

what the contractor charges you doesn't equal what the guy actually doing the work gets (management costs, you understand)

Re:Cost?

[hairyfeet]

Well if you use something like this AMD Bobcat you are looking at 18w under full load and average 6w-8w day to day. You can buy something low powered and cheap like this or one of the Atom or Celeron boards and build a pretty damned cheap and low power router/server/media tank that will last you for quite awhile, is easy to upgrade, and is whisper quiet.

Re:Cost?

[MightyYar]

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 pretend that we are considering our time as particularly valuable when selecting this particular product.

Re:Cost?

[TheGratefulNet]

even the asus .11ac router (their best) is below $200.

'linksys' is in a dream world if they think they can get more than that for their router.

btw, the 802.11ac intel pci-e card is $30 or less. you can install it in a mini-itx board (or laptop, as long as its not a locked laptop like lenovo or hp, sigh) and you can run your own ac-based wifi router for next to nothing.

(I have some ac grade cards and they fail to deliver anything close to their promised thruput, even a foot away from each other. oh well. maybe the gen+1 will work better).

Re:Cost?

[TheGratefulNet]

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.

Re:Cost?

[AmiMoJo]

It depends if you are happy to have a desktop PC as your router or if you want something small and low power. I use a Buffalo router with DDWRT. 802.1ac, low power, silent, small, cheap. Set up was easy too, so low labour.

Re:Cost?

[Lothsahn]

Install asusWRT or Tomato...

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.

Re:Cost?

[UnknownSoldier]

Agreed! Price is exactly one of the issues. You can *still* buy the WRT54GL for $50 from NewEgg.

Flash Tomato by Shibby (http://tomato.groov.pl/) or DD-WRT and you got a very nice router that just works.

I paid $200 each to "upgrade" to 2x Asus RT-N66U and its Wifi abilities are crap. The default firmware doesn't let you Port Trigger a port range, only a single port. The range is garbage too. At least with Tomato you have control over the antenna strength, lots of options for tweaking, etc.

Paying $300 is nonsense when there are cheaper routers out there that allow you to run custom firmware.

Re:Cost?

[AmiMoJo]

Linksys, Netgear, D Link, Sweex and all the rest ate junk. Of those Belkin is the absolute worst. If you look at the download page on their website you will see that many simple devices like WiFi adapters have several versions with the same product number followed by v1, v2 etc. They basically buy whatever shitty chipset is cheap that week and crap out a few million. Put them in expensive looking premium packaging with a suitably high price tag and get them on the shelves of PC World.

I have been buying Buffalo hardware for years. It's ultra reliable and not particularly expensive. Some of it ships with DDWRT too. It's designed for the Japanese market where gigabit internet is common, so I'm hardly stressing it.

Re:Cost?

[RVT]

Challenge Accepted!

Solution: Find Fry's add. Find special for dual band router for less than $100.- !!!

I got mine for $49.99 on sale. It has four gigabit wired ports as well.

Yes, dual band 300/300.

Re:Cost?

[ruir]

For that kind of money, I prefer to buy an Apple Time Capsule, and get a 3T hard disk also. And I find it not good commercial strategy to price things on par to Apple prices exactly because of that.

Re:Cost?

[isorox]

Try getting a network engineer for a 5 hour project. See if they bill at $50-80k annually.

Sure, contractors earn far more per hour. However when you tie in the costs of contracting (overheads, taxes, uncertainty, benefits) effective annual income drops.

Re:Cost?

[smash]

He claims he did (I have my doubts) - and the end device comes with no BOM, no warranty, no support, etc. And adding a wireless card brings him up to $~300 so he's line-ball with the fully supported device from Linksys anyway. Assuming his time to source and build the thing is worth $0.

Re:Cost?

[smash]

Heh. I"m on about $50/hr Australian.

Re:Cost?

[smash]

Exactly. My time is paid at $50/hr when i'm on the clock at work. If it is my own free time, and its something I don't want to / don't need to be doing (i.e., it is a sideshow compared to the actual thing I'm wanting to get working) then I value my free time at 2-3x that as it is so much more scarce.

Re:Cost?

[opus_magnum]

An embedded device is probably more reliable. Still, the price is unreasonably high.

Re:Cost?

[ZenMatrix]

The problem with this is to find a card that works well with linux and supports using it as a access point not all do. Also I've built a router as well and the amount of space even a mini itx may be too much for your needs. I ended up just getting a regular router in the end

Re:Cost?

[rjstanford]

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 to converting it to hourly that's assuming that you're not spending any time during the year training, goofing off, etc.

Re:Cost?

[itsthebin]

http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/tomato-builds-for-asus-rt-ac66u.68055/

it has been out for a couple of months now

Re:Cost?

[CronoCloud]

are people really flinging files around their home networks that much? No, the router is there to act as a gateway for all the tablets, phones, game consoles, Blu-Ray players, notebooks, that are probably all connecting wirelessly

Re:Cost?

[Mdk754]

Does that account for time spent removing the stock firmware and switching to openwrt, or the time unbricking the device if anything goes wrong? Just saying, I think it's best to leave software out of a hardware price comparison.

Re:Cost?

[FictionPimp]

We don't get $100 an hour, our companies bill us at $100-200 an hour.

Re:Cost?

[isorox]

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.

My internal network isn't that large, but I do like to segment it, wifi backbone @5G, dropping into 4 wired networks arround the place, and a single AP at 2.4G. As is quite typical I share it out via a VPN so I can connect home, and a bit of OSPF to handle the routing as I'm far too lazy to set up manual routes. Multicast/broadcast when you have wireless on the same network causes major problems.

However given my network interconnects are only wireless, I don't need to be routing at gigabit speeds, the local switch in each area does that fine.

Re:Cost?

[MightyYar]

It comes with a warranty for sure, unless he's using gray market or used parts. His time to source and build the thing is worth approximately zero, or he wouldn't be messing around with a DIY device. If he's a professional who puts together a standard set of firmware for these things and uses them at all of his clients, that's another thing. But I think most of us are discussing the home use of this beast. Perhaps my assumption is faulty.

Re:Cost?

[MightyYar]

That's true, but he claims it draws 35 watts. I imagine he didn't use a full sized desktop box for his router :)

The Buffalo routers are great, but they don't try to sell them for $300! If I wanted an OpenWRT device I would do something very similar to what you have done. If you dropped $300 on my lap, I might be tempted to build something more capable.

Re:Cost?

[Patch86]

If I assemble a computer for my own use, it is not for sale and is therefore worth nothing. Things are only worth what people are willing (and able) to pay for them, so something that is not for sale has no inherent value.

I can sit on my ass and read and no-one will pay me anything, or I can assemble a computer for my own use and no-one will pay me anything. I could probably find some activities that would pay me in the evening (get a second job, become a telemarketer, whatever), but I can more or less guarantee that I wouldn't enjoy any of them enough for me to consider it downtime. And I need downtime- I have a well (enough) paid and (moderately) important job that I do all day for a salary, and I definitely need a break from work when I get home.

Following my logic, by the way, only works if you actually enjoy assembling computers. If you think that sounds like hell, you should put that in the "work" category instead, and should definitely not allow it to eat up your downtime. Each to their own, of course.

Re:Cost?

[LWATCDR]

Sorry but I didn't notice that the network card was not 1 Gbps. Here is the corrected build with new network card. It is only a few dollars more expensive and the AC adaptor is a 3 antenna model. You also have USB and sata ports to add Storage if you want to use it as a NAS as well.
PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2xdU3
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2xdU3/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2xdU3/benchmarks/

CPU: AMD A4-4000 3.0GHz Dual-Core Processor ($43.68 @ Mwave)
Motherboard: MSI FM2-A75MA-P33 Micro ATX FM2 Motherboard ($29.99 @ Microcenter)
Memory: Crucial 2GB (1 x 2GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($22.95 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 160GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($30.94 @ Amazon)
Wired Network Adapter: Rosewill RC-404 10/100/1000 Mbps PCI Network Adapter ($8.99 @ Amazon)
Wireless Network Adapter: Asus PCE-AC68 802.11a/b/g/n/ac PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Diablotek CPA-0170 ATX Mid Tower Case w/400W Power Supply ($29.99 @ Microcenter)
Total: $266.53
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-07 12:22 EST-0500)

Re:Cost?

[vac65]

Can i push too?

Re:Cost?

[spire3661]

Netgear has that too. I have a 801.11b network card from them that has various drivers for different versions. I'll agree on the Buffalo gear. I bought a 'Buffalo' Kuro box years before consumer NAS took off.

Re:Cost?

[spire3661]

Just to update your knowledge, the new Atoms (22nm or better) absolutely destroy anything AMD is putting out in the low power space. My wife's Bay Trial (Atom) based Asus T-100 is astonishingly powerful for what it is.

Re:Cost?

[Ol Olsoc]

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?

You don't think those mechanics at the garage that fix your auto are getting all of that 50 -100 dollars per hour? The Boss. CEO, and maybe stockhoders get the majority of money

I was shocked to see what my time was billed out at. The 80 K engineer is probably billing out at 300 dollars per hour.

Re:Cost?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

So you rather pay $300 for a traditional PC with a wireless card than a small form factor and quiet $300 device?

The $299 is MSRP and will most definitely be discounted once it hit retailers. The market is too crowded for them to price it higher than a comparably featured device.

Re:Cost?

[smash]

Has warranty on individual components, but no guarantee that the end result is fit for purpose... Also, as it is built from discrete components, a hardware bug/compatibility issue = you're on your own.

Re:Cost?

[JabberWokky]

How much do they pay per square foot for your office? For your furniture? For your break room? Do you have any equipment? A computer? A laptop and/or tablet? A phone? Business bandwidth and phone lines/accounts for them? As a business owner, I can tell you that full time employees in an office are danged expensive.

Even still, it seems like the OP was being a bit over zealous. While I do think you're low-balling the overhead of your employment, their figure seems like they were likely exaggerating (unless they are in an exceptionally expensive city, which I wouldn't have experience with).

Re:Cost?

[bluefoxlucid]

Office space is flexible, but the expense is inflexible: it comes in blocks. The more employees you hire in the office, the less expensive they are per capita in office space. In tight offices, two-per-cubicle with 30% larger cubicles is more space-efficient than open plan and has about 1/10 of the drawbacks (look, we all want private offices, but we'll settle for private cubes; open-plan is just stupid, but double cubes are a legitimate trade-off). So it's better to take office space as a separate expense. Same with business bandwidth: you're doing business on your bandwidth, and often your employees are going to be using the extra padding that saves you in peak times.

The same can be said of furniture: if it lasts relatively long, it's a minimal expense. Someone should buy us all $2000 standing desks, because the $100 motor is replaceable when it burns out 15-20 years down the line (the SSA uses these and has about 200,000 of them--they last forever). Phone services for each employee (mobile) are a legitimate per-annum per-capita expense; PBX lines are not, since you buy one bloc outgoing (maybe 20 lines for 6000 people; many more if your business operations are largely handled by phone conversations, in which case it's a business expense and not a human expense) and a PBX internal that doesn't have a subscription cost.

The overhead of business is large. The overhead of employment doesn't equate to one unit slice of business per employee.

Re:Cost?

[lsatenstein]

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.

Can you start with a Raseberry, and build up to a 8 port DD-WRT router running 1AC? Not all ports would be at the speed capability of a 1AC, but at least one to be reserved for it

Re:Cost?

[JabberWokky]

Yes. I agree.

But I suspect you've moved beyond anything related to the cost of personal time invested in building your own router versus the cost of a prebuilt router.

$300?!?

[nbvb]

That makes an AirPort Extreme seem like a bargain ... And it's no bargain.

(I do own one though!)

Re:$300?!?

[hondo77]

For $300 I can get a 2TB AirPort Time Capsule. I owned one of these blue routers way back when. Why would I want to shell out that much for one now?

Re:$300?!?

[DigiShaman]

In this case, you're paying for the radio transceiver technology along with an embedded computer. And if anything home-brew router related holds true, it's a quality transceiver that's the most important aspect when ensuring good WiFi coverage and stability.

Re:$300?!?

[Luckyo]

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.

Re: $300?!?

[DigiShaman]

Depends on the client: but more often than not, clients rarely reconnect to an AP with stronger signal. Not unless they get dropped first. It makes "roaming" a miserable experience, packet loss and all.

There are managed AP solutions that employ nothing short of voodoo to make WiFi clients roam properly, but such solutions are EXPENSIVE!

Re: $300?!?

[Luckyo]

Incidentally, I think employing a voodoo priest would probably be cheaper also =D

Stuffed to the gills

[Anonymous Coward]

with spyware, ain't that the truth!

That is awesome

[redmid17]

Part of me really wants it. Then part of me questions why I would need a $300 router for a 1 BR apartment.

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.

Re:That is awesome

[redmid17]

The money isn't an issue. It's a question of whether or not I should even bother. The old laptop isn't going to exceed the capacities of my newish router and it's going to suck up power like it's going out of style because it's an old laptop. I'd be better off refurbishing a net top to do what you're thinking, and even then the money would be enough that I'd just buy the dedicated router like I was thinking about in the first place.

Re:That is awesome

[SeanBlader]

Except you'd need to get an AC radio for it, and stock Android won't connect to ad-hoc routers, so you'll need to root all your devices, and any friends that come over and want to share in your wi-fi. At that level you'd be better off getting some cheap AC router and not bother with the firmware.

Re:That is awesome

[bigfinger76]

Why do you think Cisco will win out here? The first sentence of TFA clearly states that Belkin bought Linksys from Cisco a year ago.

Re:That is awesome

[redmid17]

Cisco got paid a bunch of money for something that may or may not sell well and basically gave up on developing. Solid win for them. Caveat: I meant to type Belkin. I was just inadvertently correct

Re:That is awesome

[bigfinger76]

Linksys routers still sell well. Cisco sold the whole bag, not just the WRT54G. Cisco has nothing to do with this.

Great but... $299!

[LWATCDR]

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.

Re:Great but... $299!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you comparing MSRPs to MSRPs, or thinking of what you actually pay?

Cult following

[Anonymous Coward]

The WRT54GS is one of the best pieces of networking equipment I've ever purchased. The thing is a tank. I've never had to reboot the damn thing, never had connection drops, it just chugged along like a trooper. I've never even bothered with Tomato or DD-WRT. I'm glad to see it making SOME sort of comeback, but until it's proven its stability first and foremost, I'll stick to my trusty old beast here.

Re:Cult following

[CronoCloud]

I have two WRT54G's, one runs the default firmware and is serving as the router which it has done for years, the other was DD-WRT'd to serve as a bridge. (Linksys's old G bridge, the WET54 was overpriced!)

And I will keep running the things until they fail.

Yeah, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

...part of what made the WRT54GL great was that it was possible to install custom firmware (DD-WRT, OpenWRT, Tomato...) AND that it had a low price tag (~$50 US).

This is still a step in the right direction, though!

Re:Yeah, but...

[dgatwood]

yup.. affordability and openness were what made wrt54gl so popular and gave it unsurpassed longevity in a market filled with 'disposable' products.

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 traffic load.

Maybe they've improved their product quality since then—I have no idea, as I won't touch anything with the Belkin name on it at this point. Either way, only time will tell whether this is built with the same quality control and high quality component selection that went into the previous models, or whether it got Belkin'ed....

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?

Re:Yeah, but...

[unitron]

...

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 stackable case BFSR41 router that connects to my cable modem.

And I discovered that adding a small fan internally, like a 486 or Pentium 100 heat sink fan, helps the reliability of Linksys routers quite a great deal.

Re:Yeah, but...

[dgatwood]

Wow. Having only used Apple and D-Link Wi-Fi hardware (both of which support Wi-Fi to Ethernet bridging out of the box), I would have assumed that bridging was considered basic functionality. I'm kind of surprised any hardware can't do that out of the box....

Re:Yeah, but...

[heypete]

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?

1. Tomato doesn't support WPS, which is useful for security purposes (WPS is broken.). Several major router vendors don't enable you to turn off WPS, or have the GUI "off" switch not fully turn it off. I'd like to have push-button WPS support but do away with the WPS PIN code (the part that's broken) but alas, nobody's made such a setup.

2. Running an OpenVPN server on the router is useful, as it allows me to securely connect to my home network from anywhere.

3. Good IPv6 support.

4. dnsmasq. I have a custom config at home that has certain domains (e.g. netflix.com) get routed to specific DNS servers (https://unlocator.com/ -- useful for accessing Netflix, Pandora, etc. from outside the US) while all other DNS traffic goes to the default servers.

5. While no software is perfect, I'm more confident in the security of open-source firmware than I am in the closed-source stuff from the vendor.

6. A non-crappy interface. Many vendors (e.g. ASUS) make good hardware but have atrocious web interfaces. Tomato is quite nice.

Basically, the open-source firmwares open up a lot of useful options that the factory-supplied firmware doesn't include. Now, if only they'd update to newer kernels -- AFAIK all of the Tomato forks like shibby's use the same 2.6.22 kernel. It'd be nice to have something newer, at least in regards to bugfixes.

Re:Yeah, but...

[CronoCloud]

Why haven't you got rid of that BEFSR41, it's basically a BEFW11S4 without the wireless. the WRT54 can take it's place!

I've got second WRT54 in bridge mode myself, via DD-WRT.

Re:Yeah, but...

[unitron]

Why haven't you got rid of that BEFSR41, it's basically a BEFW11S4 without the wireless. the WRT54 can take it's place!

I've got second WRT54 in bridge mode myself, via DD-WRT.

As far as I know, the wired connections on the 41 and the 54 are the same speed, by which I mean actual speed, not just the 10/100 thing.

In the same room as the cable modem I have 2 to 4 PCs, depending, and at least 4 TiVos, as well as a couple of Buffalo Link Stations, which means I need lots of RJ-45 jacks tied together and connected to the cable modem, so I've got 2 BEFSR41s and 2 WRT54Gs (one with wireless turned off) daisy-chained, and when I get around to replacing the Linksys firmware on a 54g2, I'll set it for wireless bridge and put it in the main room with another PC and the rest of the TiVos, and take the 54g that's in there now and add it to the modem room stack.

Got all of them cheap off of Craigslist.

missing it

[Mr Krinkle]

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..

Re:missing it

[Skater]

Yeah, it was what I recommended as well. I have a version 1.1 floating around; I stopped using it just last year, after buying an n-capable router with gigabit ethernet (I often move large files around my network, so the n network speeds were a useful upgrade). Unfortunately, that router sometimes won't let devices connect and has to be rebooted, a problem I never had with my WRT54G... sigh.

Re:missing it

[bill_mcgonigle]

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 actually sell a few of these.

Re:missing it

[citizenr]

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?

[nurb432]

Yikes. Could build a really small fan-less PC and run pfsense on it AND have storage..

Re:$300?

[snarfies]

YOU could, maybe. Most people can't.

I have my own VPS, and I'm not even sure I can.

Re:$300?

[avandesande]

Not that I agree with the price but the unit has eSata and USB ports- I assume you could add storage.

Re:$300?

[bussdriver]

Using old parts I've been running such a setup since 2006. VIA EPIA at 1+ Ghz set with powerd to run half that speed most the time. Plus since it runs at 12V I have two power bricks on it for redundant power supplies. The WRT54G would eventually lock up with heavy P2P traffic or something; which is why I went to pfsense which was infinitely superior. Probably still is.

It's being replaced as soon as I can get that new low power AMD server chip that gets down to the VIA chip's power level (of 7 years ago...) not having SATA and ECC (I want to do ZFS) is now a problem and freeNAS is better suited. pfSense really shouldn't be used for a fileserver (but it does now have ZFS too.) I figure the pfsense box will run under 20W without the HDs and fan; it's pulling 40-80W now.

Re:$300?

[Kremmy]

I'm thinking they need to get the pfSense guys some dev units. As a wireless router, way too expensive. As a pfSense box, I'd consider it as a go-to prebuild.

Re:$300?

[nurb432]

Yes you can, but at the $300, my own box would already have storage included.

Re:$300?

[nurb432]

I agree that not *everyone* can, but clearly the people that are spending $300 to buy THIS box are the same group that could.

However, i disagree that *most* cant. if you can figure out how to write an image to a USB flash or CD, and follow a few really simple steps, you could to create your own functional pfsense box. If you cant later do the advanced stuff, you wont be doing it with $300 dollar dedicated consumer network hardware either, so both routes are really pointless for you.

Re:$300?

[avandesande]

Unless you are capable of rolling your own small fanless pcs are also ridiculously overpriced. Again not defending the WRT45G pricing :-)

Re:$300?

[nurb432]

Those spending that much on the WRT should be able to roll their own..

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.

Re:Still running my WRT54GL with Tomato

[redmid17]

Only reason I retired mine a few months ago is because it was intermittently interfering with my Tivo and broadband connectivity. It didn't seem to play too well with the MoCA adapter needed to get the secondary TIVO box connectivity. Tried swapping out multiple cable modems, tivo units, and cycled through the three DD-WRT routers I had. Only constant was the WRT54G. Switched over to a crappy netgear I bought for cheap and everything started working with no hiccups. At some point you'll really want the upgraded speed. If I hadn't gotten and loved Tivo, I doubt I would have switched over either. I think the uptime on the old router was, excluding being powered off for an apartment move, around 20 months or so.

Re:Still running my WRT54GL with Tomato

[invisibletank]

Mine melted in the backseat of the car in the sun on a hot Las Vegas day almost 10 years ago. Taped the melted case back together, still works like a champ as my only router. Now that's quality.

Re:Still running my WRT54GL with Tomato

[Nimey]

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.

Re:Still running my WRT54GL with Tomato

[unitron]

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.

Re:Still running my WRT54GL with Tomato

[dugancent]

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.

Re:Still running my WRT54GL with Tomato

[danomac]

When I upgraded to a 25mbit connection, my WRT54GL just couldn't handle the traffic anymore. Even under moderate use - one computer downloading something would cause the internet on all other devices to "disappear".

I'd probably still be using it today if I still had my old 6mbit connection.

Re:Still running my WRT54GL with Tomato

[universalconstant]

I just retired my old WRT54GL at the weekend with a nice cheap Asus RT-N16, running TomatoUSB. It doesn't have 5GHz support, but then I don't have anything that uses it yet. So far it's been a really good replacement.

Re:Still running my WRT54GL with Tomato

[dugancent]

I've been looking at that router, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. I don't have any wireless APs near me (I can only detect my own) so 2.4ghz is fine.

Belkin, eh?

[J'raxis]

Never trust a product made by this company. "Belkin Routers Route Users to Censorware Ad", 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:Belkin, eh?

[outlaw]

This is just one amongst the plethora of reasons I install openWRT on linksys and (some) belkin devices.

Re:Belkin, eh?

[CrashNBrn]

Then there's those of us that have had a Belkin router for years with no issue. After Cisco acquired Linksys what was there available for the home market - that didn't suck... D-Link?
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 have just crapped out entirely shortly after the warranty expired. Or when we had 2 routers D-link/Linksys that had to alternately be used as they would both overheat and stop routing.

Re:Belkin, eh?

[J'raxis]

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.

Re:Belkin, eh?

[J'raxis]

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?

[Voyager529]

After Cisco acquired Linksys what was there available for the home market - that didn't suck... D-Link?

D-Link has been hit-or-miss. I've been rather happy with Tenda at the low end, yes they're obviously Chinese and unabashedly so, but I've gotten dual-band N routers with gigabit ports for $40 at Microcenter, on no particular sale day, and have never had to touch them since.

The next step up would be Buffalo, who, for quite some time, have been running DD-WRT as their stock firmware. Slightly modified versions of them, sure, but never to the point of uselessness.

From there, you go to Asus. Nearly all of their routers have run alternative firmware for some time; my N56U has been shuffling packets at some pretty solid speeds for years, even when it was a VPN endpoint, FTP server, DLNA server, and running Transmission, all at the same time. The next tier down didn't do the faster speeds, only had 10/100 ethernet ports, and no USB host (so no torrent/FTP/DLNA functions), but they hovered around $50 and ran most of the same firmware releases. Also, Asus' first party firmware has been updated regularly for the past few years, far longer than I've seen any other router manufacturer write firmware.

Finally, I've been pretty happy with the Western Digital router I bought one of my clients. I wasn't looking for them specifically, but what they brought to the table was a router that has seven gigabit ethernet ports, for less money than it would have cost to get an N56U and a 5-port gigabit switch...then we didn't have to deal with multiple wall warts or congestion with the uplink or anything like that. Those Western Digital routers are quite snappy as well, they do DLNA, FTP, and SMB sharing, and I've never had to reboot it.

There have been great alternatives to Belkin, Linksys, Netgear, and D-Link for some time. They just don't sell them at Staples, Best Buy, or Wal-Mart.

Re:Belkin, eh?

[ahowlett]

Please RTFA, specifically ...

"Linksys is also providing early hardware along with SDKs and APIs to the developers of the third-party OpenWRT firmware, with plans to have custom open source firmware available for download when the router becomes commercially available."

I.e., if you don't trust the Linksys/Belkin firmware, you can install OpenWRT, dd-wrt, tomato, etc.

Re:Belkin, eh?

[CronoCloud]

They just don't sell them at Staples, Best Buy, or Wal-Mart.

But that matters. Back in Linksys's pre-Cisco days, anyone could run out to their local wal-mart and pick up a nice blue stackable with their cable-modem Linksys BEFW11S4 or WRT54 for a fair price and it would provide good service for years of constant use.

I'm of the opinion that Cisco bought Linksys when they realized that lots of small/home office people were buying Linksys products because they were good enough and inexpensive and ignoring whatever overpriced gear Cisco supposedly intended for the small/home office market.

WRT54 sucked ass

[Noxal]

Most unstable piece of cheap shit I ever tried, and I went through several variants of the damn thing.

Re: WRT54 sucked ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Most unstable piece of cheap shit I ever tried, and I went through several variants of the damn thing.

Really?! I've been using my 54GL since at least '06 with DD-WRT no problems.

Re: WRT54 sucked ass

[Anonymous Coward]

But the G is excellent. I know of hundreds deployed with very few, if any, failures.

Re: WRT54 sucked ass

[plover]

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 backdoors, I'm thinking this one may just have to go on eBay, and I'll swap to something that can actually run OpenWRT or Tomato. While I'm not particularly worried about the NSA spying on me, any holes they can exploit can also be discovered and exploited by the bad guys.

The drawback is that I don't particularly trust Belkin hardware, either. Jeez, they've made a lot of fall-apart-in-a-month crappy junk over the years.

Re: WRT54 sucked ass

[Lothsahn]

I've had some problems with the stock firmware as well. However, if you load tomato from Toastman on it, it works great. Specifically, this file: tomato-WRT54G_WRT54GL-1.28.7634Toastman-IPT-ND-VPN.bin

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.

Re: WRT54 sucked ass

[CronoCloud]

I have two WRT54Gv8's.

The one that serves as the router has default firmware, it's as solid as a rock.

The second has been DD-WRT'd, serves as a bridge it needs a manual reboot now and then. I just go to it's configuration page and reboot it from there.

How is the IPv6 support now?

[unixisc]

Is it improved, or is it non-existent?

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:How is the IPv6 support now?

[unixisc]

Are m0n0wall or pFsense options as well?

Stackable design

[Anonymous Coward]

That new design does not look like the old one imho. It is not stackable! Also, the sides are filled with antenna's and they have some weird shape. However, having bought around 10 old ones, the design was obviously not the reason for that, but being able to store them on top of each other was a nice additional feature.

The good news is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that Cisco isn' in charge of Linksys SOHO routers anymore. The bad news is that Belkin is...

Recently brought an old out of retirment

[wjcofkc]

I recently brought an early revision WRT54G out of retirement after a newer router failed. Although I did recently re-decommission it, it still worked fantastically well for the modes it supports. For anyone who missed the party:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_WRT54G_series

Re:Recently brought an old out of retirment

[citizenr]

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.

+1

[Wrexs0ul]

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.

re wrt54g

[freddieb]

Nice specifications. Hard to justify when you can buy a really nice router from Mikrotic for under $100 though. Hopefully the price will drop eventually and it will be competitive.

Re:Belkin, ugh.

[J'raxis]

Ten years now. Slashdot covered that story, too. Belkin has been on my boycott list ever since.

trouble

[Lehk228]

I've had nothing but trouble from linksys routers,

A summary of the /. article

[SGT CAPSLOCK]

resurrects with the newer, nicer !

Someone writes:

"A year after , today brought back the design of what it called 'the best-selling product of all time' but with . We are talking about the classic . After caving in to community demands, has decided to release at the inflated price of . A spokesman for can be quoted as having said, 'give me your money!'."

Re:A summary of the /. article

[SGT CAPSLOCK]

Ahem. Pretend that read:

(Company) resurrects (popular product) with the newer, nicer (more expensive, less functional product)!

Someone writes:

"A year after (random event), (Company) today brought back the design of what it called 'the best-selling product of all time' but now with (common feature). We are talking about the classic (popular product). After caving in to community demands, (Company) has decided to release (more expensive, less functional product) at the inflated price of (too much). A spokesman for can be quoted as having said, 'give me your money!'."

HARDWARE BACKDOOR?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Is this one got the hardware backdoor feature for the NSA? I'd hate if that were only a firmware implementation!

OpenWRT would otherwise block the nation from being as fully safe as we really could be.

Real Geeks...

[Rob Riggs]

Real Geeks are buying Ubiquiti equipment. Very reasonably priced, easy to hack the firmware, and the radios are "Amateur Friendly", meaning you can operate the radio in the Ham bands and limit the channel usage or bandwidth to stay in the ham band.

Re:Real Geeks...

[Anonymous Coward]

Real Geeks are buying Ubiquiti equipment. Very reasonably priced, easy to hack the firmware, and the radios are "Amateur Friendly", meaning you can operate the radio in the Ham bands and limit the channel usage or bandwidth to stay in the ham band.

Would be nice if Ubiquitit would give back a little more.. Especially consdiering their AirOS is an OpenWRT fork ( with extras ) and their EdgeMax routers are baed on a vYatta fork ( with extras GUI added back in etc )

AC $$$

[DarthVain]

I have already commented on how expensive the new standard is. People have already mentioned early adopters.

The price tag isn't about much other than that, you will just have to wait for it to go down.

Check out prices for ANY AC compliant router. I recently got a new MB with built in AC complaint wifi. When I looked at upgrading my router, it quickly became clear that I wasn't going to do that. I found a few in the 100-150$ range on sale, but most were in the 200+ range. So a suggested retail for this at 299$ isn't as crazy as it sounds.

Comparing it to a 30$ N or G is just silly. This is likely priced like a quality AC router is 250$, and you're paying a 50$ fee for open source etc...

Anyway while I am glad this is being made, I won't be getting any until it is at least below 100$, and likely waiting till it is less than 75$.

AC is pretty nice, but looks aren't enough

[AdamHaun]

Wireless-AC is still at a very early stage, but there are a few routers available. I just replaced my DIR-655 N router with a Netgear Nighthawk R7000, which was a huge improvement. I previously got about 3 Mbps with 2.4 GHz, but now I can use the full 24 Mbps of my internet connection on 5 GHz AC. The existing (good) routers are all about $200 with three antennas. The Linksys has four, so maybe they're going for higher bandwidth. (There are several tiers of AC performance.) Plus, MSRP is not the same as retail price. So my guess is that the WRT1900 will be a sort of next-gen AC router at a similar price point.

Before you all rush to upgrade, note that there aren't many AC adapters yet. There's an Intel 7260HMW mini-PCIe for laptops ($25, no antenna included) and the Asus PCE-AC68 for desktops ($100), plus several USB adapters. I've never had much luck with USB wireless, but YMMV. I'm using the PCE-AC68 with good results. I needed a new router anyway for my new home, so I took the plunge. If you're okay with your current network, I'd suggest waiting another year before you upgrade.

Re:AC is pretty nice, but looks aren't enough

[Phlow]

The Netgear Nighthawk R7000 is $100 cheaper, was an absolute cinch to put the latest DD-WRT on. On the 2.4GHz antenna I have N transfers with TurboQAM hitting 12MB/s (connecting at 144Mbps). I installed the Intel 7260HMWG adapter in my laptop, and even at 2x2 it's connecting to the 5GHz AC antenna at upwards of 650Mbps and transferring files typically between 40 - 50MB/s.

Not sure what more a $300 router would buy me.

Re:AC is pretty nice, but looks aren't enough

[AdamHaun]

Interesting! I didn't see it in the DD-WRT router database so I assumed it wasn't compatible. I'll have to run some tests and see if I want to give it a try.

Re:AC is pretty nice, but looks aren't enough

[AdamHaun]

Don't forget apple's router and macbooks.

Oh yeah, good point. I don't have any Mac stuff, so someone else will have to comment on those.

MSRP of $299.99

[frovingslosh]

It would be a bargain at 1/10th the price.

Maybe when my WRT54G finally dies...

[iceaxe]

...and I hope I didn't just jinx myself.

Re:Linksys late to the party

[am 2k]

This router already exists: Netgear R7000.

No eSATA port, though :(

It was quite good but I had to upgrade

[cciRRus]

I was upgraded to TP-Link WR1043ND because I needed a wireless router that supports Gigabit Ethernet and has a USB port. The USB port lets me to extend the available storage space allowing the router to serves as a simple web server as well as a NAS.

How about a non-wireless version

[geminidomino]

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 long enough to give them another chance.

Belkin didn't keep the physical box !?

[craighansen]

Sadly, while keeping the electric blue and black color scheme, they failed to keep the physical form factor, so my box of ten wall-mounts (Linksys SM01) that I've been meaning to use to put the WRT-54GL routers on the wall is now obsolete. For me, the color scheme was not the reason for buying these routers - I'd rather have them in white boxes with white antennae so they could more quietly sit on the wall or ceiling. In fact, my wireless needs have drifted away from these all-in-one boxes - the latest house I provisioned used Engenius access points, powered by an ethernet switch with POE - the router only really needs to have one port to the switch, and one port to the cable/DSL modem and no wireless at all.

Re:Linksys late to the party

[smash]

WTF you want eSATA on your router for? Just because you CAN does not mean you SHOULD.

WTB: A rugged router built to withstand heat

[In hydraulis]

I've just expanded the comments on this page, ran a search for the term "heat," found a few mentions of overheating but no suggestions to prevent it. So let me ask here:

Does any Slashdotter reading this have any recommendations for a DSL modem-router (combined unit preferred) that can withstand, say, an Australian Summer while operating under load without crapping out every few minutes?

I realise that it will involve heat sinks and/or fans, and that the price will reflect this. Perfectly understandable. That said, this is for a small business/home environment, and I don't have an unbounded budget.

Compatibility with DD-WRT, OpenWRT, Tomato, etc. would be a godsend, too.

Asking because no router I've bought during the past ten years can make it through ten minutes of anything-more-than-idling without dropping sync repeatedly in an endless loop once the Summer heat sets in. (What a hideous sentence.)

Thank you.

New WRT54GL for almost 48 bucks!

[antdude]

http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Linksys-WRT54GL-Wireless-G-Broadband-Router/dp/B000BTL0OA/ if don't need the latest features.

They stopped making netbooks a year ago

[tepples]

With... a netbook?

If only manufacturers made those anymore...

Provided you have an Internet-enabled cell phone

[tepples]

Yeah, keep your eyes open at the thrift store and you can get decent routers there for $10. Just remember to bring your internet enabled cell phone

Then I guess this router is for people who don't already have an Internet-enabled cell phone. For example, upgrading from my current cell phone plan ($7/mo pay-as-you-go on Virgin Mobile) to the least expensive Internet-enabled cell phone plan on the same carrier ($35/mo) would cost an additional $336 per year.

System requirements: other Apple product

[tepples]

The page you linked states that setup and administration of an AirPort Extreme router requires a sufficiently recent Mac, iPhone, or iPad, so add another $329 for an iPad mini if you don't already have one of those.

Once you've blacklisted all companies

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Once you recognize that all companies that mass-produce products have had sleazeball episodes and deserve to end up voted against with your dollars, then what are you going to do? Give up computer technology and join the Amish? A more practical solution in my opinion is to remove a company from one's blacklist once the executives responsible for the episode have left the company.