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?

[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?

[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?

[GameboyRMH]

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

Then I was like...

Re:Cost?

[NatasRevol]

As long as you don't count labor.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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]

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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]

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?

[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?

[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.

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

[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..

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

[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.

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?

[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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

They stopped making netbooks a year ago

[tepples]

With... a netbook?

If only manufacturers made those anymore...