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?

[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?

[Scragglykat]

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

Re:Cost?

[SJHillman]

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?

[MightyYar]

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

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?

[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?

[the_B0fh]

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

Re:Cost?

[SJHillman]

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

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

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..

$300?

[nurb432]

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

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.

How is the IPv6 support now?

[unixisc]

Is it improved, or is it non-existent?