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?

[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?

[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?

[MightyYar]

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

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...

$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.