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Ask Slashdot: Life Beyond the WRT54G Series?

Posted by timothy on from the blue-pill-that-stacks-neatly dept.

First time accepted submitter jarmund (2752233) writes "I first got a WRT54GL in 2007. Now, 7 years later, it's still churning along, despite only having one of its antennae left after an encounter with a toddler. As it is simply not up to date to today's standards (802.11N for example), what is a worthy successor? I enjoyed the freedom to choose the firmware myself (I've run Tomato on it since 2008), in addition to its robustness. A replacement will be considered second-rate unless it catered for the same freedom as its predecessor." Is there a canonical best household router nowadays?

8 of 427 comments (clear)

  1. +1 for this Post by haknick · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Been looking for another router for almost a year now, and still haven't been convinced of a better one than my WRT54GL

    1. Re:+1 for this Post by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Informative

      Linksys hardware is crappy, unfortunately. Also, it is debatable if any hardware made by a US company can be trusted, especially since Linksys is a subsidiary of Cisco who are the NSA's bitch.

      I recommend Buffalo. Their hardware is made for the Japanese market where symmetrical gigabit internet connections are not uncommon, and thus they are capable of routing close to 1000Mb/sec over the WAN interface. Massive overkill for western internet connections, but once you add in some filtering and traffic shaping you start to see why that kind of processing power and memory is needed.

      Buffalo hardware is generally bulletproof and lasts. Some models come with DD-WRT pre-installed, many others fully support it. They are not too expensive either, and support all the latest stuff like 802.11ac and most importantly 5GHz.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Re:Buffalo by Nimey · · Score: 5, Informative

    Tomato itself is no longer maintained, but there are several mods out there. I use Shibby's mod for my Asus RT-N16.

    --
    Hail Eris, full of mischief...

    E pluribus sanguinem
  3. Everyone: please be specific! by mrchaotica · · Score: 5, Informative

    Every time I've tried to figure out this question for myself, I've run into a maze of "router [foo 600] works but [foo 601] doesn't, unless you have [foo 601 revision 2, 3, or 5] with firmware version X but not firmware Y." If you just tell us a brand name or something, your post is fucking useless!

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  4. Mikrotik by Cigamit · · Score: 5, Informative

    I use Mikrotiks for just about everything nowadays. I haven't really found any situation that it couldn't do the function I required, even when it was something as complex as L7 regexing on a URL to force specific requests into a different priority queue.

    http://routerboard.com/RB951G-...

  5. I've moved to Mikrotik by mysqlbytes · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've moved over to a Mikrotik RB2011 series device and I have to say I'm loving it. Has all the features I need, and even though the hardware is 3 years old at this stage, it's still alot faster than the older WRT devices. Interface and command line are a little whacky, and hard to get used to, but once you do, you'll never go back. http://routerboard.com/RB2011U...

  6. Re:Option: Linksys WRT1900ac by sinij · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If it lasts for 7+ years like WRT54GL, cost of ownership wouldn't be that high, just upfront costs.

  7. They used to call me paranoid... by chaoskitty · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have long advocated for separating everything - the cable modem / DSL modem should JUST be an interface to the upstream provider, with no NAT and DEFINITELY with no wireless. See the issues with Xfinity and other providers who are now piggybacking their "free" Wifi on customers' connections - I bet it'll be shown in the near future that the already existing NAT table size issues, which already cause many consumer devices to be problematic, are being exacerbated by trying to maintain state entries for the "free" wireless, too.

    So you have a cable / DSL modem which is in bridge mode. Then you have some sort of NAT device. If you like running your own OS, a Raspberry Pi or some other tiny StrongARM device is cheap and can run whatever GNU/Linux or BSD you like. Heck, you can even still use your WRT54GL if the CPU in it isn't limiting the speed of your upstream connection.

    Then, you have your wireless device. Again, I strongly recommend something that just does bridging - you have the simplest setup because you're not using the wireless device for NAT or any other "features". With all the stories about consumer devices having poor security and intentional back doors, the less exposure, the better. Personally, I pay extra for Apple because the 802.11ac Airport Extreme does wonders with existing 802.11n clients.

    The great thing about this is that you can have as many segments as you want without needing a switch which does VLANs. You can plug two USB-ethernets into a Raspberry Pi, for instance, and keep your wireless and wired networks on completely different segments. Or three, and you can have your old device provide a completely separate guest network.

    The best thing about this setup is that if one device fails or is shown to be insecure and the manufacturers won't fix it, you can just replace that one device.