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The WRT54GL: A 54Mbps Router From 2005 Still Makes Millions For Linksys
Jon Brodkin, reporting for Ars Technica:In a time when consumers routinely replace gadgets with new models after just two or three years, some products stand out for being built to last. Witness the Linksys WRT54GL, the famous wireless router that came out in 2005 and is still for sale. At first glance, there seems to be little reason to buy the WRT54GL in the year 2016. It uses the 802.11g Wi-Fi standard, which has been surpassed by 802.11n and 802.11ac. It delivers data over the crowded 2.4GHz frequency band and is limited to speeds of 54Mbps. You can buy a new router -- for less money -- and get the benefit of modern standards, expansion into the 5GHz band, and data rates more than 20 times higher. Despite all that, people still buy the WRT54GL in large enough numbers that Linksys continues to earn millions of dollars per year selling an 11-year-old product without ever changing its specs or design.
Because people have these setup in commercial/industrial settings due the popularity of DD-WRT.
If you're looking to replace a failed one or extend your range, you buy the exact same model and drop the exact same config on it.
Actually, a lot of them still are hackable. The challenge being in WRT54G land, it was *the* definitive hackable router. While several are hackable, it's more confusing and frankly with projects named things like 'openwrt' or 'ddwrt', the very name of the ecosystem is still rooted in that product line. So people who want to load up a custom distro but aren't *that* informed have a hard time knowing what is and isn't and which download to pair with which product.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
It's a damn shame other manufacturers don't follow this model.. In fact all makers of all items don't follow this model. It's an old one... If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it.
Why would a company continue to produce a product if there is no way to make any money doing so? The ONLY reason this router is still made is because people are willing to buy it at a price higher than it costs to make it. Has nothing to do with it being broken or not.
Don't confuse broken with obsolete. Sometimes people find economic utility in something that isn't state of the art. My company uses some presses that are older than I am and they will probably still be working after I'm dead. They aren't state of the art but they work fine for specific uses. But they also cannot be sold as new profitably because they lack features that customers want and new presses have and there is a large secondary market for them so used ones can be bought cheaply. It's not broken - it's obsolete. No company could make money making new ones.
People still buy the old WRT router because it still has some utility and because it can be made cheaply enough to still make a profit. Eventually that will go away but there is a modest market in the mean time. The tail might be long but it won't last forever.
Now that average consumers are buying wireless routers, we have meaningless speed fixation and corresponding price inflation. Take a look at some of the absolutely horrible advice offered on consumer-grade router reviews, by doing a google search for "wireless router ratings."
Exhibit 1: Forbes: Choosing the best wireless router
The page is one big chart showing theoretical speeds, and recommending getting 802.11ac. 802.11a is the 5Ghz standard that was discarded for dead since it doesn't penetrate through walls. Whoops! That's why for 10 years, hardly any router or NIC supported it. It's kinda useless in most homes. For a while, 5Ghz was billed as a way to do high-speed over short distances. Since people may have multiple network devices in one room or cubicle, you could put a 5Ghz router in each one. The range is so short they won't interfere with each other. But that was too expensive, and the moderate speed boost wasn't worth it.
But it's faster, so "oooooh shiny" now it is back!
Exhibit 2: Wireless routers at Newegg
An observant shopper soon learns that routers are speed rated: N150, N300, AC1750, AC1900, AC2600, AC5300, etc. By this system, a G54 router is ancient. They make it look like buying a 100Mhz CPU in 2.6Ghz era. But if you ask "Why would I need a 5300Mbps router when my internet is 50Mbps?" The only reason to buy a router with such a high rating is that you will probably get a fraction of that actual speed. But even that number doesn't correlate because the number in AC5300 refers to the "A" speed that most devices don't even support. So the number is doubly meaningless.
This stupid system is so prevalent that people sometimes think that AC1750 is the model number. They get confused and buy the wrong router, or can't figure out why there are 5 routers all called the BrandName AC1750.
Exhibit 3: PC magazine recommends the most expensive consumer routers ever
PC Magazine's recommended routers: $300, $250, $174, and $17. Wow, that's quite a price difference. Unless you have lots and lots of people using the wireless network, and some kind of crazy university-sized internet pipe, and devices that support the 5Ghz band, that $17 router will do just as well as the $300 router.
What these review sites need to do is actually measure wireless performance at various ranges and in different rooms. Unless they do that, the speed ratings are meaningless.
There's a big difference between making genuine improvements to a product and making superficial/minor/useless changes every year as a marketing/planned obsolescence ploy. Keeping a product in production long term, especially if you have worked the bugs out if it, allows for a much cheaper & reliable product. You wouldn't have nearly as many recalls on cars for example if a majority of them used a standardized, well vetted, well engineered components instead of redesigning cable harnesses, engineering new starters and rebuilding their seatbelt mechanism every few model years, etc. You also wouldn't need to toss millions of dollars worth of manufacturing equipment and subsequently buy millions of dollars more equipment every few years if you kept a good product in production. Speed/security are the only improvements that are really pursued these days in routers, and security seems to have plateaued, and more speed than consumers already have isn't all that useful for most as the bottleneck isn't the local network but the connection to the internet.