WRT54G

Darthn3ss

Just wondering if anyone else out here is into these little things. Thinking of putting a 3rd party firmware on it and trying to make it do something fun.

or maybe i'll just replace it with a 2610....

RussS

Had a lot of those crap themselves early on - usually about a few weeks after warranty expires. I kicked up a stink and managed to get quite a few replaced with the newer model with the Broadcom chipset - those early ADMtek chips were rubbish IMHO.

Darthn3ss

i've had my wrt54g for like 2 years or so no real major problems yet. biggest issue is that when im using a lot of traffic over wireless it'll kill wireless access... oh, and im not sure if this router related or what but i can't download some stuff over HTTP... ie, server 2003 from microsoft.com stalls at 200-250mb, wihle opensuse/ubuntu download full no problem.

georgemc

Yes, I have one and put 3rd party S/W on it. Haven't done anything fancy with it since but I did notice that it offers a lot more configuration options. Like turning the antenna's on/off individually (I believe), and adjustments to the transmit power. I don't have access to It right now or I'd give you a little more info. I believe the name is DD-wrt...

Georgemc

sthomas

I have one of those at home and have setup a few for other home users and have not had any problems that upgrading the firmware did not fix. I never have put 3rd party firmware on one but have thrown around the idea of doing that.

dynamik

I know some people who have done some fun things with this. Just make sure you have other means of accessing your network in case something goes wrong

mikez

they are great boxes for the money (new around $50, used a lot less). I have 2 of them, a WRT54G v2.2 and a WRT54GS v4 both running DD-WRT. I've been running them for over a year and half now and with 3rd party firmware they are really stable. In my testing, the linksys stock firmware was garbage and very unstable.

I recommend looking into http://www.dd-wrt.com
There are huge user communities out there that are dedicated to many different flavors of 3rd party firmware. You'd be surprised what wrt54g(s)'s can do for 50 bucks or less.

JDMurray

I have both WRT54G v4 and WRT54GS v3 boxes running DD-WRT and they run very well. The original Linksys firmware was serviceable, but the box is capable of so much more functionality than what Linksys wanted to put into it. A nice thing about the DD-WRT is that it allows the power output to be juiced up to 200mW, which is a huge improvement over the fixed 32mW output of the Linksys firmware.

I wish that I could buy a few more of the WRT54GS v3 boxes. The units were crippled starting with the v5 release. The serial number identifies the hardware version and what chipset the WRT54Gx has.