Cisco-Linksys WRT54GL Wireless-G Broadband Router

This wireless router, besides supporting Linux firmware, is a tested and true wireless router with 802.11 b and g support. It supports WPA, WPA2 and the older WEP encryption schemes. In addition, it has a built-in firewall, MAC address filtering, and supports access policies (such as "don't allow FTP connections to this computer on Sundays").

When I installed this wireless router, setup was very straightforward (I did not use the Setup Wizard because it didn't work for me). I changed the IP address range (because the DSL modem uses the 192.168.1 address space), set the administrator password, chose a name for the Wireless network, enabled WPA2 encryption and picked a passphrase.

After that, I connected my laptop to the router right away, and received an excellent signal and throughput of 100 KB/sec (for comparison, my DSL connection maintains a throughput of 300 KB/sec when I connect straight to the DSL modem).

I've been using the router...Read more

I've bought close to a dozen of the earlier versions of these routers (WRT54G v2-v4) over the past few years as well as recommended them to my friends, and the ability to update and upgrade the flash memory with modified open source software is the reason why these routers deserve a wonderful reputation.

The modified software versions, such as HyperWRT and OpenWRT, Sveasoft, etc. have over the years provided capabilities that Linksys themselves didn't put in the box on their own, such as having routers that link up over the wireless connection, or routers that can work well in P2P applications with hundreds of active connections. Some of these features made it back into Linksys's official codebase over the years, helping to make this a Truly Great Product.

Linksys has chosen to eviscerate the memory of the latest version (v5) of the WRT54G to make it cheaper. This latest version doesn't have Linux inside and as others have reported isn't nearly as stable as...Read more

I bought this router about 3 weeks ago to upgrade my Linksys BEFW11S4 802.11b router. The main thing I was looking for is the stability. So far, this router has been perfect, it hasn't dropped the connection yet. It also appears this router has much better range than my previous router. The product comes with a CD which has the installation guide on it. As usual, it's not well written.

Update:
It has been more than 3 months since I set up this router and I haven't had any problem. - 8/16/06

Update:
This router has been in operation for 7 months and hasn't had any problem at all. Not even a single reboot. - 1/16/07