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You've been running an obsolete firmware on an obsolete device for what I imagine is years. A wrt54g doesn't have gigabit ethernet, doesn't support 802.11N or

You've been running an obsolete firmware on an obsolete device for what I imagine is years. A wrt54g doesn't have gigabit ethernet, doesn't support 802.11N or AC.. The last one I used topped out at 50mbit on a single connection. Those things were good for a while, but unless the rest of your hardware is from 2008, you probably owe it to yourself to upgrade.

dredmorbius 11y ago
Funny thing is: the device is sufficient for the use. It's attached to a DSL connection that's far slower than it, and largely ties together a small number of client systems which communicate exclusively with the Internet gateway (no local traffic). Oh, and the folks who own the system itself would have absolutely no idea of what any of the items in your second sentence mean, or what they'd matter to them (if the features mattered at all to them, which they in fact don't). There's no GigE on the property. If they had a Web-only system they'd probably be ahead of the game (less shit to go wrong), and wireless bands supported work fine with devices connecting to it. Point is, there's a piece of perfectly _suitable_ and _usable_ hardware that's running just fine at the job for which it was originally intended, but the manufacturer's abandoned it. Something I strongly suspect we'll be seeing rather more of in the coming age of the Internet of Broken Things That Spy on You. But, say you've sold me: what's a decent replacement. And a Free-Software based ROM to put on it (I'd like to put extensive blocklisting on the gateway device itself).
- justinsaccount 11y ago
  > Point is, there's a piece of perfectly _suitable_ and _usable_ hardware that's running just fine at the job for which it was originally intended, but the manufacturer's abandoned it. Fortunately most[1] wrt54g devices are re-flashable, so if the slow lan speeds and poor wifi support are not a problem, you can get another few years out of it. > But, say you've sold me: what's a decent replacement. And a Free-Software based ROM to put on it (I'd like to put extensive blocklisting on the gateway device itself). At home I use a pair of an edge router lite and a random TP link AC router in AP mode (basically, DHCP server disabled). You can't really buy a decent AC access point, it's much more cost effective to buy a router and put it in AP mode. A Unifi UAP‑AC might be nice, but it's 3x the cost the tp-link was. I haven't bothered re-flashing the TP-link, but I made sure I could when I bought it. The edge router lite will probably end up running something like openbsd or pfsense in a few years. [1] a few ran vxworks with flash too small to support linux
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    Thanks.
pyre 11y ago
> A wrt54g doesn't have gigabit ethernet You say this like GigE is required in every situation that might need a router. It really comes across like "that guy" who talks down at the (e.g.) Prius owner because they aren't driving a turbo-charged V8 (as if every person driving a car should be required to have one).

dredmorbius 11y ago

Funny thing is: the device is sufficient for the use. It's attached to a DSL connection that's far slower than it, and largely ties together a small number of client systems which communicate exclusively with the Internet gateway (no local traffic). Oh, and the folks who own the system itself would have absolutely no idea of what any of the items in your second sentence mean, or what they'd matter to them (if the features mattered at all to them, which they in fact don't). There's no GigE on the property. If they had a Web-only system they'd probably be ahead of the game (less shit to go wrong), and wireless bands supported work fine with devices connecting to it. Point is, there's a piece of perfectly _suitable_ and _usable_ hardware that's running just fine at the job for which it was originally intended, but the manufacturer's abandoned it. Something I strongly suspect we'll be seeing rather more of in the coming age of the Internet of Broken Things That Spy on You. But, say you've sold me: what's a decent replacement. And a Free-Software based ROM to put on it (I'd like to put extensive blocklisting on the gateway device itself).

justinsaccount 11y ago
> Point is, there's a piece of perfectly _suitable_ and _usable_ hardware that's running just fine at the job for which it was originally intended, but the manufacturer's abandoned it. Fortunately most[1] wrt54g devices are re-flashable, so if the slow lan speeds and poor wifi support are not a problem, you can get another few years out of it. > But, say you've sold me: what's a decent replacement. And a Free-Software based ROM to put on it (I'd like to put extensive blocklisting on the gateway device itself). At home I use a pair of an edge router lite and a random TP link AC router in AP mode (basically, DHCP server disabled). You can't really buy a decent AC access point, it's much more cost effective to buy a router and put it in AP mode. A Unifi UAP‑AC might be nice, but it's 3x the cost the tp-link was. I haven't bothered re-flashing the TP-link, but I made sure I could when I bought it. The edge router lite will probably end up running something like openbsd or pfsense in a few years. [1] a few ran vxworks with flash too small to support linux
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Thanks.

pyre 11y ago

> A wrt54g doesn't have gigabit ethernet You say this like GigE is required in every situation that might need a router. It really comes across like "that guy" who talks down at the (e.g.) Prius owner because they aren't driving a turbo-charged V8 (as if every person driving a car should be required to have one).