48 ms·

WRT54G History: The Router That Accidentally Went Open Source

679 points by uptown 6y ago

yial 6y ago
I still have one of these in a box. Maybe two as I used to encourage friends to buy them years ago. I only stopped using it(with some custom firmware) about a year and a half ago because it was just too slow - and had gotten this weird issue where it would cut off the internet to some devices while keeping them on the network. It was really by luck that I had one of these in my teenage years initially to play with. I sometimes wonder what hobbies I would have developed if I hadn’t lucked out and found working computer in the trash, or my parents had bought something that wasn’t such an easily moddable desktop (AMD K6-2 was the CPU in the first computer they purchased). Anyway - the WRT54G really was a fun piece of hardware to play with.
- joshstrange 6y ago
  If you still want to live that WRT life with something like OpenWRT/LEDE (I think they re-merged now just under OpenWRT but I'm running LEDE currently) then I can highly recommend this [0] updated version. I have it and I can get gigabit speeds (wired) through it just fine and don't have any issues with the wireless other than at the far, far end of my house and only sometimes. My next router will probably be a Ubiquity setup so I can setup 2-3 AP's for full coverage and coverage out to the (detached) garage but that setup is not cheap or simple and my current issues are so minor that it will be a while before I pull the trigger on that. [0] https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JOXW3YE/ https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JOXW3YE/
  - rkagerer 6y ago
    I bought a WRT3200ACM back in 2018. I wasn't able to get Tomato flashed onto it (Shibby or FreshTomato). I've flashed Tomato onto what feels like every other router under the sun (many dozens of models with a handful of different techniques tftp included). I wound up returning it and sticking with my RT-AC3200 instead. Do you know if the situation has changed? Or do you still have to switch to OpenWRT or similar to use it?
- BearOso 6y ago
  > because it was just too slow The WAN to LAN throughput on a wrt54g is only like 34mbits/s. It’s just too slow to handle a fast internet connection. I guess the fact that so many are still being used shows how ISP connection speeds have stagnated.
  - guenthert 6y ago
    Or that there simply is no need for that high a bandwidth. Netflix, e.g., uses fancy compression algorithms and you can almost watch their HD offerings with ~3mbps. They do recommend 5mbps and 25mbps for their 4k content. I so wished, I could get here a 6mbps connection for half the price of my current 65mps line.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      Bro, when I want to play games with friends I frequently have to update to play because I play so rarely. Speed means lower latency to startup.
    - Jonnax 6y ago
      So there's a need for it, it's just that you don't have a need for it. I'm happy with my 1gbps connection where I can download a 50GB game in less than 10 minutes.
      - guenthert 6y ago
        I know that there is use for it ("any space will be filled"). A buddy of mine has two teenage boys -- 'nough said. I just don't see that as explaining the market for 100Mbps+ connections to the home and such routers. Your use case reminds me of the (mystical?) fellow who allegedly complained that his new graphics card didn't allow him to play his favorite 3D FPS game and watch a movie simultaneously.
        fomine3 6y ago
        Another point is that old wireless tech is inefficient so it reduces your smartphone's battery life. Faster connection able to work faster, so the device can go to sleep state early, even when streaming Netflix.
- zerd 6y ago
  I'm still running a WRT54GL with Tomato firmware on at my parents place. I used it until I upgraded to a faster one, but the reason it's still running is that it provides the longest 2.4GHz range which is perfect for a large house. I've tried Ubiquity, newer ASUS routers and the range is shorter and their devices prefers to connect to the WRT54G. And my parents don't need super fast wifi, just a stable one.
ktpsns 6y ago
If there was a WRT54G version with Gigabit ethernet, it would be my daily driver today. Having a 100mbit/sec switch is the only reason why my WRT54G is sitting in the shelve without any work. I only use it for tinkering one day or the other.
- selectodude 6y ago
  WRT3200ACM is the modern incarnation.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - sam_lowry_ 6y ago
    At 5 times the price.
    - sonotmyname 6y ago
      They're $249 almost everywhere, and the WRT54G was $199. Taking inflation into account, the 3200 is likely cheaper than the 54g was...
      - masklinn 6y ago
        According to the CPI's Inflation Calculator, $200 in December 2002 (release of the 54G) was $287.98 as of December 2020. So yeah. Even at MSRP (280), the 3200 is cheaper than the 54G was at release.
    - Macha 6y ago
      https://www.linksys.com/us/p/P-WRT3200ACM/ https://www.linksys.com/us/p/P-WRT3200ACM/ I had to look because I was wondering "Do they really charge $1000 for a consumer router + AP?" The answer is no. $250 vs the $200 of the WRT54G in its heyday doesn't seem so bad for 15 years of inflation
      - 6y ago
whalesalad 6y ago
I remember feeling like such an edgy, cool and counter-culture youth during this period that I did everything in my power to avoid using this piece of hardware just because it was so popular. Joke was totally on me - everything else in the space at the time was mostly crap. I finally caved in and ultimately owned quite a few of them. Really rock-solid pieces of gear!
EvanAnderson 6y ago
The highly coveted WRT54G! I picked up a number of these at thrift stores over the years. Occasionally I'd get lucky and get the "WRT54GL" version. I was sometimes persuaded to exceed my "$5 or less" budget for a "L" version. They were great for having a little Linux-box to do oddball utility stuff-- ad-hoc OpenVPN endpoints, caching DNS server, captive Wi-Fi portal controller. They were eerily solid for their built-to-a-price-point nature.
- bityard 6y ago
  A few years back, I spotted two of these for $0.50 at the thrift store amongst all the outdated DSL modems and answering machines. My tech hoard was already large enough at that point so I made sure they worked, flashed the factory firmware, and turned around and sold them for $25 each on craigslist in under 24 hours. Easiest beer money I ever made.
ginko 6y ago
It's one of the most successful routers ever sold and yet network equipment manufacturers are still fighting tooth and nail to keep their devices closed source. It just doesn't make sense to me.
- Maxburn 6y ago
  That's why I'm so impressed with OPNsense and pfSense and a wide selection of build it yourself hardware selection with them. You can own and tinker with your own router top to bottom. Seems like a niche market and I'm wondering why they aren't catching on with this same community that embraced the WRT.
  - sq_ 6y ago
    Wonder if there's a chance some of the router projects and Pine64 could collaborate somehow to make a fully open router. Pine64 seems to be quickly developing some production chops and the various router projects also seem to be doing great work.
    - Maxburn 6y ago
      ANY more work in this space would be great. The SG1100 seems similar already though. Most configs of the Pine64 I'm looking at are single Ethernet port though, I'm not a fan of the router on stick config, even the one in the SG1100 is confusing internally.
    - yellowapple 6y ago
      If Pine64 threw a bunch of Ethernet ports into a Clusterboard that'd be a pretty killer platform for a router. Start with one SOPINE for the actual router stuff, then add more for things like NAS, print servers, home streaming, home automation, etc.
      - MartijnBraam 6y ago
        The issue with that is it's A64 based, you only get one native 1Gbps port on that and you kinda need at least 2 if you're using a router for it's routing functionality. You could get a rockpro64 and stick a nice network card in it's pci-e slot and probably outperform the clusterboard.
znpy 6y ago
Just bought a WRT3200ACM about a month ago to replace the isp-provided router... Slapped OpenWRT on it and... It's a dream.
- stagger87 6y ago
  As someone with a WRT3200ACM, what's the advantage of OpenWRT over the preinstalled FW? (honest question) A quick search indicated better security (which I don't know how to assess), and I was wondering if there was any functional/feature advantages you have seen.
  - znpy 6y ago
    the default firmware is very good. I skimmed the various functions and it's definitely another league when compared to usual routers. I just skimmed it though, because i bought that router with the explicit intent of installing openwrt. to me the biggest advantage is that the underlying linux kernel and functionalities are not hidden at all. then there's a pretty huge selection of packages that you can install (wireguard, openvpn, asterisk, node_exporter, 6rd to name a few). it just more comprehensive as a solution. in my opinion, for a geek/nerd/control-freak router it's either this or a pfsense-based box (which doesn't do wireless very well sadly).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cowmix 6y ago
This route + Tomato firmware.. amazing!
- DanTheManPR 6y ago
  Tomato is such a slick piece of software, combined with one of the most practical pieces of consumer electronics I've ever owned. Only reason I stopped using it was because of eventual advances in networking tech. My old WRT54G with Tomato got donated to my friend's game store, and still serves to this day as the public wifi access point there.
  - smiley1437 6y ago
    Tomato is\was amazing, like you I've moved on However I've never found a cheap router that has Real-time, PER-IP network utilization graphs that you can just click on like in Tomato (I don't want to send netflows to another machine for analysis, I just want to see it right on the router's web interface) If anyone has a suggestion I'm all ears
- wnevets 6y ago
  Tomato was ahead of its time when it came to router ui
pabs3 6y ago
I wonder what class of device will accidentally go open source next. I think I vote robot vacuums.
- hattar 6y ago
  I don’t know that it’s accidental. iRobot really promotes hacking their devices even going to the extent of making non-vacuum devices similar to their base units that are designed to be modded. https://store.irobot.com/default/create-programmable-programmable-robot-irobot-create-2/RC65099.html?cgid=us https://store.irobot.com/default/create-programmable-program...
  - pabs3 6y ago
    So, got a link to the open source parts of the iRobot OS? Do they contribute to the open source community (Linux etc)?
ryandrake 6y ago
I don’t know why WiFi AP manufacturers don’t just give up and just use stock open source firmware on their devices. They are not even trying to get the sw right. The first thing I do when buying one anymore is ditch the built in tinker-toy firmware and install an open source one. Lots of companies that make hardware treat software as just another line item on the BOM like a bolt or a screw, and source the cheapest shit they can find, rather than treating the software as an integral part of the product that needs the same polish as the external box and marketing materials.
- njharman 6y ago
  It's probably mostly due to legal liability. Real or perceived. It's gonna be risky to convince a jury you did your fiduciary duty to either consumers or stockholders when opposing lawyer is saying "so you subjected my client's data to you didn't even write? Code anyone one on internet can change at anytime, etc. etc. legal is not about what is true or right or fair or probably it is about risk reduction/mitigation. A 20% chance to lose court case is too much. Or even chance of bad PR is something to be avoided.
  - cryptonym 6y ago
    Doubt... Look at all the CVE on that kind of hardware, limited liability and actual loss of control to contractors. In this case, leading to not knowing you are actually selling Open Source technology. Look at the longevity of this router and all the features: "it was the perfect way to turn your $60 router into a $600 router". With closed firmware, you can artificially lock features and prevent everyone from adding them to cheap devices. You can also stop updating firmware after few years so everyone trash old devices and buy a new one. Fun fact: Open Source is good for the environment.
    - hobofan 6y ago
      > You can also stop updating firmware after few years so everyone trash old devices and buy a new one. Routers aren't really the kind of devices that become obsolete quickly though, are they? A bulk of all users will just use they one they will get from their ISP. Since the main interest of ISPs is reduce ongoing costs for support (reduce calls to hotline and sending out technicians for the setup of a new router), they should also be motivated to provide cheap, long lived routers.
theandrewbailey 6y ago
I brought a WRT54G to college, and left it with some roomies when I moved out. I think I had OpenWRT on it. It sucked that no custom firmware supported the D-Link I bought to replace it. I finally got fed up with it, and I've been using another router with OpenWRT for many years.
bsharitt 6y ago
Man I used one of those forever, I think I finally threw it out once 100Mb switch and G wifi wasn't quite enough. Tomato was probably my favorite firmware for it. I remember bricking it with a bad update one time and having to jumper two pins with a paper clip to put it in tftp mode in order to load working firmware.
- bartvk 6y ago
  A buddy of mine got divorced and found himself in a tiny apartment with ethernet and not a router. I dug up my WRT54G but yeah, G wifi... In the end, we found an unused TP-Link Archer C7 for him, but that WRT54G brought back some memories.
peter_d_sherman 6y ago
>"The companies Linksys was competing with were, again, focused on a market where routers cost nearly as much as a computer itself. But Victor found the sweet spot: A $199 router that came with software that was easy to set up and reasonably understandable for mere mortals."
keanebean86 6y ago
I knew a dude in college that was trying to set up a campus wide mesh network (he worked in IT) with these. The college bought some and he started working on it. Then 2008 happened and he got laid off. It was a cool idea but long term would have been a burden.
- jandrese 6y ago
  Also, he would have discovered eventually that mesh networks are slow and can't support many simultaneous users. For general Internet access they aren't a great solution.
gorgoiler 6y ago
It’s right up there with the NSLU2 in terms of delightfully accidental Linux platforms.
tomhoward 6y ago
Such fond memories using these on the ADSL2+ internet services we started getting in Australia in the mid 2000s!
paulcarroty 6y ago
Great device. Remember my first time experience with hackable router using openwrt, it was like miracle. I'm not feeling comfortable anymore when working with vendor-locked platforms.
napkin 6y ago
I was just thinking about the importance of the WRT54G in the last days while selecting a new wireless access point. I ordered an Ubiquiti UAC-AP-LITE, based on the price and clean hardware design. I was torn on firmware- Unifi, or flash OpenWRT? The day my package arrives the news of the Ubiquiti breach emerges. OpenWRT it is! Some things never change. A lot of what I learned about networking I owe to the coolness/fun factor of installing OpenWRT on WRT54G units when I was a teenager.
dgrabla 6y ago
I cannot believe nobody has said "I'm still using them" yet. I have two of them still happily moving packets the same they did back in mid 2000.
- the8472 6y ago
  Network speeds got faster and the software stack became more CPU-hungry (e.g. running CAKE), which means old hardware can't keep up with many use-cases.
- jabl 6y ago
  I donated mine to my father. He still uses it for his somewhat basic wifi needs (he has wired ethernet for his "real" desktop computer).
- hyperman1 6y ago
  Seconded. I actually used it a few months ago to stage 20 old laptops for covid induced homescooling. The 10 laptops staging before that managed to cook my more modern router, and I had promised to deliver the next day. The WRT didn't budge and was actually speedy enough.
- greenshackle2 6y ago
  I donated two of them to my parents who used them until one died a few months ago. They live in the boonies so, they only get 10mbps internet but wanted good coverage for a decently sized house + garage, so I set one up as repeater. But I wouldn't use it myself anymore, unlike my parents I don't have mid 2000's internet speeds, and I stream games, movies and take backups over wifi.
creeble 6y ago
I should test OpenWRT with my new multi-AP test setup. Many repeaters and pure (bridging) APs have an isolation problem for clients that switch between them. TP-Link, Netgear, and a few others suffer this problem. What happens is that when a wifi client moves from one AP to another, the old AP doesn't update its device table, and the client becomes unreachable from other clients on the old AP. This only matters on networks that use a lot of LAN comms (Sonos, AirPlay, etc), but it makes certain APs (and extenders) unusable on those networks. Two that work right are Ubiquity and Eero, fwiw.
- CharlesW 6y ago
  FWIW, I've had a Netgear Orbi system (1 base, 2 satellites) for some time and haven't noticed any issues.
bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago
I just bought 8 WRT54Gs and GSs to set up some Broadband Hamnet nodes for a mesh net.
tfvlrue 6y ago
Even though I've since switched all my networking gear to Ubiquiti stuff these days, I still have fond memories of using DD-WRT on the WRT54GL. Being able to configure dynamic DNS and host a VPN server was an amazing thing when you had a handful of routers to remotely manage (parents, etc). And the replacement firmware made them so much more stable than stock. Gone were the days of the Internet dying and having to reboot the router to get it back. I still have a few unused WRT54GL lying around that I never got around to using. Funny to think they're still selling on Amazon for the same price they were a decade ago! In case anyone doubts my adoration for this router, take a look at https://tfvlrue.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/lego-router-wrt54gl/ https://tfvlrue.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/lego-router-wrt54gl... :)
technofiend 6y ago
I see Mikrotik does have an open source repo on Github, but it's not clear if you could really build a working OS from it. That's another platform I'd love to see go open source with as required binary blobs for the network bits. In particular to see how updating their kernel to something recent benefits performance; their patches are for kernel 3.3.x.
nicolas_t 6y ago
What's a reliable company for multi-AP setups that also respect my privacy? Ubiquity had that whole phone home scandal.. Eero I'm not sure yet. I have pfSense for the routing but now just need access points. So far I've been using an old Asus ac86u on Merlin as an AP but the reception is not great in other rooms due to the fact that walls in my apartment are concrete with rebar.
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  I use a pfSense+UniFi combo. I know about the scandal, but they added an option for the user to control it and as far as I know, they haven't done anything questionable since - software quality aside. (Actually I know the internet loves to bitch about Ubiquiti but my experience has been just fine. Maybe it's because I don't have a Unifi router.)
  - nicolas_t 6y ago
    Yeah, it might be an overreaction but the fact they did that does show that they have people who are clueless in their company and don't respect their customers Given the target market of their product I would expect any such attempt to be quickly found so I guess there's not that much risk to use them
- dialamac 6y ago
  CommScope Ruckus?
- asdff 6y ago
  I've seen a few articles that use a raspberry pi in fact
- chenxiaolong 6y ago
  I'm looking for the same as well. I've heard good things about actual enterprise APs, though they seem to be quite expensive. Ruckus APs are 4x the price of my current Ubiquiti APs. I'll probably do more research into this when Wi-Fi 6E becomes more commonplace. For now, I just block outbound internet access on the management network for my Ubiquiti APs and controller.
zoobab 6y ago
I ordered a router from Amazon when someone said it was running Linux. I received it, and gave it to my uni friend on Friday. On Sunday, he told me he found an exploit in the webinterface.
shmerl 6y ago
The latest router in the series is Linksys WRT3200ACM: https://www.linksys.com/us/p/P-WRT3200ACM/ https://www.linksys.com/us/p/P-WRT3200ACM/ It has decent open source support and even WiFi drivers are open: https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi The WiFi firmware though is not, which became a problem when NXP bought Marvel that made the chips for WRT3200ACM. NXP is unresponsive and doesn't do anything to update the firmware. See: https://community.nxp.com/t5/Wireless-Connectivity/Drivers-for-88W8964/m-p/997496 https://community.nxp.com/t5/Wireless-Connectivity/Drivers-f...
- rkagerer 6y ago
  This may be a dumb question but are there any open-source routers out there that can manage to do QoS on a gigabit+ WAN connection (without tanking latency)?
  - shmerl 6y ago
    I didn't really play with QoS on it, but it has a dual core 1.8 GHz CPU, so may be it can handle it. In the worst case, you can just make your own custom router that runs Linux using x86_64 hardware. What's harder to find is a good MIMO WiFi cards for parallel connections. Qualcomm supposedly has some with open drivers (recent Atheros - ath10k, ath11k).
shimonabi 6y ago
I used a WRT54G v2.2 for more than 10 years. A few years ago I wanted to setup a repeater with it, but it was not powerful enough to handle AES in repeater mode, if I remember correctly.
wejick 6y ago
I remember around 2006-2009 playing with this wireless router. I thought back then it was pretty cool, an enterprisey colored device with cisco logo on the front. That was the first time I learned about networking. Did pretty standard setting, like dhcp server and ip address of the port. We also put it on the point to point wireless network with the range of 10s KM, using grid antennas. That was quite early in Indonesian internet scene.
birdman3131 6y ago
One thing this article completely misses is the reliability of the WRT54G. It may be old but I have never picked up a used one that did not just work reliably. Never heard of anybody I know having one die. Contrast that to the newer square black pancake linksys routers and after about a year or so they seem to develop hardware issues and even a reset won't fix them. (Always assumed the chips needed heatsinks and were slowly cooking themselves)
- Bluecobra 6y ago
  I remember lots of people reporting failures around the time when bad capacitors flooded the market and lots of consumer devices were affected. My WRT54G is a later model (v4.0?) that seemed to be unaffected by this issue. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
sunnytimes 6y ago
i loved my WRT in the beginning for XLink Kai .. after that when i got a new router i used the WRT as a range extender which was nice until the wifi basically died .. loved tomato.. i think i still have one ..
Aachen 6y ago
TL;DR they used GPL software and so had to provide the derivative work back to the community, latest upon request. That's how it went "accidentally" open source, if you want to save a click bait click, no source code was stolen or accidentally posted publicity or anything.
- aksss 6y ago
  Haha you know somebody there was like, “shit! This is what Microsoft warned us about!” I can only imagine that spawned a backlash internally against open source until they realized how popular the router became. It was nice of them to make the homage WRT several years ago. Maybe I should go read the article. Like many here I had (and probably still have!) a 54 series and ran ddwrt on it. Very liberating to realize half the functionality I wanted wasn’t in any way a hardware limitation, just software. After that, my next routers were purchased with careful attention to the amount of RAM and nv memory onboard as well as the device compatibility table. Now I run UBNT in the house on the ER platform with unifi stack on a VM that rarely gets turned on except to manage fw upgrades of the radios.
williesleg 6y ago
Great story, shit writing.
geocrasher 6y ago
Its spiritual successor was the Asus RTN-16. I still have one sitting on my bench, running TomatoUSB. I got it 9 years ago, and for the past 5 years it's been a 2.4ghz wifi bridge, connecting the hardwired devices in my office to the wifi router in my house. It just keeps working, so I keep using it. Of course I can't forget the first time I got a WRT54G. My brother in law had one just sitting around unused (around 2006 I think) and while I didn't know a lot about them, I asked him about the router. I ended up trading him a well used laptop for it. The router was the locked down version. Then it died. Oh well.
temac 6y ago
How is respecting the licence of software you use an accident and a problem? The managers who believe that are completely insane. Even the market segmentation theory: you can not just sell perfectly capable hardware but artificially limited by software to a very narrow set of features and pretend you care about e.g. limited natural resources. Likewise attempting to limit the hackability (and reparability) of devices is starting to look criminal in my eyes.
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
The first dedicated site (I know of) that was distributing modified 54G firmware was wrt54g.com . https://web.archive.org/web/20050803021630/http://www.wrt54g.com:80/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050803021630/http://www.wrt54g... Right after that some guy (Thomas?) was tweaking the WRT firmware and selling it on his own site. He really liked red things. His whole endeavor kind of annoyed me.
renewiltord 6y ago
Interesting concept to outsource software development to OSS developers and stick to hardware development. Wonder why Cisco didn't take that angle with WRT54GL derivatives. I had one and it was quite nice. Only thing I can think of is that the hardware was plenty capable but the software is where feature differentiation is and they didn't want to end up being commoditized. It appears that approach has been successful.
cameronperot 6y ago
I absolutely loved my WRT54G series router. I had one years ago that had its input ethernet port fried during a storm. Luckily I was running DD-WRT on it and was able to reconfigure one of the output ethernet ports as the new input so the router lived on.
paraleopiped 6y ago
Is there a list of useful hardware like this or tplink722 and other similar stories?
WaitWaitWha 6y ago
Reading this article makes me realize how old I am. I pretend, but then when "historical" write-ups are presented, and I blurt out "wait, that was just yesteryear...", I instantly realize, I am ancient in technology terms.
Triv888 6y ago
The other day, I accidentally robbed a bank...
throwaway1999x 6y ago
So, I worked for Broadcom for some years after this went down. This post is purely descriptive to give people some insight into the history from inside the company; I'm not commenting on who should have done what (although I was not directly involved, so if someone who was comments, take their word over mine). Broadcom made an error of judgement here, but this incident fostered a deep distrust of open source, at senior levels, that persisted for more than a decade after; perhaps to this day. Firstly at this point Cisco was, at the time, Broadcom's largest customer by a large margin. This caused huge tension in that relationship that was totally unforseen, and was very painful for a while. Secondly, a at a certain point it dawned on Cisco and Broadcom that the GPL lawsuit was not like a normal business dispute , because businessmen after a certain point will settle for money even if they didn't get everything they want. Sure a few people will keep going to the detriment of their own business, but most aim to make profit, not expound a principle. Many companies in the position of the FSF would have settled for a cut of the revenue. But the FSF wanted the source code released, and they were prepared to kill the business to get it. So Cisco and Broadcom had to concede. The source code was released, and OpenWRT was born. The fallout, though was that subsequently Broadcom router ICs were designed with hardware accelerators which were separate from the main CPU. They were driven by separate CPUs on the same SoC that did not run linux and whose drivers could not be demanded under the GPL. none of the open source firmwares can run these devices efficiently unless someone spends weeks reverse engineering them.
- d1zzy 6y ago
  I'm not sure about the last point. I would think hardware dedicated accelerators were done because it was the cheapest way to achieve that performance not because it allowed to somehow bypass GPL. However, choosing to not run Linux but some proprietary OS could most certainly have something to do with that. At the end of the day, was it a good thing? I would say it was. It opened many generations of home router hardware to being modded/replaced with user controlled software. It even created a market of its own where certain consumer router hardware is advertised as being designed to run custom/third-party software and where vendors themselves ship with some heavily modified software and release the sources for it from day 1 (which are the only wifi routers I shop for these days).
WorldMaker 6y ago
One fascinating sidebar in the WRT54G history was the Fon [0] "Fonera" project, which was one of the reasons I bought WRT54G specifically. (Which I found in a box just recently, Fon stickers beside it.) Fon had the idea of trying to build a network of independent residential wifi that users could share roaming among each other. It was a paid wifi network, so people that had a Fonera AP at home could opt for either free access wherever they went as benefit of running an AP or a simple profit sharing option (but then they'd pay for their own roaming). The original Fonera projects were all built on top of OpenWRT. It was cute idea for trying to make guest-accessible wifi ubiquitous. It ran up against shifts in law in some countries making network AP owners more personally responsible for accesses to their wifi. Also, it never really hit network effects that the scale mattered. I ran a Fonera AP through a large chunk of college/grad school and can't say that I ever saw another AP in the wild to take advantage of the free roaming (and if I had it switched to the profit-sharing mode I never would have seen a dime). Fon pivoted entirely out of the Fonera residential wifi project in 2016. It was a neat idea, but it didn't survive. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fon_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fon_(company)
- usertrjx 6y ago
  I don't recall which wifi router I used, but also I setup fonera for about a week. I also don't believe I ever saw one in the wild. I thought it was an interesting idea.
tapper 6y ago
If a router will not run OpenWrt then I will not by it simples!
zupreme 6y ago
DDWrt was an amazing platform, in its heyday, and it allowed me to save several clients ALOT of money, as compared to buying more expensive gear from major players in the market. I even still have a couple of WRT54G’s with it installed sitting on a shelf.
thathndude 6y ago
Like that Windows XP key I have burnt in my memory, “WRT54G” is etched there forever.
s0rce 6y ago
I remember getting my first WRT54G it replaced Freesco running off a floppy disc on a Pentium.
spiritplumber 6y ago
We've open sourced every physical product we sell (lasers, the very first Android-based mobile robot, science instruments) and what it's gotten us so far is a Russian copycat that we can't get rid of. Anyway, our stuff is at http://robots-everywhere.com/ http://robots-everywhere.com/ and http://f3.to/cellsol/ http://f3.to/cellsol/
- wejick 6y ago
  Does the Russian copycat impose a (significant) problem in your business financially, and if there's other than financial issue?
  - spiritplumber 6y ago
    He betrayed my trust, but I have no legal recourse since he's never coming back to the US and suing a Russian citizen in Russia isn't likely to do me much good. I'm also nonviolent, so extralegal recourses are limited.

679 points by uptown 6y ago

yial 6y ago

I still have one of these in a box. Maybe two as I used to encourage friends to buy them years ago. I only stopped using it(with some custom firmware) about a year and a half ago because it was just too slow - and had gotten this weird issue where it would cut off the internet to some devices while keeping them on the network. It was really by luck that I had one of these in my teenage years initially to play with. I sometimes wonder what hobbies I would have developed if I hadn’t lucked out and found working computer in the trash, or my parents had bought something that wasn’t such an easily moddable desktop (AMD K6-2 was the CPU in the first computer they purchased). Anyway - the WRT54G really was a fun piece of hardware to play with.

joshstrange 6y ago
If you still want to live that WRT life with something like OpenWRT/LEDE (I think they re-merged now just under OpenWRT but I'm running LEDE currently) then I can highly recommend this [0] updated version. I have it and I can get gigabit speeds (wired) through it just fine and don't have any issues with the wireless other than at the far, far end of my house and only sometimes. My next router will probably be a Ubiquity setup so I can setup 2-3 AP's for full coverage and coverage out to the (detached) garage but that setup is not cheap or simple and my current issues are so minor that it will be a while before I pull the trigger on that. [0] https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JOXW3YE/ https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JOXW3YE/
- rkagerer 6y ago
  I bought a WRT3200ACM back in 2018. I wasn't able to get Tomato flashed onto it (Shibby or FreshTomato). I've flashed Tomato onto what feels like every other router under the sun (many dozens of models with a handful of different techniques tftp included). I wound up returning it and sticking with my RT-AC3200 instead. Do you know if the situation has changed? Or do you still have to switch to OpenWRT or similar to use it?
BearOso 6y ago
> because it was just too slow The WAN to LAN throughput on a wrt54g is only like 34mbits/s. It’s just too slow to handle a fast internet connection. I guess the fact that so many are still being used shows how ISP connection speeds have stagnated.
- guenthert 6y ago
  Or that there simply is no need for that high a bandwidth. Netflix, e.g., uses fancy compression algorithms and you can almost watch their HD offerings with ~3mbps. They do recommend 5mbps and 25mbps for their 4k content. I so wished, I could get here a 6mbps connection for half the price of my current 65mps line.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Bro, when I want to play games with friends I frequently have to update to play because I play so rarely. Speed means lower latency to startup.
  - Jonnax 6y ago
    So there's a need for it, it's just that you don't have a need for it. I'm happy with my 1gbps connection where I can download a 50GB game in less than 10 minutes.
    - guenthert 6y ago
      I know that there is use for it ("any space will be filled"). A buddy of mine has two teenage boys -- 'nough said. I just don't see that as explaining the market for 100Mbps+ connections to the home and such routers. Your use case reminds me of the (mystical?) fellow who allegedly complained that his new graphics card didn't allow him to play his favorite 3D FPS game and watch a movie simultaneously.
      - fomine3 6y ago
        Another point is that old wireless tech is inefficient so it reduces your smartphone's battery life. Faster connection able to work faster, so the device can go to sleep state early, even when streaming Netflix.
zerd 6y ago
I'm still running a WRT54GL with Tomato firmware on at my parents place. I used it until I upgraded to a faster one, but the reason it's still running is that it provides the longest 2.4GHz range which is perfect for a large house. I've tried Ubiquity, newer ASUS routers and the range is shorter and their devices prefers to connect to the WRT54G. And my parents don't need super fast wifi, just a stable one.

ktpsns 6y ago

If there was a WRT54G version with Gigabit ethernet, it would be my daily driver today. Having a 100mbit/sec switch is the only reason why my WRT54G is sitting in the shelve without any work. I only use it for tinkering one day or the other.

selectodude 6y ago
WRT3200ACM is the modern incarnation.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sam_lowry_ 6y ago
  At 5 times the price.
  - sonotmyname 6y ago
    They're $249 almost everywhere, and the WRT54G was $199. Taking inflation into account, the 3200 is likely cheaper than the 54g was...
    - masklinn 6y ago
      According to the CPI's Inflation Calculator, $200 in December 2002 (release of the 54G) was $287.98 as of December 2020. So yeah. Even at MSRP (280), the 3200 is cheaper than the 54G was at release.
  - Macha 6y ago
    https://www.linksys.com/us/p/P-WRT3200ACM/ https://www.linksys.com/us/p/P-WRT3200ACM/ I had to look because I was wondering "Do they really charge $1000 for a consumer router + AP?" The answer is no. $250 vs the $200 of the WRT54G in its heyday doesn't seem so bad for 15 years of inflation
    - 6y ago

whalesalad 6y ago

I remember feeling like such an edgy, cool and counter-culture youth during this period that I did everything in my power to avoid using this piece of hardware just because it was so popular. Joke was totally on me - everything else in the space at the time was mostly crap. I finally caved in and ultimately owned quite a few of them. Really rock-solid pieces of gear!

EvanAnderson 6y ago

The highly coveted WRT54G! I picked up a number of these at thrift stores over the years. Occasionally I'd get lucky and get the "WRT54GL" version. I was sometimes persuaded to exceed my "$5 or less" budget for a "L" version. They were great for having a little Linux-box to do oddball utility stuff-- ad-hoc OpenVPN endpoints, caching DNS server, captive Wi-Fi portal controller. They were eerily solid for their built-to-a-price-point nature.

bityard 6y ago
A few years back, I spotted two of these for $0.50 at the thrift store amongst all the outdated DSL modems and answering machines. My tech hoard was already large enough at that point so I made sure they worked, flashed the factory firmware, and turned around and sold them for $25 each on craigslist in under 24 hours. Easiest beer money I ever made.

ginko 6y ago

It's one of the most successful routers ever sold and yet network equipment manufacturers are still fighting tooth and nail to keep their devices closed source. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Maxburn 6y ago
That's why I'm so impressed with OPNsense and pfSense and a wide selection of build it yourself hardware selection with them. You can own and tinker with your own router top to bottom. Seems like a niche market and I'm wondering why they aren't catching on with this same community that embraced the WRT.
- sq_ 6y ago
  Wonder if there's a chance some of the router projects and Pine64 could collaborate somehow to make a fully open router. Pine64 seems to be quickly developing some production chops and the various router projects also seem to be doing great work.
  - Maxburn 6y ago
    ANY more work in this space would be great. The SG1100 seems similar already though. Most configs of the Pine64 I'm looking at are single Ethernet port though, I'm not a fan of the router on stick config, even the one in the SG1100 is confusing internally.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    If Pine64 threw a bunch of Ethernet ports into a Clusterboard that'd be a pretty killer platform for a router. Start with one SOPINE for the actual router stuff, then add more for things like NAS, print servers, home streaming, home automation, etc.
    - MartijnBraam 6y ago
      The issue with that is it's A64 based, you only get one native 1Gbps port on that and you kinda need at least 2 if you're using a router for it's routing functionality. You could get a rockpro64 and stick a nice network card in it's pci-e slot and probably outperform the clusterboard.

znpy 6y ago

Just bought a WRT3200ACM about a month ago to replace the isp-provided router... Slapped OpenWRT on it and... It's a dream.

stagger87 6y ago
As someone with a WRT3200ACM, what's the advantage of OpenWRT over the preinstalled FW? (honest question) A quick search indicated better security (which I don't know how to assess), and I was wondering if there was any functional/feature advantages you have seen.
- znpy 6y ago
  the default firmware is very good. I skimmed the various functions and it's definitely another league when compared to usual routers. I just skimmed it though, because i bought that router with the explicit intent of installing openwrt. to me the biggest advantage is that the underlying linux kernel and functionalities are not hidden at all. then there's a pretty huge selection of packages that you can install (wireguard, openvpn, asterisk, node_exporter, 6rd to name a few). it just more comprehensive as a solution. in my opinion, for a geek/nerd/control-freak router it's either this or a pfsense-based box (which doesn't do wireless very well sadly).

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

cowmix 6y ago

This route + Tomato firmware.. amazing!

DanTheManPR 6y ago
Tomato is such a slick piece of software, combined with one of the most practical pieces of consumer electronics I've ever owned. Only reason I stopped using it was because of eventual advances in networking tech. My old WRT54G with Tomato got donated to my friend's game store, and still serves to this day as the public wifi access point there.
- smiley1437 6y ago
  Tomato is\was amazing, like you I've moved on However I've never found a cheap router that has Real-time, PER-IP network utilization graphs that you can just click on like in Tomato (I don't want to send netflows to another machine for analysis, I just want to see it right on the router's web interface) If anyone has a suggestion I'm all ears
wnevets 6y ago
Tomato was ahead of its time when it came to router ui

pabs3 6y ago

I wonder what class of device will accidentally go open source next. I think I vote robot vacuums.

hattar 6y ago
I don’t know that it’s accidental. iRobot really promotes hacking their devices even going to the extent of making non-vacuum devices similar to their base units that are designed to be modded. https://store.irobot.com/default/create-programmable-programmable-robot-irobot-create-2/RC65099.html?cgid=us https://store.irobot.com/default/create-programmable-program...
- pabs3 6y ago
  So, got a link to the open source parts of the iRobot OS? Do they contribute to the open source community (Linux etc)?

ryandrake 6y ago

I don’t know why WiFi AP manufacturers don’t just give up and just use stock open source firmware on their devices. They are not even trying to get the sw right. The first thing I do when buying one anymore is ditch the built in tinker-toy firmware and install an open source one. Lots of companies that make hardware treat software as just another line item on the BOM like a bolt or a screw, and source the cheapest shit they can find, rather than treating the software as an integral part of the product that needs the same polish as the external box and marketing materials.

njharman 6y ago
It's probably mostly due to legal liability. Real or perceived. It's gonna be risky to convince a jury you did your fiduciary duty to either consumers or stockholders when opposing lawyer is saying "so you subjected my client's data to you didn't even write? Code anyone one on internet can change at anytime, etc. etc. legal is not about what is true or right or fair or probably it is about risk reduction/mitigation. A 20% chance to lose court case is too much. Or even chance of bad PR is something to be avoided.
- cryptonym 6y ago
  Doubt... Look at all the CVE on that kind of hardware, limited liability and actual loss of control to contractors. In this case, leading to not knowing you are actually selling Open Source technology. Look at the longevity of this router and all the features: "it was the perfect way to turn your $60 router into a $600 router". With closed firmware, you can artificially lock features and prevent everyone from adding them to cheap devices. You can also stop updating firmware after few years so everyone trash old devices and buy a new one. Fun fact: Open Source is good for the environment.
  - hobofan 6y ago
    > You can also stop updating firmware after few years so everyone trash old devices and buy a new one. Routers aren't really the kind of devices that become obsolete quickly though, are they? A bulk of all users will just use they one they will get from their ISP. Since the main interest of ISPs is reduce ongoing costs for support (reduce calls to hotline and sending out technicians for the setup of a new router), they should also be motivated to provide cheap, long lived routers.

theandrewbailey 6y ago

I brought a WRT54G to college, and left it with some roomies when I moved out. I think I had OpenWRT on it. It sucked that no custom firmware supported the D-Link I bought to replace it. I finally got fed up with it, and I've been using another router with OpenWRT for many years.

bsharitt 6y ago

Man I used one of those forever, I think I finally threw it out once 100Mb switch and G wifi wasn't quite enough. Tomato was probably my favorite firmware for it. I remember bricking it with a bad update one time and having to jumper two pins with a paper clip to put it in tftp mode in order to load working firmware.

bartvk 6y ago
A buddy of mine got divorced and found himself in a tiny apartment with ethernet and not a router. I dug up my WRT54G but yeah, G wifi... In the end, we found an unused TP-Link Archer C7 for him, but that WRT54G brought back some memories.

peter_d_sherman 6y ago

>"The companies Linksys was competing with were, again, focused on a market where routers cost nearly as much as a computer itself. But Victor found the sweet spot: A $199 router that came with software that was easy to set up and reasonably understandable for mere mortals."

keanebean86 6y ago

I knew a dude in college that was trying to set up a campus wide mesh network (he worked in IT) with these. The college bought some and he started working on it. Then 2008 happened and he got laid off. It was a cool idea but long term would have been a burden.

jandrese 6y ago
Also, he would have discovered eventually that mesh networks are slow and can't support many simultaneous users. For general Internet access they aren't a great solution.

gorgoiler 6y ago

It’s right up there with the NSLU2 in terms of delightfully accidental Linux platforms.

tomhoward 6y ago

Such fond memories using these on the ADSL2+ internet services we started getting in Australia in the mid 2000s!

paulcarroty 6y ago

Great device. Remember my first time experience with hackable router using openwrt, it was like miracle. I'm not feeling comfortable anymore when working with vendor-locked platforms.

napkin 6y ago

I was just thinking about the importance of the WRT54G in the last days while selecting a new wireless access point. I ordered an Ubiquiti UAC-AP-LITE, based on the price and clean hardware design. I was torn on firmware- Unifi, or flash OpenWRT? The day my package arrives the news of the Ubiquiti breach emerges. OpenWRT it is! Some things never change. A lot of what I learned about networking I owe to the coolness/fun factor of installing OpenWRT on WRT54G units when I was a teenager.

dgrabla 6y ago

I cannot believe nobody has said "I'm still using them" yet. I have two of them still happily moving packets the same they did back in mid 2000.

the8472 6y ago
Network speeds got faster and the software stack became more CPU-hungry (e.g. running CAKE), which means old hardware can't keep up with many use-cases.
jabl 6y ago
I donated mine to my father. He still uses it for his somewhat basic wifi needs (he has wired ethernet for his "real" desktop computer).
hyperman1 6y ago
Seconded. I actually used it a few months ago to stage 20 old laptops for covid induced homescooling. The 10 laptops staging before that managed to cook my more modern router, and I had promised to deliver the next day. The WRT didn't budge and was actually speedy enough.
greenshackle2 6y ago
I donated two of them to my parents who used them until one died a few months ago. They live in the boonies so, they only get 10mbps internet but wanted good coverage for a decently sized house + garage, so I set one up as repeater. But I wouldn't use it myself anymore, unlike my parents I don't have mid 2000's internet speeds, and I stream games, movies and take backups over wifi.

creeble 6y ago

I should test OpenWRT with my new multi-AP test setup. Many repeaters and pure (bridging) APs have an isolation problem for clients that switch between them. TP-Link, Netgear, and a few others suffer this problem. What happens is that when a wifi client moves from one AP to another, the old AP doesn't update its device table, and the client becomes unreachable from other clients on the old AP. This only matters on networks that use a lot of LAN comms (Sonos, AirPlay, etc), but it makes certain APs (and extenders) unusable on those networks. Two that work right are Ubiquity and Eero, fwiw.

CharlesW 6y ago
FWIW, I've had a Netgear Orbi system (1 base, 2 satellites) for some time and haven't noticed any issues.

bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago

I just bought 8 WRT54Gs and GSs to set up some Broadband Hamnet nodes for a mesh net.

tfvlrue 6y ago

Even though I've since switched all my networking gear to Ubiquiti stuff these days, I still have fond memories of using DD-WRT on the WRT54GL. Being able to configure dynamic DNS and host a VPN server was an amazing thing when you had a handful of routers to remotely manage (parents, etc). And the replacement firmware made them so much more stable than stock. Gone were the days of the Internet dying and having to reboot the router to get it back. I still have a few unused WRT54GL lying around that I never got around to using. Funny to think they're still selling on Amazon for the same price they were a decade ago! In case anyone doubts my adoration for this router, take a look at https://tfvlrue.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/lego-router-wrt54gl/ https://tfvlrue.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/lego-router-wrt54gl... :)

technofiend 6y ago

I see Mikrotik does have an open source repo on Github, but it's not clear if you could really build a working OS from it. That's another platform I'd love to see go open source with as required binary blobs for the network bits. In particular to see how updating their kernel to something recent benefits performance; their patches are for kernel 3.3.x.

nicolas_t 6y ago

What's a reliable company for multi-AP setups that also respect my privacy? Ubiquity had that whole phone home scandal.. Eero I'm not sure yet. I have pfSense for the routing but now just need access points. So far I've been using an old Asus ac86u on Merlin as an AP but the reception is not great in other rooms due to the fact that walls in my apartment are concrete with rebar.

LeoPanthera 6y ago
I use a pfSense+UniFi combo. I know about the scandal, but they added an option for the user to control it and as far as I know, they haven't done anything questionable since - software quality aside. (Actually I know the internet loves to bitch about Ubiquiti but my experience has been just fine. Maybe it's because I don't have a Unifi router.)
- nicolas_t 6y ago
  Yeah, it might be an overreaction but the fact they did that does show that they have people who are clueless in their company and don't respect their customers Given the target market of their product I would expect any such attempt to be quickly found so I guess there's not that much risk to use them
dialamac 6y ago
CommScope Ruckus?
asdff 6y ago
I've seen a few articles that use a raspberry pi in fact
chenxiaolong 6y ago
I'm looking for the same as well. I've heard good things about actual enterprise APs, though they seem to be quite expensive. Ruckus APs are 4x the price of my current Ubiquiti APs. I'll probably do more research into this when Wi-Fi 6E becomes more commonplace. For now, I just block outbound internet access on the management network for my Ubiquiti APs and controller.

zoobab 6y ago

I ordered a router from Amazon when someone said it was running Linux. I received it, and gave it to my uni friend on Friday. On Sunday, he told me he found an exploit in the webinterface.

shmerl 6y ago

The latest router in the series is Linksys WRT3200ACM: https://www.linksys.com/us/p/P-WRT3200ACM/ https://www.linksys.com/us/p/P-WRT3200ACM/ It has decent open source support and even WiFi drivers are open: https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi The WiFi firmware though is not, which became a problem when NXP bought Marvel that made the chips for WRT3200ACM. NXP is unresponsive and doesn't do anything to update the firmware. See: https://community.nxp.com/t5/Wireless-Connectivity/Drivers-for-88W8964/m-p/997496 https://community.nxp.com/t5/Wireless-Connectivity/Drivers-f...

rkagerer 6y ago
This may be a dumb question but are there any open-source routers out there that can manage to do QoS on a gigabit+ WAN connection (without tanking latency)?
- shmerl 6y ago
  I didn't really play with QoS on it, but it has a dual core 1.8 GHz CPU, so may be it can handle it. In the worst case, you can just make your own custom router that runs Linux using x86_64 hardware. What's harder to find is a good MIMO WiFi cards for parallel connections. Qualcomm supposedly has some with open drivers (recent Atheros - ath10k, ath11k).

shimonabi 6y ago

I used a WRT54G v2.2 for more than 10 years. A few years ago I wanted to setup a repeater with it, but it was not powerful enough to handle AES in repeater mode, if I remember correctly.

wejick 6y ago

I remember around 2006-2009 playing with this wireless router. I thought back then it was pretty cool, an enterprisey colored device with cisco logo on the front. That was the first time I learned about networking. Did pretty standard setting, like dhcp server and ip address of the port. We also put it on the point to point wireless network with the range of 10s KM, using grid antennas. That was quite early in Indonesian internet scene.

birdman3131 6y ago

One thing this article completely misses is the reliability of the WRT54G. It may be old but I have never picked up a used one that did not just work reliably. Never heard of anybody I know having one die. Contrast that to the newer square black pancake linksys routers and after about a year or so they seem to develop hardware issues and even a reset won't fix them. (Always assumed the chips needed heatsinks and were slowly cooking themselves)

Bluecobra 6y ago
I remember lots of people reporting failures around the time when bad capacitors flooded the market and lots of consumer devices were affected. My WRT54G is a later model (v4.0?) that seemed to be unaffected by this issue. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

sunnytimes 6y ago

i loved my WRT in the beginning for XLink Kai .. after that when i got a new router i used the WRT as a range extender which was nice until the wifi basically died .. loved tomato.. i think i still have one ..

Aachen 6y ago

TL;DR they used GPL software and so had to provide the derivative work back to the community, latest upon request. That's how it went "accidentally" open source, if you want to save a click bait click, no source code was stolen or accidentally posted publicity or anything.

aksss 6y ago
Haha you know somebody there was like, “shit! This is what Microsoft warned us about!” I can only imagine that spawned a backlash internally against open source until they realized how popular the router became. It was nice of them to make the homage WRT several years ago. Maybe I should go read the article. Like many here I had (and probably still have!) a 54 series and ran ddwrt on it. Very liberating to realize half the functionality I wanted wasn’t in any way a hardware limitation, just software. After that, my next routers were purchased with careful attention to the amount of RAM and nv memory onboard as well as the device compatibility table. Now I run UBNT in the house on the ER platform with unifi stack on a VM that rarely gets turned on except to manage fw upgrades of the radios.

williesleg 6y ago

Great story, shit writing.

geocrasher 6y ago

Its spiritual successor was the Asus RTN-16. I still have one sitting on my bench, running TomatoUSB. I got it 9 years ago, and for the past 5 years it's been a 2.4ghz wifi bridge, connecting the hardwired devices in my office to the wifi router in my house. It just keeps working, so I keep using it. Of course I can't forget the first time I got a WRT54G. My brother in law had one just sitting around unused (around 2006 I think) and while I didn't know a lot about them, I asked him about the router. I ended up trading him a well used laptop for it. The router was the locked down version. Then it died. Oh well.

temac 6y ago

How is respecting the licence of software you use an accident and a problem? The managers who believe that are completely insane. Even the market segmentation theory: you can not just sell perfectly capable hardware but artificially limited by software to a very narrow set of features and pretend you care about e.g. limited natural resources. Likewise attempting to limit the hackability (and reparability) of devices is starting to look criminal in my eyes.

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago

The first dedicated site (I know of) that was distributing modified 54G firmware was wrt54g.com . https://web.archive.org/web/20050803021630/http://www.wrt54g.com:80/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050803021630/http://www.wrt54g... Right after that some guy (Thomas?) was tweaking the WRT firmware and selling it on his own site. He really liked red things. His whole endeavor kind of annoyed me.

renewiltord 6y ago

Interesting concept to outsource software development to OSS developers and stick to hardware development. Wonder why Cisco didn't take that angle with WRT54GL derivatives. I had one and it was quite nice. Only thing I can think of is that the hardware was plenty capable but the software is where feature differentiation is and they didn't want to end up being commoditized. It appears that approach has been successful.

cameronperot 6y ago

I absolutely loved my WRT54G series router. I had one years ago that had its input ethernet port fried during a storm. Luckily I was running DD-WRT on it and was able to reconfigure one of the output ethernet ports as the new input so the router lived on.

paraleopiped 6y ago

Is there a list of useful hardware like this or tplink722 and other similar stories?

WaitWaitWha 6y ago

Reading this article makes me realize how old I am. I pretend, but then when "historical" write-ups are presented, and I blurt out "wait, that was just yesteryear...", I instantly realize, I am ancient in technology terms.

Triv888 6y ago

The other day, I accidentally robbed a bank...

throwaway1999x 6y ago

So, I worked for Broadcom for some years after this went down. This post is purely descriptive to give people some insight into the history from inside the company; I'm not commenting on who should have done what (although I was not directly involved, so if someone who was comments, take their word over mine). Broadcom made an error of judgement here, but this incident fostered a deep distrust of open source, at senior levels, that persisted for more than a decade after; perhaps to this day. Firstly at this point Cisco was, at the time, Broadcom's largest customer by a large margin. This caused huge tension in that relationship that was totally unforseen, and was very painful for a while. Secondly, a at a certain point it dawned on Cisco and Broadcom that the GPL lawsuit was not like a normal business dispute , because businessmen after a certain point will settle for money even if they didn't get everything they want. Sure a few people will keep going to the detriment of their own business, but most aim to make profit, not expound a principle. Many companies in the position of the FSF would have settled for a cut of the revenue. But the FSF wanted the source code released, and they were prepared to kill the business to get it. So Cisco and Broadcom had to concede. The source code was released, and OpenWRT was born. The fallout, though was that subsequently Broadcom router ICs were designed with hardware accelerators which were separate from the main CPU. They were driven by separate CPUs on the same SoC that did not run linux and whose drivers could not be demanded under the GPL. none of the open source firmwares can run these devices efficiently unless someone spends weeks reverse engineering them.

d1zzy 6y ago
I'm not sure about the last point. I would think hardware dedicated accelerators were done because it was the cheapest way to achieve that performance not because it allowed to somehow bypass GPL. However, choosing to not run Linux but some proprietary OS could most certainly have something to do with that. At the end of the day, was it a good thing? I would say it was. It opened many generations of home router hardware to being modded/replaced with user controlled software. It even created a market of its own where certain consumer router hardware is advertised as being designed to run custom/third-party software and where vendors themselves ship with some heavily modified software and release the sources for it from day 1 (which are the only wifi routers I shop for these days).

WorldMaker 6y ago

One fascinating sidebar in the WRT54G history was the Fon [0] "Fonera" project, which was one of the reasons I bought WRT54G specifically. (Which I found in a box just recently, Fon stickers beside it.) Fon had the idea of trying to build a network of independent residential wifi that users could share roaming among each other. It was a paid wifi network, so people that had a Fonera AP at home could opt for either free access wherever they went as benefit of running an AP or a simple profit sharing option (but then they'd pay for their own roaming). The original Fonera projects were all built on top of OpenWRT. It was cute idea for trying to make guest-accessible wifi ubiquitous. It ran up against shifts in law in some countries making network AP owners more personally responsible for accesses to their wifi. Also, it never really hit network effects that the scale mattered. I ran a Fonera AP through a large chunk of college/grad school and can't say that I ever saw another AP in the wild to take advantage of the free roaming (and if I had it switched to the profit-sharing mode I never would have seen a dime). Fon pivoted entirely out of the Fonera residential wifi project in 2016. It was a neat idea, but it didn't survive. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fon_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fon_(company)

usertrjx 6y ago
I don't recall which wifi router I used, but also I setup fonera for about a week. I also don't believe I ever saw one in the wild. I thought it was an interesting idea.

tapper 6y ago

If a router will not run OpenWrt then I will not by it simples!

zupreme 6y ago

DDWrt was an amazing platform, in its heyday, and it allowed me to save several clients ALOT of money, as compared to buying more expensive gear from major players in the market. I even still have a couple of WRT54G’s with it installed sitting on a shelf.

thathndude 6y ago

Like that Windows XP key I have burnt in my memory, “WRT54G” is etched there forever.

s0rce 6y ago

I remember getting my first WRT54G it replaced Freesco running off a floppy disc on a Pentium.

spiritplumber 6y ago

We've open sourced every physical product we sell (lasers, the very first Android-based mobile robot, science instruments) and what it's gotten us so far is a Russian copycat that we can't get rid of. Anyway, our stuff is at http://robots-everywhere.com/ http://robots-everywhere.com/ and http://f3.to/cellsol/ http://f3.to/cellsol/

wejick 6y ago
Does the Russian copycat impose a (significant) problem in your business financially, and if there's other than financial issue?
- spiritplumber 6y ago
  He betrayed my trust, but I have no legal recourse since he's never coming back to the US and suing a Russian citizen in Russia isn't likely to do me much good. I'm also nonviolent, so extralegal recourses are limited.