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This is horrible news. Linksys used to make some great consumer hardware; I still have a 4+ year old WRT54GL plugging happily along from college. In contrast,

This is horrible news. Linksys used to make some great consumer hardware; I still have a 4+ year old WRT54GL plugging happily along from college. In contrast, I've never been satisfied with any Belkin product I've owned.

vl 14y ago
Every Belkin product I ever bough had problems (KVM switches and routers), so I just stopped buying from them, even cables. Now I'm not going to buy from Belkinsys too.
sliverstorm 14y ago
The WRT54GL was a great router for its day, but Linksys has not really been making great consumer hardware for a couple years now. I decided to jump ship for ASUS, and I've been pretty happy so far.
- leeoniya 14y ago
  i swore by WRT54GL w/sd card mod for many many years (on dd-wrt, then tomato). jumped ship to an Asus RT-N16 recently cause i needed the wireless-N and gigabit switch. currently sporting the Toastman mod of tomato, Shibby mod is also good choice. Toastman: http://www.4shared.com/dir/v1BuINP3/Toastman_Builds.html#dir=v1BuINP3 http://www.4shared.com/dir/v1BuINP3/Toastman_Builds.html#dir... Shibby: http://tomato.groov.pl/download/ http://tomato.groov.pl/download/
  - jmreid 14y ago
    I'm running the latest Toastman on an Asus RT-N66U. Great firmware and awesome hardware.
- circa 14y ago
  I did the same thing. my Asus + tomato firmware = sanity. I couldn't believe how easy it was I've had the thing for about 4 years and never have to reboot it or anything.
  - kyrra 14y ago
    New Asus routers like the N66U used TomatoUSB as a base, creating their own custom version of it. Then there are custom versions of Asus's firmware, such as the AsusWRT Merlin builds.
    - jseliger 14y ago
      >New Asus routers like the N66U Tangential questions: why do consumer routers never have six or eight ethernet ports? Most appear to have space, yet so few include extras.
      - sliverstorm 14y ago
        Probably because hardly anyone uses all four ports, and extra ports is extra cost. Besides, you can always get a switch. Not saying I would object to more ports, just my guess as to why.
        wtracy 14y ago
        Offering models with extra ports sounds like it would be an awesome way to price segment your customers. The enterprise people have already figured this out, I don't know why the consumer people haven't.
        wtallis 14y ago
        I suspect that the Ethernet switch is not part of the SoC, so it's a separate component that is already price-segmented. A consumer wireless router with 8+ Ethernet ports would probably not have significantly better margins than the existing models, but might need another round of FCC certification, and might also cannibalize sales of enterprise routers. Also, I think most consumers who have a need for more than 4 computers to connect to their router via Ethernet probably don't want their entire network to have such an expensive single point of failure. I've had Ethernet ports on wireless routers die before. I like my switch separate from my router/AP separate from my modem.
- ibrahima 14y ago
  Yeah, these days Asus makes great routers while Linksys has languished.
  - kinleyd 14y ago
    Asus is increasingly my go to company as they make great routers (and other gear too) and are very open to the open source community.
- Ecio78 14y ago
  I agree with you, the latest products were quite limited. My brother bought one of their ADSL routers: the wireless range was limited (a lot less than my draytek and i think less than the old dlink we had), some features were crippled (usb port cannot be used for printer sharing but only for disk sharing, the disk should be fat and not ntfs, the sharing feature was basic) and wifi was continuosly freezing also with latest firmware 'til we searched on google and find some wifi parameter tuning hints on a forum
notatoad 14y ago
It could be great news. Linksys has some pretty good quality control and build quality, which belkin is lacking in. However, Linksys has always had serious problems when it comes to shutting up and getting out of the way. From what i've seen, belkin understands better than most that consumer networking equipment should be silent and invisible - it doesn't need to install software packages or pop up messages in your notification tray. You really can't judge linksys by the wrt54gl - that's a product from another era, long before they were bought by cisco.
- JoshTriplett 14y ago
  > From what i've seen, belkin understands better than most that consumer networking equipment should be silent and invisible - it doesn't need to install software packages or pop up messages in your notification tray. On the other hand, they considered it reasonable to MITM your HTTP traffic to insert ads: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1039_3-5104863.html http://news.cnet.com/2100-1039_3-5104863.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belkin#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belkin#Criticism
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
PhrosTT 14y ago
At the very least, LinkSys stuff is interoperable and EVERYBODY has LinkSys so adding access points and whatnot has always been pretty effortless. I made the mistake of trying to mix and match brands once which is a great way to waste time.
s_husso 14y ago
> I've never been satisfied with any Belkin product I've owned. I've got a Belkin N+ router and boy is it bad. Have to restart it every two days to get to the maximum download speeds. Wlan(s) just drop at some point during the day and have to restart the whole thing. Argh. Googling just now it seems that you can push the dd-wrt firmware onto it though. But I hope this move to buy syslink will bring something more to the table.

vl 14y ago

Every Belkin product I ever bough had problems (KVM switches and routers), so I just stopped buying from them, even cables. Now I'm not going to buy from Belkinsys too.

sliverstorm 14y ago

The WRT54GL was a great router for its day, but Linksys has not really been making great consumer hardware for a couple years now. I decided to jump ship for ASUS, and I've been pretty happy so far.

leeoniya 14y ago
i swore by WRT54GL w/sd card mod for many many years (on dd-wrt, then tomato). jumped ship to an Asus RT-N16 recently cause i needed the wireless-N and gigabit switch. currently sporting the Toastman mod of tomato, Shibby mod is also good choice. Toastman: http://www.4shared.com/dir/v1BuINP3/Toastman_Builds.html#dir=v1BuINP3 http://www.4shared.com/dir/v1BuINP3/Toastman_Builds.html#dir... Shibby: http://tomato.groov.pl/download/ http://tomato.groov.pl/download/
- jmreid 14y ago
  I'm running the latest Toastman on an Asus RT-N66U. Great firmware and awesome hardware.
circa 14y ago
I did the same thing. my Asus + tomato firmware = sanity. I couldn't believe how easy it was I've had the thing for about 4 years and never have to reboot it or anything.
- kyrra 14y ago
  New Asus routers like the N66U used TomatoUSB as a base, creating their own custom version of it. Then there are custom versions of Asus's firmware, such as the AsusWRT Merlin builds.
  - jseliger 14y ago
    >New Asus routers like the N66U Tangential questions: why do consumer routers never have six or eight ethernet ports? Most appear to have space, yet so few include extras.
    - sliverstorm 14y ago
      Probably because hardly anyone uses all four ports, and extra ports is extra cost. Besides, you can always get a switch. Not saying I would object to more ports, just my guess as to why.
      - wtracy 14y ago
        Offering models with extra ports sounds like it would be an awesome way to price segment your customers. The enterprise people have already figured this out, I don't know why the consumer people haven't.
        wtallis 14y ago
        I suspect that the Ethernet switch is not part of the SoC, so it's a separate component that is already price-segmented. A consumer wireless router with 8+ Ethernet ports would probably not have significantly better margins than the existing models, but might need another round of FCC certification, and might also cannibalize sales of enterprise routers. Also, I think most consumers who have a need for more than 4 computers to connect to their router via Ethernet probably don't want their entire network to have such an expensive single point of failure. I've had Ethernet ports on wireless routers die before. I like my switch separate from my router/AP separate from my modem.
ibrahima 14y ago
Yeah, these days Asus makes great routers while Linksys has languished.
- kinleyd 14y ago
  Asus is increasingly my go to company as they make great routers (and other gear too) and are very open to the open source community.
Ecio78 14y ago
I agree with you, the latest products were quite limited. My brother bought one of their ADSL routers: the wireless range was limited (a lot less than my draytek and i think less than the old dlink we had), some features were crippled (usb port cannot be used for printer sharing but only for disk sharing, the disk should be fat and not ntfs, the sharing feature was basic) and wifi was continuosly freezing also with latest firmware 'til we searched on google and find some wifi parameter tuning hints on a forum

notatoad 14y ago

It could be great news. Linksys has some pretty good quality control and build quality, which belkin is lacking in. However, Linksys has always had serious problems when it comes to shutting up and getting out of the way. From what i've seen, belkin understands better than most that consumer networking equipment should be silent and invisible - it doesn't need to install software packages or pop up messages in your notification tray. You really can't judge linksys by the wrt54gl - that's a product from another era, long before they were bought by cisco.

JoshTriplett 14y ago
> From what i've seen, belkin understands better than most that consumer networking equipment should be silent and invisible - it doesn't need to install software packages or pop up messages in your notification tray. On the other hand, they considered it reasonable to MITM your HTTP traffic to insert ads: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1039_3-5104863.html http://news.cnet.com/2100-1039_3-5104863.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belkin#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belkin#Criticism
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

PhrosTT 14y ago

At the very least, LinkSys stuff is interoperable and EVERYBODY has LinkSys so adding access points and whatnot has always been pretty effortless. I made the mistake of trying to mix and match brands once which is a great way to waste time.

s_husso 14y ago

> I've never been satisfied with any Belkin product I've owned. I've got a Belkin N+ router and boy is it bad. Have to restart it every two days to get to the maximum download speeds. Wlan(s) just drop at some point during the day and have to restart the whole thing. Argh. Googling just now it seems that you can push the dd-wrt firmware onto it though. But I hope this move to buy syslink will bring something more to the table.