I still have a WRT54GL sitting in a box somewhere.

EvanAnderson a day ago | parent | next [-]

The best model of the WRT54G line. I would snag them at thrift stores for cheap to use for silly utility functions. I always referred to that particular model as "The highly-coveted WRT54GL."

I used a pair to provide Internet access at a Customer's construction site back in 2010. Cell phone hotspot wasn't a thing for me yet. We took a pair of WRT54Gs, configured one as a WiFi client, the other as a bog-standard router/AP, connected the LAN from the client to the WAN on the router/AP, pur a directional antenna onto the "client", and pointed it down the road toward a big business who offered free WiFi for Customers. We leeched off that until the real Internet service got installed. (It was a restaurant and we ate there at least once so we were Customers, right? >smile<)

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jandrese a day ago | parent [-]

It seems crazy to me that Linksys didn't look at the success of the WRT54GL and the higher prices they commanded and decide to just keep doing that. Why every company feels the need to roll their own firmware that is buggy, slow, crashy, and doesn't implement half of the promised functionality properly is still baffling to me.

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ssl-3 a day ago | parent [-]

Companies roll their own, I think, because of a combination of Not Invented Here and secret-sauce binary blobs. They work within the script that the chipset/radio maker gives them to follow.

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They don't often offer inexpensive, deliberately-hackable units like the WRT54GL, I think, because of support costs.

And by "support costs," I don't mean that it was expensive to hold users' hands while they installed custom firmware -- that's never been a service that has been provided.

Instead, I mean that there are people who start goofing with this stuff and run out of skill when hacking close-ish to the metal on this kind of hardware. They don't know how to get themselves out of a jam and unbrick their device.

So they find a way to lie their way into getting an RMA and get the device replaced under warranty, and that's expensive for companies to deal with.

(Those people fucking suck.)

	▲	vitally3643 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Let's also not forget that there are multiple governments lining up to "politely request" firmware backdoors.

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srik a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Used to work for that model. Great device for it’s time.