Linksys by Cisco WRT54GL Wireless-G Broadband Router (Compatible with Linux)

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Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 10.7 x 9.6 x 2.6 inches ; 13.1 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000BTL0OA
• Item model number: WRT54GL
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (612 customer reviews)
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  Electronics > Computers & Accessories > Networking Products > Routers

• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 11, 2006

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The Linksys Wireless-G Broadband Router is really three devices in one box. First, there's the Wireless Access Point, which lets you connect both screaming fast Wireless-G (802.11g at 54Mbps) and Wireless-B (802.11b at 11Mbps) devices to the network.

The Linksys-Cisco WRT54GL offers great performance and ease of use -- plus Linux compatibility. See it in detail: front and rear.

There's also a built-in 4-port full-duplex 10/100 Switch to connect your wired-Ethernet devices together. Connect four PCs directly, or attach more hubs and switches to create as big a network as you need. Finally, the Router function ties it all together and lets your whole network share a high-speed cable or DSL Internet connection.

Once your computers are connected to the Router and the Internet, they can communicate with each other too, sharing resources and files. All your computers can print on a shared printer connected anywhere in the house. And your computers can share all kinds of files -- music, digital pictures, and documents. Keep all your digital music on one computer, and listen to it anywhere in the house. Organize all of your family's digital pictures in one place, to simplify finding the ones you want, and easing backup to CD-R. Utilize extra free space on one computer when another's hard drive starts to fill up.

The new push button setup feature makes it easy to configure your wireless devices. Just push the button on the router and on your other SecureEasySetup-enabled wireless device to automatically create an encryption-secured wireless connection. TKIP and AES protects your data and privacy with up to 128-bit industrial-strength encryption. The Router can serve as a DHCP Server, has a powerful SPI firewall to protect your PCs against intruders and most known Internet attacks, supports VPN pass-through, and can be configured to filter internal users' access to the Internet. Advanced configuration is a snap with the web browser-based interface.

With the Linksys Wireless-G Broadband Router at the center of your home or office network, you can share a high-speed Internet connection, files, printers, and multi-player games with flexibility, speed, security and simplicity!

Product Description

The Linksys Wireless-G Broadband Router is really three devices in one box. First, theres the Wireless Access Point, which lets you connect both screaming fast Wireless-G (802.11g at 54Mbps) and Wireless-B (802.11b at 11Mbps) devices to the network. Theres also a built-in 4-port full-duplex 10/100 Switch to connect your wired-Ethernet devices together. Connect four PCs directly, or attach more hubs and switches to create as big a network as you need. Finally, the Router function ties it all together and lets your whole network share a high-speed cable or DSL Internet connection. Once your computers are connected to the Router and the Internet, they can communicate with each other too, sharing resources and files. All your computers can print on a shared printer connected anywhere in the house.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

124 of 126 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid and Reliable, May 12, 2007

By	C. Petit (Northeastern US) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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 for several months now, and have not had any dropped connections (my older Netgear router dropped connections fairly frequently and did not support the newer WPA encryption scheme) and have consistent throughput. The router has been running constantly for these past few months.

For the real tech-heads, this router has customized Linux firmware available from third parties. I haven't tried this firmware, since the base Linksys firmware more than meets my needs.

Finally, good security practices are to: Change the administrator password, disable Universal Plug and Play, disable Remote administrative access, use a unique name for the access point, and if the network is only for a small number of personal devices (i.e. a laptop you own), enable MAC address filtering. A MAC address uniquely identifies a network card, so this only allows certain computers to access the network.

218 of 232 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Meet the new box, same as the old box, December 2, 2005

By	C. Hansen - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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 earlier versions, nor is it in any condition to have the open source community help Linksys fix the problems. If you want The Little Blue Box That Could, you now have to buy the WRT54GL.

259 of 279 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is really the *original* WRT54G, December 1, 2005

By	gadgeek (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews

This new "L" model has the same Flash and RAM capacities as the older WRT54G models that ran Linux, and thus will support freely and commercially available third-party Linux-based firmware upgrades (voiding the warranty, of course).

Some background and history can be found here:

LinkSys courts Linux hackers with WRT54G"L"
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS4729641740.html

LinkSys also offers a WRT54GS "speedboaster" model that uses channel bonding with I believe both A and G signals, to realize faster throughput in some use cases. Some older WRT54GS models were available with 8MB of Flash and 32MB of RAM, while current models have 4/16, and thus will also support fancy firmware upgrades, such as those from http://www.dd-wrt.com/, http://www.sveasoft.com/, http://sputnik.com, and so on. These firmwares offer things like optimization for VoWiFi (voice-over-wifi), integration with Radius authentication, bridging, etc, etc, etc.

Techie knitty-gritty on all the various permutations, serial number sequences, and so forth can be found at James Depew's unofficial LinkSysInfo.org site.