Linksys Open Source WiFi Wireless-G Broadband Router, Speeds up to (AC1200) 1.2Gbps - WRT54GL

This router is nothing short of amazing! I needed to upgrade our house system from an older Ethernet router to a router that would offer both hardwired Ethernet ports (for the legacy Ethernet devices in our house, including my desktop PC) and also WiFi, but the catch was that I was hoping to get WiFi range up to over 100 feet in radius, and I knew in advance that this range is often not achieved in under-$100 WiFi routers. However, after a bit of online research into WiFi routers, my gut sense told me to pick this router, which was priced under $50. It arrived a few days ago, and I set it up almost immediately. The setup on my Windows 7 desktop PC was quite straightforward, but I do note that the Setup Wizard ground to a halt and failed after the installation of the all-important drivers, and I was not even able to close the program and its window until I used Task Manager to unload the application. I then tested the router, and it worked fine, even though the Setup Wizard had not yet completed. I note that several other reviewers of this product have also noted that the Setup Wizard had also failed/frozen up on them while they were installing the router. I then tested the router performance a bit, and even though I used rather lengthy (12 foot long) cheaper older Ethernet cables to connect the router to the cable modem (we have very fast Comcast cable modem service, and a very fast Motorola cable modem) and to connect the router to my PC, I noticed immediately that the speed/bandwidth, via Ethernet cable, and also via WiFi, was obviously considerably faster than had been the case my older router, which had always offered very adequate speed/bandwidth. I then tested the WiFi range indoors. Our house is an older wooden house which has a footprint of only about 1600 square feet (including an enclosed porch), and, while walking around with my laptop, I noticed that WiFi coverage was great throught both floors of the house, and also on the enclosed porch, and also in the unfinished basement. I then decided to test the WiFi range outdoors, using only my cheap laptop and its admittedly-limited-range built-in factory-equipped WiFi antenna/WiFi module, because we live on a heavily-wooded lot (no lawn, only forested mountainside) I was also hoping that the WiFi signal might possibly reach my workshop, which is located about 125 feet from the modem's 2ndfloor locaiton in the house, and I was also hoping that the WiFi signal might also reach two enclosed meditation gazebos, which are located, respectively, about 130 feet and 160 feet from the house, with numerous intervening large trees, and also bushes, between each of these three structures and the house. To my amazement, the WiFi signal strength in each of these three outdoor structures was very good; this was particularly surprising in the case of my workshop, which has wooden walls and roof that are heavily lined with foil/bubble/foil insulation, and there were also a dozen CFL lamps (which are known to emit RF inferference (aka RFI) which can interfere with WiFi signals) burning brightly the workshop at the time of my test. I then decided to try to push the limits of the modem's WiFi range, and started walking further into the forest beyond each of the three structures that I mentioned above. To my amazment, I discovered that the build-in WiFi antenna/circuitry inside my inexpensive 3-year old laptop was able to receive the WiFi signal (and still at a very impressive speed/bandwidth) out to a distance of at least 390 feet from the house (I did not try to go further, because I was tired of tramping up the mountainside in the snow), despite the fact that there were many dozens of large trees (and also bushes) in the signal path between the house and my varied test locations in the forest. I then ran some additional coverage range tests in other directions (since all of the above-mentioned tests had been confined within the same 90 degree slice of the 360 degree coverage radius), all of them heavily forested, and these further tests confirmed that the signal reached to at least the same distance in every direction as had been found earlier, with the sole exception of one direction, where an intervening steeply-rising hillside/mountainside completely occluded the line-of sight path about 100 feet from the house; this limited the WiFi range in this direction to a bit less than 300 feet from the house. In conclusion, I can say that this WiFi router vastly exceeded all of my expectations! It's performance continues to amaze me today, about 6 days after the router was first installed. And to realize that I paid less than $50 for this router at Amazon Marketplace. . . it is quite amazing! My next step, since I have also noticed that the WiFi signal reaches the henhouse with very good strength, is to install one of my old laptops in the henhouse so that our chickens and ducks can surf the web whenever they wish.

This is typical of all the Cisco-Linksys products I've owned; I have never gotten a bad one (knock on wood). For the money you can't do any better I think. The range is as good as I want it to be since I don't want to attract war drivers. I actually only use this for our android cell phones which it handles fine; the rest of my network is wired and the mixed network plays well with this device. If you have a dhcp server on your network, you will want to disable that functionality on the WRT54GL or at least set up non-conflicting address pools. Personally I need a little more control over dhcp leases than you can configure with this device. I had to set it up twice. I turned on MAC address filtering and very carefully added all my devices; when I saved the settings I couldn't connect from anything so I had to restore factory defaults and start over. I'm not sure what happened, but I know I didn't type all the MAC addresses in wrong. Maybe there is a timeout on connections and I took too long entering the MAC addresses; I did get an error and had to resubmit my changes. I'll figure that part out later. I'm a little concerned about the setup program; frankly it's pretty lame. All illustrations and instructions assume the absolute barest network possible, i.e. 1 dsl router plugged into 1 pc with a single NIC, so the entire scenario is designed to have you plug the dsl modem straight into the internet port on the WRT54GL router and use the supplied cable to plug your pc into one of the four 10/100 ports on the back of the router. Maybe it's the people I hang out with, but I haven't seen very many home "networks" that simplistic in a long time. I plugged the WRT54GL internet port into the switchable port 1 on my aging Netgear switch and plugged the dsl modem into another auto sensing port and the WRT54GL didn't know the difference. My wireless network still works and the androids have an on site wifi which was my goal. Incidentally, the only setup program provided is the Windows setup.exe. Whose in charge of this project? After you run the setup program you can connect to the router using the embedded browser based admin tool. I blinked a couple of times when I saw that the minimal browser based admin program is coded in ASPX which seems strange. I haven't been out of the business long enough to forget the immense cost of using Microsoft technology; they may forget about the known bugs in their solutions at deploy time, but they never forget to license and charge. Oh well, at least it works and this is not exactly a backbone router. Incidentally, the public, non-routable ip address of device is 192.168.1.1 so if you are using that address on something on your network you will need to resolve the conflict. Our cell phones hooked right up and WIFI calling was enabled in minutes, which was the goal. Recommended.

I bought this router soley based on on so many favorable reviews and it does not disappoint so far and I'm still using the firmware that it came with. I have had it over a week and no problems. It is on the ground floor and has a direct line to our family's office computer. It also connects my sister's laptop, my netbook, my desktop, and my Nintendo Wii through wireless. Several times we had all of these running together (online gaming, streaming videos, downloading music, surfing, shopping, etc.)In the past two weeks and no problems (with one exception explained below). Even my online matches on Brawl went perfectly well. My wireless card on my desktop shows great reception of 95-100% (usually at 100 and sometimes 98%) compare that to the mid 60s to 70s I was getting on my older routers. Speaking of old routers we used a Belkin(F5D7230-4) and Trednet(TEW-432BRP), and the much newer Belkin N+ (my netbook supports N on 2.4). The big surprise was how bad the Belkin N+ router we bought was. The old Belkin required us to reset it about 8 times a day at the router (which is really annoying when you have to keep going up and down the stairs.) The other two would just frequently drop connection and we would have to wait a minute or two for it to reconnect. Extremely annoying when you are being cut out in the middle of a fierce match on Brawl. Although I recommend the router it may not be perfect for everyone. It did quit on me when downloading multiple large video files on LimeWire. Also obviously it's a G router (or G/B mixed or just B) so if you have equipment that can implement wireless N technology or plan to upgrade your current equipment to take advantage of N then obviously this isn't going to perform as well as routers that support it. Also its somewhat basic no usb storage or or any real fancy bells and whistles or even that great looking but who acres right? Besides the fact that is ahacked and has several other downloadable free firmwares fro it should be another reason to buy it. Anyway if you are like me and have multiple wireless devices that are only G compatible and just are tired of your current router constantly dropping connection GET THIS ONE! I will update if any problems arise and if I decide to change the firmware.

I bought this Linksys WRT54GL router to use purely as a Wireless Access Point on my existing wired network. The process was simple (in general terms, don't connect anything to its WAN port, give it a new IP address, turn off its DHCP Server, and set its wireless values) and the results great (excellent connectivity throughout my house). My wireless needs are very low (basically, a Wi-Fi connection for my Kindle and for the occasional cell phone). So, this router (on sale) fit the bill. Unless and until something unforeseen pops up, I'm rating this at an Excellent 5 stars out of 5. If anyone's interested in the technical specifics of my process, here they are: - To avoid conflicting with my existing wired network, I plugged the WRT54GL into a power supply and attached the provided 5 foot long CAT5E network cable to an isolated computer via one of the numbered LAN ports (not the WAN port -- don't use that for an Access Point). - Upon booting up the computer, I opened my browser and went to the default router location of 192.168.1.1 (the default password is "admin"). This brought up the Setup | Basic Setup tab. - In the upper right corner, I noted that the "Firmware Version" was 4.30.14. Previously, I had checked the Linksys support page and downloaded the latest firmware (4.30.15). So, I went to the Administration | Firmware Upgrade tab and upgraded the firmware. When that was done, I reset the WRT54GL to it's factory defaults by holding the reset pin on the back for 30 seconds. - My existing network router/DHCP server is at 192.168.1.251 and manages the IP range from 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.149. So, once I was back at the WRT54GL's default page, I changed the "Local IP Address" from its 192.168.1.1 address to something within my existing subnet that wouldn't conflict (192.168.1.10). I also Disabled the "DHCP Server" and set my Time Zone. I then hit the "Save Settings" button at the bottom of the screen (I won't include this "Save" process in the rest of my bullets -- just assume it's there). - After it was done, I unplugged the WRT54GL from the power and the computer, and turned off the computer. I connected the cable from the WRT54GL's numbered LAN port to a port on a switch on my wired network (a port on my router in my wired network would also work), plugged the computer back into the switch, too, and powered everything back up. - This time, I browsed to the WRT54GL's new address of 192.168.10, went to Administration | Management and reset my "Router Password" to a good, strong value. - On the Wireless | Basic Wireless tab, I changed the "Wireless Network Name (SSID)" to a good, strong value, Disabled "Wireless SSID Broadcast", and changed the "Wireless Channel" to what I wanted. - On the Wireless | Wireless Security tab, I set the "Security Mode" to "WPA2 Personal" and entered a good, strong "WPA Shared Key." - That's it. The WRT54GL now functions as a Wireless Access Point. Since nothing's hooked to its WAN port and its DHCP Server is disabled, all the IP addressing for everything coming through the WRT54GL is handled by my wired network's router/DHCP server.

I have used this device for years and I have installed it for many of my friends. Recently I decided to upgrade it to the latest Linksys EA3500 / N750 which I have using for about 1 full month and finally after at least 2 phone calls with Linksys Tech Support, hours trying to make it work the way I wanted it, it went back to Amazon, and instead I purchase the Cisco-Linksys WRT54GL. If you want to know why I returned the Linksys EA3500 / N750 please my review: Linksys EA3500 / N750. Besides the N speed, really the Cisco-Linksys WRT54GL is still a lot cheaper, and a more flexible and the best, it doesn’t require Cisco to know what your username and password are (yes, if you buy the Linksys EA3500 / N750 or any of the new ones, you must create an account with Cisco and provide them with your router’s username and password). Among other reasons and as a parent, keeping my kids Internet browsing habits under control is important and the Cisco-Linksys WRT54GL has every feature I may need whereas the Linksys EA3500 / N750 doesn’t. I’m not sure why Linksys/Cisco trimmed so severely parental controls from the Linksys EA3500 / N750, considering these are SOHO devices. This in summary the parental control differences between the two: WRT54GL (Old): 1. 10 Internet Policy Access 2. Ability to enable and disable each one of them 3. You can add or remove PCs to each one of these policies, maximum flexibility. 4. Option to configure every day or specific days per policy. 5. Option to configure times per policy. 6. Option to block services: DNS, ping, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, POP3, IMAP, etc. per policy! 7. Option to define non-standard ports, per policy. 8. Web site blocking by URL per policy 9. Web site blocking by keyword per policy. EA3500 (this new Linksys device): 1. 1 list of target devices (you can add or remove). 2. Time: You can choose the time of the day these computers will have or not access to internet. 3. Block specific sites: You can add a list of URLs you want to block. But anyway, I received the new Cisco-Linksys WRT54GL, and it is working flawlessly as always. In fact I have a network at home of 3 of them, all broadcasting the same SSID so my devices can connect automatically to the closest one. If you are interested in creating the same type of network, feel free to drop me a line. I have seen some reviews of customers complaining that is difficult to configure. That cannot be more wrong. Below is the standard configuration using WPA2 Personal. Don’t use WPA because is easy to hack. Setup, Basic Setup - Internet connection type: DHCP - Router Name: YourName - Hostname: YourName - Local IP Address: 192.168.1.1 - DHCP Server: Enabled - Starting IP Address: 192.168.0.100 - Maximum Number of DHCP Users: 15 - Time zone: Choose your time zone. Wireless, Basic Wireless Settings: - Wireless Network Mode: Mixed - Wireless Network Name (SSIS): YourName-WiFi - Wireless Channel: Choose any channel here. - Wireless SSID Broadcast: Enable Wireless, Wireless Security: - Security Mode: WPA2 Personal - WPA Algorithms: TKIP+AES - WPA Shared Key: AnyPasswordYouWant  Keep this in mind, this password will have to be provided to any computer accessing your WiFi network. - Group Key Renewal: 3600 Administration, Management: - Router Password: AnyPasswordYouWant - Re-Enter to Confirm: Repeat the password above here. That’s it. In summary, the WRT54GL is still a better router, more flexible, with better parental controls and a lot more affordable than any of the new Linksys SMART Wi-Fi routers.

Flash this router with open source Tomato SpeedMod firmware [1], and configure it to use a fast DNS service like OpenDNS [2] or Google Public DNS [3], turn off 802.11b (so it only uses the faster 802.11g, no internal interference of one with the other), and it just screams. Rock solid stability as well, no slowdowns, no lagging, no overheating, can handle thousands of concurrent connections [4]. For those concerned about the lack of 802.11n support, you only need that for two cases: 1. Your Internet connection is faster than the 802.11g's 54Mbps, for example Verizon FIOS or you have a T1 or something like that. Typical residential cable modem services like Comcast or RoadRunner give you ~25Mbps download/~5Mbps upload max (actual is usually much less). Nowhere near the max capability of 802.11g. 2. You have an internal home media network that streams a lot of HD/Blu-Ray/etc. media around. In that case you can use this router for the Internet connection, and connect a faster 802.11n wireless access point or switch for streaming media around internally [5]. Edit: Amazon is deleting my links :/. Here's the search terms instead, first result should be the correct link: 1. google 'tomato speedmod touristinparadise wrt54gl' 2. google 'OpenDNS' 3. google 'Google Public DNS' 4. google 'tomato speedmod touristinparadise' (find in the result page 'connections') 5. search Amazon for 'wireless n access point' Footnote: One of the benefits of this router's fully open source firmware is that over the years, the software has had a chance to evolve, improve, optimize, and basically catch up with the hardware. Even though the hardware is from 2004, it's more than sufficient for the task of routing internet traffic, especially when using a lightweight, highly optimized Linux kernel-based OS. And there are plenty of such OS's available for it [1], now that it is has had a good seven years to mature and for the hobbyist ecosystem to grow around it. The most popular ones currently appear to be Tomato [2], OpenWRT [3], and DDR-WRT [4]. I have only used Tomato SpeedMod [5] so far, and am 110% happy with it. It loses none of the features or stability of Tomato (which is based on the original Linksys firmware), but improves its stability under load and performance. 1. search Wikipedia for 'List of wireless router firmware projects' 2. google 'polarcloud tomato firmware' 3. google 'OpenWRT' 4. google 'DDR-WRT' 5. google 'tomato speedmod touristinparadise wrt54gl' Good starting point for anyone wanting to learn more about this router, its many different versions (especially which versions *not* to get if you want to be able to flash it with open source firmware): search Wikipedia for 'linksys wrt54gl'.

UPDATE: After making the warranty claim, it took me a while before I could ship them the defective unit. However, once I shipped it, they were very prompt in shipping me a "reman" unit (another term for remanufactured/refurbished or second-hand). I wasn't thrilled about receiving a second-hand router, but it has functioned well till now, and it has been close to 10 days since I started using it. Hopefully it will stay that way. I've increased my rating to 3-stars after the prompt customer service and return. ORIGINAL REVIEW: I bought the router in August 2011. I have used a similar router before, so setting up was not a big issue. The wireless capability was decent, and it worked okay for a couple of months. I would need to restart it every now and then, as either the speed would get too slow, or my computer (Mac) won't connect wirelessly to it. I wasn't exactly crazy about the product, but it was okay. Until it stopped working absolutely, one fine day in December 2011. The power LED keeps blinking, and all the other LEDs are just lit constantly. I went online and searched for solutions, including a couple of different methods of hard resetting (30/30/30 sec or the 10/turnoff/10/turnon/10 sec). This didn't fix the problem. I tried pinging the default address (192.168.1.1) of the router through my computer via LAN cable, after setting my computer at a static address, which is in the same subnet as the router (e.g., 192.168.1.10 and setting the router/default gateway as 192.168.1.1). It was unreachable. According to certain forums, this is equivalent to 'bricking' your router, if you were trying to install some other 3rd party firmware on it, and failed. I hadn't done anything like that. I finally got around talking to a Cisco rep online. They've decided this is a defective model. They've asked me to initiate a return request through the Cisco RMA department. I am going to ship out this model and wait for the new one and see how that works. A friend has used this model for years without issue, and I was expecting the same. I wasn't totally satisfied with its performance even when it was working, though maybe that was just because of it being defective. I will update this review after I receive the new piece.

It just keeps going and going. There may be more user-friendly routers out there for neophytes, but people that are specifically looking for the, "GL," version of this product are most likely not neophytes. As you might suspect, the WRT54GL is a great platform if you want to try 3rd party firmware such as DD-WRT, Tomato or something else. I tried both DD-WRT and Tomato on this router and both installed without a hitch. To be perfectly honest, I don't need this router to act as an IP/Sec tunnel end-point nor have I any need to SSH into my router (what would I do once I SSH'ed there anyway?). I am just using the stock firmware from Liksys, and it works fine, not needing any attention or reboots whatsoever for at least months at a time. Something to keep in mind is that tweakers think they can boost performance by hacking the power of the RF otuput higher using alternate firmware. While it is possible, the radio in the WRT54GL will also put out more distortion and more power, so your signal to noise ratio won't improve much, if any, at the receiver. It is best to stick with the default profile maximum 13 dBm output. You'd be better off using better antennas with a directional pattern to provide effective gain. You also can't make the radio receiver in the WRT54GL any more sensitive without a better antenna anyway. At least the dual RP-TNC connectors on the WRT54GL make it easy to experiment with improving the antennas and/or amplifiers. There are newer sleeker looking products that may have more fun LEDs and curvy plastic cases to entertain you. The WRT54GL is well made and will last years if you don't absuse it or expose it to harsh dusty or wet conditions. The most likely weak spot in a conusmer grade product is the wall-wart power pack. Cisco/Linksys have been going back and forth on what they supply for the power pack. In the two WRT54GLs that I most recently bought from Amazon, the power packs have iron core trnasformers instead using capacitor based switching regulators. The transformer based power packs will probably out-last power packs that use switching technology to lower the wall voltage to operate the router. I have several WRT54GLs and several of their older WRT54 Linux based predecessors and have found they perform well and will last at least several years in a home environment. I haven't had any of the WRT54GLs fail, but I did have an older WRT54 die at almost the end of it its warranty. Cisco replaced the bad unit, but it took two tries, with the first replacement being completely DOA. The second replacement is still working after several years. This is a great product for home or a medium duty office enviornment.