Linksys WRT54
August 4, 2013
There is almost a cult following around the Linksys WRT54 series of routers.
The Wikipedia article is a fine introduction.
There are also WAP54 wireless access points in almost identical packages.
A big reason for all the interest in these units is that
the stock firmware that ships on these routers can be replaced with
enhanced alternate firmware (in general linux based).
The WRT54GS version 5.0
I picked up one of these (literally) that was getting thrown away.
It seems to work just fine running the Linksys firmware (version 1.52.8).
It fired up with IP address 192.168.1.1 and offered a web page.
I was able to authenticate with no user name and password "admin".
I ran this unit for several years, until it finally just died.
Given any choice, buy a v4 unit.
I was going to just run it with the factory firmware, but
decided it would be more fun to run dd-wrt.
(I have abandoned this on later units I acquired due to
sheer laziness.
Alternate firmware
You even have several choices of alternate firmware:
- DD-WRT -- seems to be very popular, was once open source, but now
has forked into a commercial and less featured open source branch.
This is sad, and perhaps even evil when something a community of people
invested in becomes a source of profit for a few.
- OpenWRT -- prettier on the inside that the outside.
Gargoyle is a front end on OpenWRT.
- Tomato -- another linux based alternative to dd-wrt or tomato.
Choosing between these is by no means the end of your troubles.
Feedback? Questions?
Drop me a line!
Tom's Computer Info / tom@mmto.org