Linksys WRT54GL Wireless Router:

I would really like to get an Airport Extreme, but I don't need 802.11N so I'm very hesitant to pay an additional $100 for it compared to a regular 802.11B/G router.

My 4 or 5 year old SMC wireless router has been a real champ. Nice GUI, it has served me well for a long time. Recently it has needed to be rebooted about once a week though, and I reached my breaking point with the necessary reboots. I probably would have bought the new Airport Extreme even with the premium price for it's 802.11N support if it had a 4 port giga-switch built into it instead of a 100Mbps. But I just can't see paying $180 for it when I don't need the 802.11N and it can't speed up my wired LAN to giga-ethernet speeds.

The timing was right this morning when I ran across this deal on a Linksys WRT54GL for only $38 delivered after a Linksys and a Paypal rebate. and jumped on it. You may be wondering what makes this Linksys so cool. Clearly it doesn't look very cool and is obviously not designed by Apple. The Airport Extreme is the nicest looking wireless router I've ever seen, the Linksys looks like a Radio Shack experiment gone bad. It's not the looks, but the ability to update the firmware with great OpenSource firmware that adds numerous feature to the router. One such feature is the ability to turn up the power for better connections. Great stuff.

It would take a long article in itself to go over all the neat things that the two non Linksys firmware offers for this router. You can find out more about them at their websites, and on Wiki. DD-WRT web page, and the Wiki page. Tomato web page, and the Wiki page.

I'll be flashing my router with the Tomato firmware, it looks simply awesome.

Maybe I'll post screenshots in a few days when it is up and running


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