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Newegg has it on sale for $60.00.. I've got an old WRT54G that I was thinking of upgrading.. any recommendations for or against this router?

I would do it, only if you can utilize wireless-n. Its a pretty good router at a great price. I am thinking of buying it to replace a E2000.

Simultaneous dual-band and 4 gigabit ports for $60? No brainer.

Even better: Both Tomato and DD-WRT support it as well.

Have had it for awhile.
Paid ALOT more. I mean ALOT.

Held up well, no problems.

Thanks for the advice.. pulled the trigger on it, and we'll see how it does.

Follow-up question.. I've seen Tomato and DD-WRT before, I kind of know what they do, but can anyone give me a good explanation for why I would want to load them on to my router? What cool features can I enable that would make futzing around with the install worthwhile?

druidcent wrote:

Thanks for the advice.. pulled the trigger on it, and we'll see how it does.

Follow-up question.. I've seen Tomato and DD-WRT before, I kind of know what they do, but can anyone give me a good explanation for why I would want to load them on to my router? What cool features can I enable that would make futzing around with the install worthwhile?

QOS? Multi-SSID? Traffic shaping? DD-WRT can do almost anything you can imagine, it's got very few limitations.

On the other hand, some folks just want their router to route. It can do that, too.

Mine did a nice Multi-SSID setup (one with MAC whitelist, WPA2, no traffic shape/rate limit, and another with WPA1, no whitelist, heavy traffic shaping and rate limiting), it was lovely to have folks over, name an SSID and password, and know they hadn't decided to do something bizarre like fire up ten million torrents (had that happen once). The more secure WLAN was used by things like my HTPC, which I could give both latency and throughput priorities to.

Anyways, all kinds of stuff. What kind of things would you want from it?

druidcent wrote:

Thanks for the advice.. pulled the trigger on it, and we'll see how it does.

Follow-up question.. I've seen Tomato and DD-WRT before, I kind of know what they do, but can anyone give me a good explanation for why I would want to load them on to my router? What cool features can I enable that would make futzing around with the install worthwhile?

Even without the extra features, I find that DD-WRT just works better than the stock firmware. My WRT610N kept dropping my iPhone with the Linksys firmware ... got fed up with it and loaded DD-WRT, never had the problem again. The E3000 is either very similar or physically identical to the WRT610N v2.0, depending on who you ask, but I believe the E3000 has a better stock firmware so you may not experience any problems.

Forge wrote:

druidcent wrote:

Thanks for the advice.. pulled the trigger on it, and we'll see how it does.

Follow-up question.. I've seen Tomato and DD-WRT before, I kind of know what they do, but can anyone give me a good explanation for why I would want to load them on to my router? What cool features can I enable that would make futzing around with the install worthwhile?

QOS? Multi-SSID? Traffic shaping? DD-WRT can do almost anything you can imagine, it's got very few limitations.

On the other hand, some folks just want their router to route. It can do that, too.

Mine did a nice Multi-SSID setup (one with MAC whitelist, WPA2, no traffic shape/rate limit, and another with WPA1, no whitelist, heavy traffic shaping and rate limiting), it was lovely to have folks over, name an SSID and password, and know they hadn't decided to do something bizarre like fire up ten million torrents (had that happen once). The more secure WLAN was used by things like my HTPC, which I could give both latency and throughput priorities to.

Anyways, all kinds of stuff. What kind of things would you want from it?

The multi-SSID is nice (although the E3000 supposedly has a guest network set up also).. honestly, I've got no idea what you can do with routers, so I was kind of hoping to get some ideas..

I saw it today too and actually came here after looking things over. I'd suggest looking through the reviews first though, it definitely takes away the shine from the deal. As best I can tell they're trying to purge the router. It appears to be discontinued on the Linksys website as well.

From reading the reviews, there is mixed thoughts on the range. Some state that it's downright horrible, others stating it's amazing. A LOT of the reviews state that it has heat issues and inevitably dies from them, people who are talking about it locking up and needing to be cycled a lot (more then likely due to the heat issues), firmware is terrible and needs to be rotated with ddwrt (thats the usual though), there are reports about throughput being terrible too...

The deal looks amazing at first glance, but comparing it to ultra cheap routers you can simply soup up by putting ddwrt on them (as long as they have the hardware) it seems like it's not all that amazing of the deal. I almost impulse bought the router cause it's $120 off and you think $180 means it's going to be amazing, but if the heat issues and longevity are true then there isn't a whole lot you can do to fix it.

Shoot, if it's really discontinued like that, buy one, use it for six months, then send it in for RMA when it croaks. Stick to your guns and insist on equivalent or better replacement, and you've gotten yourself a 60$ next-step-up.

Failing that, you can deshell it, glue heatsinks to anything that gets warm, and forget warranty, just have lovely, ugly hardware. I'd do that, twice.

If you pick one up and don't like it, send it to me, I'll give it love.

Sorta what I was thinking with the heatsink mod, but honestly I have used routers that you just plug them in and they work for years. While something like that works to make better out of a bad situation, you shouldn't even need to mess with it in the first place.

I've used this unique router cooler http://www.xoxide.com/evercool-drcool.html with two routers and had great results, no overheating at all. To me it was definitely worth the money.

After reading some reviews, getting a couple 3/4" spacers to lift the router up should solve the overheating problem.. anyway we'll see what happens..

Yeah, report pack if it explodes or it's actually decent. I was definitely torn trying to figure out if I should buy it or not.

Yeah, it is old, and it does run warm.
But for range:

I have it in the basement and my kids use their ipods and iphones all night upstairs(2nd story)

I just put it elevated on some old heat-sinks

mdk77777 wrote:

Yeah, it is old, and it does run warm.
But for range:

I have it in the basement and my kids use their ipods and iphones all night upstairs(2nd story)

I just put it elevated on some old heat-sinks

Classy!

Wouldn't wooden blocks be better? Just thinking the aluminum/metal in the heat sinks would provide interference, even if it's on the opposite site of where you need the signal to travel.

emorgoch wrote:

Wouldn't wooden blocks be better?

Well, they better be Mpingo Discs.

[/ducks, sets timer for 2 hours]

Hanging from a string in the dead center of your home volume would probably be best.

But in the corner of the basement works for me.

Otherwise, wife would find it clashes with the formal living room decors.

Ok.. so I got the new router, set it up, and was up and running, relatively painlessly...

Just wondering what the range on the wireless-N should be? What I found, I've got a pretty good connection when I'm in the same room.. leaving the room (maybe 10-15ft from the room), the signal quality drops significantly, to the point where my laptop sometimes won't connect.

As some background, I set up the 5GHz band for wireless-N only, and 2.4 GHz for wireless b/g. The networks all have the same SSID, but the passkeys are different (so wireless N should be on 1 frequency, and the b/g devices are on the other).

Anyone have any ideas on what is going on, and how can I make it better?

Nothing? Would flashing Tomato or DD-WRT help? And is there a recommendation whether to use DD-WRT or Tomato?

Have you tried just simply updating to the latest firmware through Linksys?

Now that would be simple and logical... which would explain why I didn't think of it I'll give it a try tonight when I get home.

Well, apparently I've got the latest version of the firmware... any other suggestions?

I'd update it to DDWRT it the stock firmware is giving you trouble and you're comfortable with it. Range on some of the Newegg reviews gave it a pretty poor rating. I personally also was hesitant to buy the router because of internal antennas.

I too have the E3000 with the latest stock firmware.
I got it for like $30-40 refurb from Microcenter.
I have nothing bad to say about it, I'm only using it as an access point.
I'm curious to see how DD-WRT goes for you if you give it a try - I've been thinking about it too.

Captain Ned wrote:

emorgoch wrote:

Wouldn't wooden blocks be better?

Well, they better be Mpingo Discs.

[/ducks, sets timer for 2 hours]

http://www.stereophile.com/features/69

wow... $50 each? for African blackwood? I don't see what's so special about them... http://www.shunmook.com/text1.htm <--- tl;dr

Didn't get a chance to upgrade the router last night... I spent yesterday going through the DD-WRT wiki... Wow is that intimidating.. lots of stuff to process.. I'm thinking I'll be blocking out some time this weekend to try it out, not something I should just start without a plan for the first time...

Ok.. did the upgrade to DD-WRT... note to self, next time I'm upgrading a router, make sure the wife is out of town, or use a backup router for the internet

So other than that, the upgrade was fairly painless, although I did spend several hours reading the wiki and forums before actually attempting the upgrade. The process took about 30 min after all the resets and waiting for boots, etc.

Only two hiccups I ran into were:
1) Applying the changes caused the Server Timeout page to occur, which was solved by clearing the browser cache
2) Wireless SSID and Security settings didn't stick when using FF. After trying with IE (and resetting the router once), the SSID changes stuck.

The 5GHz band works marginally better now, It drops about 5 min after I leave the room instead of immediately.. I didn't get a chance to look into all of the DD-WRT settings (and play with stuff), but I'll keep looking into it. Hopefully I'll be able to figure out a way to boost the range through the software.

Glad to hear it worked!
Is there a built-in mode to have it officially act as an access point? (this is lacking in the stock firmware but it works this way anyway).