[TriLUG] Linksys long in the tooth?

[Michael Tharp]

James Brigman wrote:
> I'm starting to suspect that the Linksys products' only, fading
> advantage is running OpenWRT

You're probably right. I had a dead Netgear that needed resetting on a 
daily basis (it was nearly two years old, not that surprising), which I 
replaced with a brand new WRT54Gv8. It worked fine for about two months, 
then started tipping over with any large transfer (downloads, 
bittorrent, etc.). It's only gotten worse since then. Because it's a 
revision 8, I can't put open firmware on it (that I know of), and since 
it's based on a Broadcom chipset I doubt the hardware is worth salvaging 
anyway.

So I did the only sensible thing to do: last weekend, I dug a mini-itx 
board out of the closet originally destined to be a carputer, threw 
m0n0wall on it, and it's been working perfectly and even doing packet 
shaping. The Linksys is sitting on top of it and serving as an AP.

I'll keep your suggestion in mind, should I ever need to buy a SOHO 
router for a friend/relative/etc. Unfortunately, PCs in a form factor 
suitable for router duty aren't nearly as cheap as the pre-built stuff.

-- m. tharp