Phoenix Network Forums

has anyone fiddledwith the wrt54g linksys wireless routers?

what kind of experiences have you all had with 3rd party firmware, (i.e. alchemy toolbox)

alchemy claims to enable speeds in excess of 100mbit over 802.11g, what kind of issues does this pose with heat and such?

I was thinking of doing it for a while, decided against it. It works too good for me to risk fucking it up.

zogo wrote:I was thinking of doing it for a while, decided against it. It works too good for me to risk fucking it up.

While I don't own this router, I agree with the poster above. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Of course, if it's not working well for you, there is a lot of ultra cool firmware you can install in it. I doubt any can improve signal strength much, though. If you're dead set on connecting at speeds of 100mbit, I suggest wiring yourself into the router, since I highly doubt you'll ever achieve speeds like that over 802.11g. ;p

Yes, There is no possible way of getting speeds above 54mbps on that particular radio frequency. You could upgrade to "super g" at 108mbps or 802.11N at 140 I believe, problem is that these are not standardized standards so you may end up doing more harm than good and having trouble finding adapters that work at those speeds reliably. As for firmware on the wrt54g, it is true, if you don't know what you're doing, I wouldn't mess around. I was fortunate enough to have an extra one lying around and I managed to install a linux based third party firmware onto it, but believe me, you need almost precise timing in order not to f**k up your router. I do have to say though that third party firmware definitely gives you increased functionality over all and it also has the pariferal benafit of making you look like a geek if you have to change router settings and you are with friends as alot of the third party fw that is out there does not have web interfaces so you will have to use telnet or, in some cases, ssh.

Personally I love the DD-WRT firmware that works well with the WRT54G (v1-v4) and the WRT54GL routers. I use it on my Buffalo WHR G54s and it adds tons of great features...you have to be careful to not brick your router though...

I recommend dd-wrt too. It adds a lot of new useful features (QoS, filters, vpn, dns auto update) an also a ssh shell (like openwrt).

Be careful, i think the wrt54g isn't very good with custom firmwares like the wrt54gl (the one i have).

I installed Samadhi firmware on mine a few years back, that's about it.

If you can get a version 4 our earlier. It is a real pain from what i hear to get a 3rd party firmware on a v5 or 6