[baggachipz]

Off topic, but what amuses me about the "Wrt" name is that it was originally alternate firmware for the Linksys WRT54G router from 25 years ago. The name has stuck for whatever reason; I guess since only geeks use it and know what it is.

[mohaine]

I'm pretty sure the software side of the project is a direct descendent from the WRT54G stack.

LinkSys got sued to release the firmware as it was GPL linked. This dump got modified to make the WRT54G way more powerful than LinkSys ever planned but they got to sell the hardware for years more than would have been expected at the time.

[kalleboo]

Yeah it was so popular they even released a specific WRT54GL model (where the L stands for Linux) in order to keep supporting third-party firmware after the main hardware series moved on to a more optimized VxWorks-based OS that let them ship less RAM and Flash.

A mainstream hardware company releasing a specific product SKU to support third party firmware really sounds crazy from the perspective of the current market where a substantial portion of the value in selling hardware is supposed to come from subscriptions and surveillance.

[baggachipz]

Yeah, I loved it because it allowed me to boost the signal above FCC-approved power requirements and saturate my house with that sweet 2.4GHz connection everywhere.

[linsomniac]

It is basically always better to run more APs at lower power in the areas where you need coverage, than to boost the power. Especially today with the radio spectrum being so congested.

Despite this, I could expect 3-5 people to hunt me down at PyCon when I was running the wireless to tell me that I had misconfigured the wifi because it was set to low power. More reports of that than reports of wifi not working, IIRC. ;-)

(I was running the wireless because the people we paid do to the wifi would just set up one or two APs and crank the power)

[baggachipz]

Please travel back to 2003 and talk to old me when I could only afford one AP and had no idea how to make them work in concert together. :)

[toast0]

> It is basically always better to run more APs at lower power in the areas where you need coverage, than to boost the power.

Only if your clients are competent at roaming.

[linsomniac]

FYI: I've never had any problems with that. Back in the mid-2000s I was running the WiFi for 1000+ people at a time at conferences for 3-4 years, and basically had no complaints.

[Cabal]

Looking at you, Nintendo Switch 1 and 2. Yes, the 2, in 2026.

[Barbing]

Good to know

[HumblyTossed]

I used corner reflectors made from roof flashing and cardboard on mine. Worked really well to get the signal from one corner of my apt to the other.

[commandersaki]

Yeah, Linksys made a killing from this and the WRT54GS 2.0 because of OpenWRT.

[pbmonster]

> it was originally alternate firmware for the Linksys WRT54G router from 25 years ago

There's a couple of fun examples like that. xda-developers is named after the O2 xda, a smartphone from 25 years ago that not many people ended up developing software for.

[philamonster]

Recycled 4 or so WRT54G variants a couple years ago I ran Tomato on for friend's small businesses and my home in early 2000's.

[tracker1]

I miss the Tomato UI/UX... I don't care for LUCU or OpnSense's UI by comparison...

Been using OpnSense for about 8 years now though... it's just been the best option for me, I use separate commercial AP.

[sourweasel]

FreshTomato is still active, and they are doing x86 builds now. I'm running it on an aging Netgear R7000 and it has been stable.

[tracker1]

May just take a look at it... I'm not doing much with OpnSense, I'm running RPi on a separate system, that I'd like to integrate into DNS on the router itself, but that's about it. The only other feature I want to use but haven't configured is auto failover to a cellular modem. It's cheap, and enough for work, but not great for heavy use.

[philamonster]

I used OPNSense briefly when I got 1gig synchronous fiber ~2015 at home on an old i5 desktop, which I think was shortly after the pfSense fork, and then found Mikrotik and RouterOS. Used RouterOS at home since and have been replacing aged out Cisco switches in the datacenter (100gig) and closets (20-40gig) cheaply. I'm looking to dump a handful of ASA's for OPNSense and the messing around I've done so far has been positive. It's aged nicely.

[voltaireodactyl]

Similar to XBMC at least for a long time.

[boobsbr]

I still have a WRT54GL sitting in a box somewhere.

[EvanAnderson]

The best model of the WRT54G line. I would snag them at thrift stores for cheap to use for silly utility functions. I always referred to that particular model as "The highly-coveted WRT54GL."

I used a pair to provide Internet access at a Customer's construction site back in 2010. Cell phone hotspot wasn't a thing for me yet. We took a pair of WRT54Gs, configured one as a WiFi client, the other as a bog-standard router/AP, connected the LAN from the client to the WAN on the router/AP, pur a directional antenna onto the "client", and pointed it down the road toward a big business who offered free WiFi for Customers. We leeched off that until the real Internet service got installed. (It was a restaurant and we ate there at least once so we were Customers, right? >smile<)

[jandrese]

It seems crazy to me that Linksys didn't look at the success of the WRT54GL and the higher prices they commanded and decide to just keep doing that. Why every company feels the need to roll their own firmware that is buggy, slow, crashy, and doesn't implement half of the promised functionality properly is still baffling to me.

[ssl-3]

Companies roll their own, I think, because of a combination of Not Invented Here and secret-sauce binary blobs. They work within the script that the chipset/radio maker gives them to follow.

---

They don't often offer inexpensive, deliberately-hackable units like the WRT54GL, I think, because of support costs.

And by "support costs," I don't mean that it was expensive to hold users' hands while they installed custom firmware -- that's never been a service that has been provided.

Instead, I mean that there are people who start goofing with this stuff and run out of skill when hacking close-ish to the metal on this kind of hardware. They don't know how to get themselves out of a jam and unbrick their device.

So they find a way to lie their way into getting an RMA and get the device replaced under warranty, and that's expensive for companies to deal with.

(Those people fucking suck.)

[vitally3643]

Let's also not forget that there are multiple governments lining up to "politely request" firmware backdoors.

[hakfoo]

It's disappointing that we still have terrible "press 9 buttons at the same time while reciting from the Necronomicon and plugging in and out the device" recovery stories.

Put the firmware and config on a ** uSD card, or set up some sort of UF2 recovery mode. Then no matter how badly you bollix it up, the answer is "plug it into your computer, download the big prominent "factory image", and drag it onto the device.

If done right, you could even do stuff like "clone the SD card so you can deploy identically-configured units for every branch of your chain business."

[srik]

Used to work for that model. Great device for it’s time.

[ornornor]

Well we still use Roman months and weekdays, and carry over the 30/31 days months even though we could’ve had a way better system by now (base 10 and equal divisions)

[somat]

Did WRT mean anything? Wireless RouTer?

[grvbck]

Wireless Router or Wireless Router Technology is the common interpretation, but to my knowledge, Linksys has never officially confirmed this.