Two routers - my experience.

[tetsuo]

This is not so much a review as a heads up of sorts.

It has to do with a Hawking HWR54G router
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...&Go.x=0&Go.y=0

and a Linksys WRT54G router
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833124010

I got the Hawking as a starter router, low price, good reviews. Quick setup (though somewhat confusing settings for an inexperienced user such as me) and fairly constant signal.
Then, because of the not-so-well-planned location where I put it, it was knocked off of a little table a couple of times, down onto the wall/floorboard heater we have. I noticed something wrong when my shared files were not accessible for my roommate. Then I checked it, and it was on the wall heater. I moved it, and it ceased to operate. My fault...though IMO the heater's low heat should not have warped (melted) the plastic

SO I had to get a new router, and didn't want to wait FOUR WHOLE DAYS for a Newegg delivery. Went to Wal-mart, and bought the Linksys. I paid five dollars less for it at Wal-mart than Neweggs current price of 54.99. The first thing I noticed is that it feels cheap. Sort of flimsy plastic, and the antennae feel like toy-parts. The setup was at about the same difficulty level (not hard even for a noob), but actually using the interface at 192.168.1.1 was much more intuitive. The main thing though, and why I'm writing this impromptu review is that it is much faster than the Hawking was, connecting to pages on the net much faster than the Hawking, though both are rated at 54G. That alone is worth paying double the price of the Hawking.

For what it is worth, I was/am using these with a Gigabyte Aircruiser wireless card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16839121008

and the signal travels maybe 30 feet from the Linksys and through the floor to my computer.

[kilgoretrout]

The ubiquitous Linksys WRT54G is a very nice router. It runs a stripped down version of linux and Linksys was forced to open the source code for it's router after initially balking/stalling the request for the code. After releasing the source code for the router OS, many projects started to rewrite the firmware. Today you can get very sophisticated, third party firmware flashes for the Linksys WRT54G which allow you to do things with this router that are only available on routers costing hundereds of dollars.

A good summary of the Linksys WRT54G saga and what you can do with this router can be found here:

http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials...le.php/3562391

[tetsuo]

That's a good read kilgoretrout, thank you. I may play with that.

[glc]

Not exactly. WRT54G versions 5 and newer no longer run Linux, they switched to VXWorks and are essentially crap now. You can get new WRT54GL routers which are essentially the old WRT54G version 2 which is the Linux-based unit. That article is over a year old.

[kilgoretrout]

According to DD-WRT wiki, it's WRT54G version 7 and above that has VXWorks with 2MB of ram and the atheros chipset as opposed to the broadcom chipset in their earlier routers:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php...RT54G/GL/GS/GX

From this wikipedia article it looks like the WRT54GS went to VXWorks with v5 instead of v7 which may account for the confusion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WRT54G

At any rate, be sure to check out your serial number against this list before you try to flash anything:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php...RT54G/GL/GS/GX

I would trust the DD-WRT info over wikipedia as these are the guys that actually hack the firmware upgrades.

[glc]

WRT54G version 5 is VXWorks and is a terrible router. Version 6 is a bit better.

[Powertrip]

What about the WRT54G-RB (Range Booster) I've sold a few of them over an airlink mimo and they seem to work a lot better, especially and reconnecting after a cable based ISP has bumped the router off.

[glc]

Never used one - but I've got a WPC54GR rangebooster PC Card in my laptop - it works very nicely.

[newbuilder14]

I did the same thing, had the router on top of a LAMP of all places in effort to get the best signal. Hmm... what was the smell? Oh, I just burned a hole in the bottom of my router. Well, it still works and I still use the same one today until I finally stop messing around and install this SRX200 next to my desk.

[Al Pollock]

Hello people........I have the WRT54GS 2.4 Gig/hz speed boost and it works great...........ver.6