WRT54GL Wi-Fi Wireless-G Broadband Router

Lots of negative reviews hunt the column. The configuration is a bit messy but the router does what its supposed to ...If you are having headache configuring,flash it with tomato or dd wrt.The router is 54 MBPS one which makes it an obsolete when nowdays you can get an 300MBPS one in 1k.The only flaw is the price otherwise its perfect.

Everything you read about this device is true! Ordered my first one 7 years ago and never looked back. Got my latest last week and still the same. Enterprise grade with custom firmware!

It is no better than locally available modems.

in a 200 square feet room not providing a proper range... surprised to see the poor performance.. seating next to router still the wifi range is one or two point indicator only... please don't buy .. No return policy...and amazon does't take responsibility of returning the same.... very bad service by amazon.....

Very easy to setup. And Wifi range is amazing.

All Good !

Product is not working . paid this much of amout still it is not working very bad .

Very poor wi fi signal, sitting very close to router shows any half signal, not giving proper speed, even Tenda N301 is 1000 time better than this fake cisco router, I have lost my confidence in cisco router. Pls go with another brand like, TP link, Tenda, ect. Don't waste your time & money for this router.

This router is nothing short of amazing! I needed to upgrade our house system from an older Ethernet router to a router that would offer both hardwired Ethernet ports (for the legacy Ethernet devices in our house, including my desktop PC) and also WiFi, but the catch was that I was hoping to get WiFi range up to over 100 feet in radius, and I knew in advance that this range is often not achieved in under-$100 WiFi routers. However, after a bit of online research into WiFi routers, my gut sense told me to pick this router, which was priced under $50. It arrived a few days ago, and I set it up almost immediately. The setup on my Windows 7 desktop PC was quite straightforward, but I do note that the Setup Wizard ground to a halt and failed after the installation of the all-important drivers, and I was not even able to close the program and its window until I used Task Manager to unload the application. I then tested the router, and it worked fine, even though the Setup Wizard had not yet completed. I note that several other reviewers of this product have also noted that the Setup Wizard had also failed/frozen up on them while they were installing the router. I then tested the router performance a bit, and even though I used rather lengthy (12 foot long) cheaper older Ethernet cables to connect the router to the cable modem (we have very fast Comcast cable modem service, and a very fast Motorola cable modem) and to connect the router to my PC, I noticed immediately that the speed/bandwidth, via Ethernet cable, and also via WiFi, was obviously considerably faster than had been the case my older router, which had always offered very adequate speed/bandwidth. I then tested the WiFi range indoors. Our house is an older wooden house which has a footprint of only about 1600 square feet (including an enclosed porch), and, while walking around with my laptop, I noticed that WiFi coverage was great throught both floors of the house, and also on the enclosed porch, and also in the unfinished basement. I then decided to test the WiFi range outdoors, using only my cheap laptop and its admittedly-limited-range built-in factory-equipped WiFi antenna/WiFi module, because we live on a heavily-wooded lot (no lawn, only forested mountainside) I was also hoping that the WiFi signal might possibly reach my workshop, which is located about 125 feet from the modem's 2ndfloor locaiton in the house, and I was also hoping that the WiFi signal might also reach two enclosed meditation gazebos, which are located, respectively, about 130 feet and 160 feet from the house, with numerous intervening large trees, and also bushes, between each of these three structures and the house. To my amazement, the WiFi signal strength in each of these three outdoor structures was very good; this was particularly surprising in the case of my workshop, which has wooden walls and roof that are heavily lined with foil/bubble/foil insulation, and there were also a dozen CFL lamps (which are known to emit RF inferference (aka RFI) which can interfere with WiFi signals) burning brightly the workshop at the time of my test. I then decided to try to push the limits of the modem's WiFi range, and started walking further into the forest beyond each of the three structures that I mentioned above. To my amazment, I discovered that the build-in WiFi antenna/circuitry inside my inexpensive 3-year old laptop was able to receive the WiFi signal (and still at a very impressive speed/bandwidth) out to a distance of at least 390 feet from the house (I did not try to go further, because I was tired of tramping up the mountainside in the snow), despite the fact that there were many dozens of large trees (and also bushes) in the signal path between the house and my varied test locations in the forest. I then ran some additional coverage range tests in other directions (since all of the above-mentioned tests had been confined within the same 90 degree slice of the 360 degree coverage radius), all of them heavily forested, and these further tests confirmed that the signal reached to at least the same distance in every direction as had been found earlier, with the sole exception of one direction, where an intervening steeply-rising hillside/mountainside completely occluded the line-of sight path about 100 feet from the house; this limited the WiFi range in this direction to a bit less than 300 feet from the house. In conclusion, I can say that this WiFi router vastly exceeded all of my expectations! It's performance continues to amaze me today, about 6 days after the router was first installed. And to realize that I paid less than $50 for this router at Amazon Marketplace. . . it is quite amazing! My next step, since I have also noticed that the WiFi signal reaches the henhouse with very good strength, is to install one of my old laptops in the henhouse so that our chickens and ducks can surf the web whenever they wish.

This is typical of all the Cisco-Linksys products I've owned; I have never gotten a bad one (knock on wood). For the money you can't do any better I think. The range is as good as I want it to be since I don't want to attract war drivers. I actually only use this for our android cell phones which it handles fine; the rest of my network is wired and the mixed network plays well with this device. If you have a dhcp server on your network, you will want to disable that functionality on the WRT54GL or at least set up non-conflicting address pools. Personally I need a little more control over dhcp leases than you can configure with this device. I had to set it up twice. I turned on MAC address filtering and very carefully added all my devices; when I saved the settings I couldn't connect from anything so I had to restore factory defaults and start over. I'm not sure what happened, but I know I didn't type all the MAC addresses in wrong. Maybe there is a timeout on connections and I took too long entering the MAC addresses; I did get an error and had to resubmit my changes. I'll figure that part out later. I'm a little concerned about the setup program; frankly it's pretty lame. All illustrations and instructions assume the absolute barest network possible, i.e. 1 dsl router plugged into 1 pc with a single NIC, so the entire scenario is designed to have you plug the dsl modem straight into the internet port on the WRT54GL router and use the supplied cable to plug your pc into one of the four 10/100 ports on the back of the router. Maybe it's the people I hang out with, but I haven't seen very many home "networks" that simplistic in a long time. I plugged the WRT54GL internet port into the switchable port 1 on my aging Netgear switch and plugged the dsl modem into another auto sensing port and the WRT54GL didn't know the difference. My wireless network still works and the androids have an on site wifi which was my goal. Incidentally, the only setup program provided is the Windows setup.exe. Whose in charge of this project? After you run the setup program you can connect to the router using the embedded browser based admin tool. I blinked a couple of times when I saw that the minimal browser based admin program is coded in ASPX which seems strange. I haven't been out of the business long enough to forget the immense cost of using Microsoft technology; they may forget about the known bugs in their solutions at deploy time, but they never forget to license and charge. Oh well, at least it works and this is not exactly a backbone router. Incidentally, the public, non-routable ip address of device is 192.168.1.1 so if you are using that address on something on your network you will need to resolve the conflict. Our cell phones hooked right up and WIFI calling was enabled in minutes, which was the goal. Recommended.

I bought this router soley based on on so many favorable reviews and it does not disappoint so far and I'm still using the firmware that it came with. I have had it over a week and no problems. It is on the ground floor and has a direct line to our family's office computer. It also connects my sister's laptop, my netbook, my desktop, and my Nintendo Wii through wireless. Several times we had all of these running together (online gaming, streaming videos, downloading music, surfing, shopping, etc.)In the past two weeks and no problems (with one exception explained below). Even my online matches on Brawl went perfectly well. My wireless card on my desktop shows great reception of 95-100% (usually at 100 and sometimes 98%) compare that to the mid 60s to 70s I was getting on my older routers. Speaking of old routers we used a Belkin(F5D7230-4) and Trednet(TEW-432BRP), and the much newer Belkin N+ (my netbook supports N on 2.4). The big surprise was how bad the Belkin N+ router we bought was. The old Belkin required us to reset it about 8 times a day at the router (which is really annoying when you have to keep going up and down the stairs.) The other two would just frequently drop connection and we would have to wait a minute or two for it to reconnect. Extremely annoying when you are being cut out in the middle of a fierce match on Brawl. Although I recommend the router it may not be perfect for everyone. It did quit on me when downloading multiple large video files on LimeWire. Also obviously it's a G router (or G/B mixed or just B) so if you have equipment that can implement wireless N technology or plan to upgrade your current equipment to take advantage of N then obviously this isn't going to perform as well as routers that support it. Also its somewhat basic no usb storage or or any real fancy bells and whistles or even that great looking but who acres right? Besides the fact that is ahacked and has several other downloadable free firmwares fro it should be another reason to buy it. Anyway if you are like me and have multiple wireless devices that are only G compatible and just are tired of your current router constantly dropping connection GET THIS ONE! I will update if any problems arise and if I decide to change the firmware.

This router is definitely worth the low price. I now own 3 of these, all flashed with the latest DD-WRT firmware, with one acting as an access point (router), and 2 acting as Wireless bridges (allows me to hook up non-wireless things to the bridges, and get them to RECEIVE signals, rather than send). A while ago, my friend spent almost $100 on a wireless adapter for his X-Box 360, while I spent $70 on this router, and hooked up my X-Box 360, PS3 (PS3 Wireless is garbage...), TV, and a computer (used as a media center)... Jokes on him, thanks to "Client Bridge Mode" on the DD-WRT firmware. In case anyone is wondering, the DD-WRT flash also allows you to use the WAN port as an additional LAN port, so you can now hook up 5 items to it while in "Client Bridge Mode", instead of 4. All-in-all... This is a buy that is definitely worth it. All 3 routers are still working nearly flawlessly, with 2 of them being in constant use for nearly a year.

I bought this Linksys WRT54GL router to use purely as a Wireless Access Point on my existing wired network. The process was simple (in general terms, don't connect anything to its WAN port, give it a new IP address, turn off its DHCP Server, and set its wireless values) and the results great (excellent connectivity throughout my house). My wireless needs are very low (basically, a Wi-Fi connection for my Kindle and for the occasional cell phone). So, this router (on sale) fit the bill. Unless and until something unforeseen pops up, I'm rating this at an Excellent 5 stars out of 5. If anyone's interested in the technical specifics of my process, here they are: - To avoid conflicting with my existing wired network, I plugged the WRT54GL into a power supply and attached the provided 5 foot long CAT5E network cable to an isolated computer via one of the numbered LAN ports (not the WAN port -- don't use that for an Access Point). - Upon booting up the computer, I opened my browser and went to the default router location of 192.168.1.1 (the default password is "admin"). This brought up the Setup | Basic Setup tab. - In the upper right corner, I noted that the "Firmware Version" was 4.30.14. Previously, I had checked the Linksys support page and downloaded the latest firmware (4.30.15). So, I went to the Administration | Firmware Upgrade tab and upgraded the firmware. When that was done, I reset the WRT54GL to it's factory defaults by holding the reset pin on the back for 30 seconds. - My existing network router/DHCP server is at 192.168.1.251 and manages the IP range from 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.149. So, once I was back at the WRT54GL's default page, I changed the "Local IP Address" from its 192.168.1.1 address to something within my existing subnet that wouldn't conflict (192.168.1.10). I also Disabled the "DHCP Server" and set my Time Zone. I then hit the "Save Settings" button at the bottom of the screen (I won't include this "Save" process in the rest of my bullets -- just assume it's there). - After it was done, I unplugged the WRT54GL from the power and the computer, and turned off the computer. I connected the cable from the WRT54GL's numbered LAN port to a port on a switch on my wired network (a port on my router in my wired network would also work), plugged the computer back into the switch, too, and powered everything back up. - This time, I browsed to the WRT54GL's new address of 192.168.10, went to Administration | Management and reset my "Router Password" to a good, strong value. - On the Wireless | Basic Wireless tab, I changed the "Wireless Network Name (SSID)" to a good, strong value, Disabled "Wireless SSID Broadcast", and changed the "Wireless Channel" to what I wanted. - On the Wireless | Wireless Security tab, I set the "Security Mode" to "WPA2 Personal" and entered a good, strong "WPA Shared Key." - That's it. The WRT54GL now functions as a Wireless Access Point. Since nothing's hooked to its WAN port and its DHCP Server is disabled, all the IP addressing for everything coming through the WRT54GL is handled by my wired network's router/DHCP server.