2026-01-11

So those that read this here phlog of mine probably already know
that I don't care much for having the latest and greatest in
computing.  I mean my main laptop that I use every single day as
my daily driver is a 14 year old HP elitebook...

And that extends to a lot of other parts of my computing environment
including my network equipment. And I am sad to report that my
trusty Linksys WRT54Gv3 router has given up the ghost and died...but
not because it stopped working. No no no, these old routers are
complete tanks.

It's because I spilled water on it from an uncovered cup straight
into the top of its vent holes. There's really no coming back from
that.

You're probably thinking to yourself 'how in the heck can you still
be using such a slow router in these modern days?'

The reality is that my linksys really stopped being my internet
router a few years ago when I dumped my DSL connection (in 2019...lol)
and just lived on as the DHCP server for my ethernet LAN. My
computers connect to a wireless 4G router via wi-fi for internet.

For those who are too young at this point to know about the Linksys
WRT54G, it was probably the first well known and widely distributed
piece of hardware that people routinely "jailbroke" to install
their own linux on. Of course "jailbroke" is not the right term
since nothing was actually locked down. You would just download a
firmware image from the internet and then go to the admin page of
your linksys router and update the firmware to OpenWRT or Tomato
router and boom, like magic your $50 dollar consumer router was
running linux and you could do all sorts of things like QoS, ad
filtering, VPNs, VLANS and all sorts of high dollar stuff that was
unavailable on consumer devices at the time.

It was a revolution genuinely. These linksys routers were sold by
the millions and you could walk into a Best Buy or Circuit City
and with one firmware update have the somewhat equivalent of a
commercial router costing hundreds of dollars for only 50 bucks.

But anyways, you're probably wondering what I replaced my dead
Linksys WRT54G router with? Hah trick question...it's another
Linksys WRT54G!

about 15 years ago, I bought a bunch of these routers to use as
cheap Wifi bridges for some IP cameras. In the old days, a lot of
early IP cameras were ethernet only and these linksys routers made
great supercheap Wifi bridges because guess what? One of the cool
things you could do with your linux firmware was make them connect
to already existing wifi APs and then connect any wired ethernet
device to them!

Alas, I'm down to my last WRT54G...but as long as I don't spill
any water on it, i think it will be good for another 15 years.

PS. Yes if you're wondering, I was using fast ethernet (100Mbps)
LAN for a long long time. I only attached a 1Gbps switch to my
linksys last year...What can I say? I'm a luddite :-P