Replacing a Linksys WRT54G?

[stroberaver]

Well, I'm toying with the idea of replacing my venerable Linksys WRT54G wireless cable router.

There's nothing wrong with it - these things are pretty damn faultless as far as I'm concerned. It's on official firmware, and is simply rock solid. It never crashes, never fails, never overheats despite being stuck in a cabinet with little ventilation, it simply keeps going and going. I have never once had to do a reset on it for any reason in over 4 years of constant usage. Even the wireless never so much as hiccups.

But it doesn't have gigabit ethernet ports, and everything else connected to the network has a gigabit connection, so it's slowing things down. I'm a keen photographer, and backing up raw files to my NAS takes an age.

Just wondering, is there anything on the market with similar flawless reliability and dependability as the WRT54G, but with gigabit LAN ports? If not, I'll just keep going with the WRT54G, as I wouldn't swap the reliability for anything.

[gss03]

Why not just buy an 8 port gigabit switch, hang it off the WRT54G and get plug all your devices into that? Keeping your WRT54G, but getting the gigabit network connectivity you want.

[stroberaver]

Ooh, I didn't realise I could do that. I thought the network speed would drop to the slowest link in the chain, which would still be the router?

[alsenior]

Ooh, I didn't realise I could do that. I thought the network speed would drop to the slowest link in the chain, which would still be the router?

that is how it used to be with hubs but with modern switches each port can communicate at its own speed. its just the slowest link on the route that determines the speed of the whole transfer.

[Pulseammo]

Yep, another vote for the switch. I'm running a WRT54GS here and seriously love it (had it for about 4 years as well I think), I'm running OpenWRT on it and the flexibility of the firmware is amazing if you ever run into the need for it, especially the QoS stuff that it can do. Just buy a switch, it'll run at full speed.