Early 2000s Linksys Wi-Fi Gear
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- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
- Taking a look at some early 2000s Linksys routers, including the famous Linksys WRT54G. We'll setup a wireless-b wi-fi network and flash DD-WRT onto the WRT54G.
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That Windows XP wireless dialog makes me full of so much nostalgia, and frustration, from the hassle that wireless was back in these days.
i love the focus on networking and enterprise gear compared to other retro computing channels
Thanks!
To be fair there is probably some of this gear floating around a warehouse somewhere still doing its job.
especially as lots of rero devices also have networking, so can be used for mixing with them period accurate
@@clabretroback in the day Linksys had a lot of good stuff and to this day I still use Linksys very good routers I have 2 ac routers that are very reliable and them are the same setup page 10:51 they still used in the WiFi N and some ac stuff when Wi-Fi 5 1st came out
My dad had a whole bunch of Linksys stuff floating around the house back in the day. Even as a kid, I was fascinated by how good they looked... like expensive glowing LEGO bricks.
The Motorola surfboard modems and these routers were like the default cable networking setup for the 2000s.
I had one of those too
Absolutely! Massive nostalgia.
Yep!! Your comment gave me a flashback to Singapore in 2005, when StarHub provided both a Motorola Surfboard SB5100 and Linksys WRT54G to their home Internet subscribers, including my family.
Wi-Fi (or Wireless LAN as it was called back then) was such new technology for us that I was just blown away at not only not having to run a long Ethernet cable from the modem to the bed when I wanted to use my dad's laptop there, but also for more than one computer in the same house to be connected to the Internet at the same time.
@@kbhasi In Belgium our cable provider had the same setup except they didn't like routers because they charged per IP-address so we got the WAP54G (access point). I also remember you had to release the ip from the modem when you wanted to connect another PC because the lease time was set on an hourly clock and the IP was given to only 1 MAC-address. Placing a router behind the modem solved that whole "1 IP" issue of course.
Definitely, in the early/ mid 2000s. I think the surfboard was the only cable modem that Comcast provided because that was also before the copper phone lines were done away with. It did not need the phone ATA adapters, that and also the massive silver Motorola or scientific Atlantica cable boxes that always seem to have the most ungodly noisy hard drives for the DVRs
Back when I was in middle school (late 2000s) I had acquired a couple of stackable Linksys devices from the thrift store, including a wired router and wireless G access point. My parents let me maintain the home network and that's how I learned most of my networking knowledge. Those devices were so cool.
best way to learn, by doing!
I only remember the 2010s
u in IT?
Heh, took two down to a resort that charged for wifi per device. One was setup as a bridge like shown here and was signed into the resort wifi. The second was setup as a normal access point. The group of us in adjacent rooms got wifi on all devices for the price of one.
ha awesome
WRT54G's firmware served as the basis for so many other routers.
@neighbor‘s network: Up to 802.11n a lot of wireless APs/routers worked in b/g/n compatible mode. So it might very well be an n-standard network which is still backwards compatible to b-standard. Even some 802.11ac APs are set to a/b/g/n/ac compatibility by default.
I still use b
These were definitely iconic with the consistent color scheme and stacking. I love when products feels like part of the same "family". It's so awesome to know there's other folks out there that appreciate stuff like this. XD
Still have a WRT54GL, I bought used many time ago, before anything vintage begins to be crazy expensive. The TNC antenna, 12V DC very useful to use outdoors in Wi-Fi parties, and the custom firmware, lot of good things to remember of
Later in life I met someone who works in Linksys at time, they liked the product as much as the costumers
Interesting about the Linksys employee. There always seems to be a correlation between the employees liking what they're creating and a good product.
I remember playing with DDWRT on these old routers when I was in high school. In 2013/14, all I could get was essentially e-waste, but it worked out well! Was able to set up multiple bridges and extend my parents' network. Fun times...miss being 16 and playing with this stuff after school.
Blowing my mind that this was 10 years ago as I'm about to turn 26 next week 🥺
A very happy early birthday wishes to you.
@@keithnsearle7393 thank you very much!! That is very nice of you :)
12:43 Its just a 2.4GHz network. Not Wireless B. By default routers that support wireless N are also backwards compatible with Wireless B & G. The only time it is not is if you manually disabled it.
oh yeah, good point
When those started showing up at thrift stores for around less than 10 dollars, I would always pick up the ones that were DD-WRT compatible and "liberate" them. I was running a pair of them with the second one acting as a range extending AP until around 2014 or 2015. I kept a third one around as a wireless bridge for cases where I needed to install Debian on something where the wireless drivers weren't shipped with the installer.
Oh man. Ya a blast from the past. I loved DD-WRT. I had 4 of the 54Gs in my house sporting DD-WRT. The early 200s where such a time.
I loved how they stacked. I always had several of them running and they looked nice all stacked up in the cabinet.
I loved WRT54G, with custom firmware you could also set the wattage of transmittion way higher then leagal limit in most part of the world.. kind of scary high actually as you could use it as a wifi jammer.. But I used it as you, as bridge, so I could connect my old Xbox and other none wifi units to it with ethernet cable. It was really fun to play around with :)
There's something special about new PCI cards. Even for something so basic, I still feel that dopamine hit for "new hardware".
agreed!
The neighbor having a wireless B router is crazy
Wireless B compatible to be more accurate. Nearly every N router comes fully compatible with B, and even on more modern equipment B compatibility isn't rare at all.
How do you know it is 802.11b? WPA2 is kind of outdated though
Because the network card was only able to understand 802.11b, if it was strictly g/n, it wouldn't show up. Of course, this doesn't mean the router is b only, but at least has b backwards compatibility turned on
nice. I miss these units. The stacking feature was the coolest part of them.
I still use my 54g as a bridge and it just works. Never have problems so different for most of the newer stuff out nowadays.
Brings back memories. I used to share my Dial Up internet to a second PC back in the late 1990s/early 2000s over wireless B with internet connection sharing and the older SMC Wireless b routers. We've come a long way since then haha.
Those older WRT54G routers (the early revisions) had the wireless controlled by an actual removable card that you could take out and pop in your laptop of the same era. There were broadcom drivers for it online somewhere and you had a "free" wireless g upgrade for your laptop. I may or may have not done this haha. If you pop open the WRT54G you may notice the card is removable, if you have an old enough revision. ;)
oh wow, I didn't know that!
nice to see a wrt54g, I was helping folks set those up back in 2006. brings back some memories
Used lots of Linksys gears back in the days, I liked that they were so easy to stack, router and 2-3 switches had a small footprint and still lots of connections.
I had a linksys 54g with ddwrt up on my tower for 8 years in client mode and it worked without a hitch to get internet from distant source . I powered it via the cat5 cable and had one of the antenna connectors plugged into an external flat antenna with good gain. My water proofing was simple and effective - it was a five quart plastic oil bottle with the bottom cut open and then just slid the router inside. I used a piece of wire through the oil bottle handle to hold it on the tower. I was always amazed that even during heavy rains and snowstorms and extreme cold the wifi signal came in no problem. The plastic oil bottle finally crumbled from sunlight so I just put it in a new one. But now I actually have my own internet so don't need to use it any longer.
Still have a Linksys 54g stored in its original box. Nice idea using it to connect my retro pc's to it. Gonda make that a future project.
I still use my 54G for this very purpose, wireless bridging is awesome for when you don't need much bandwidth and you don't want/can't run a wire
what a nostalgia trip seeing that router configuration page again. So many childhood memories of screwing around in there with no clue at all what I was doing. Good times.
Great vid! Thanks for the memories :)
thanks for watching!
My first wireless network! Picked up the router and usb wifi adapter when I worked at Best Buy at the time.
Great video! My company supplied internet and VOIP to 21 McDonalds restaurants. We ran Metro E to the stores and used Cisco routers and switches in each store office They wanted a custom wireless setup for their customers so we bought the 54Gs off of Ebay and flashed a custom load with DD-WRT that loaded a McDonalds splash screen and terms of service whenever a customer logged in (along with commercials). We ran POE from the switch and ran the ethernet run into the ceiling over the dining room. We mounted the wireless routers upside down and drilled holes in the ceiling tiles to poke the wireless antennae through. We tried using the PCI cards in warehouse situations but never had much luck connecting them to the network.
I remember using these to create wireless bridges between two family members’ houses that were across the street from each other back in the day. I loved doing that kind of stuff.
Brings back old memories... Had BEFSR41, WAP11, WRT54GS and also a switch of the same form factor. Loved the stacking form factor at the time. Had a little mini tower of them.
I had one of these wireless routers in the early 2000s. I also had a Linksys 10 port switch connected to it. I also swapped out the stock antenna for a long pair of hi gain versions that Linsys sold separately.
I was always curious what the head end hardware that served DOCIS is like. I always thought it would be cool to use some vintage cable modems and set them up in your home network. When I worked for a hotel they used to have a cable modem in every room that provided wifi using the hotels COAX network so I dont feel it would be too much of a stretch to home lab that.
I was wondering about that too, could be an interesting little research project to see if I could feed that modem something it could actually do something with.
In case it helps your searching, the "router" between an ISP's Ethernet and DOCSIS networks is called a CMTS (Cable Modem Termination System). The similar device for DSL providers is called a DSLAM.
Please setup an entire cable internet provider in your home! After all you already run your own tv station! Only a logical conclusion.
Sounds like an awesome project for @TheSerialPort!
Good memories! The WRT54G + ddwrt was really nice combo back in those years!
The most underrated feature was the stackability. I had three units stacked and would drill out larger vent holes, mount 120mm fans to the top and bottom of the stack and solder power to the 12v off the board. These things did run pretty toasty when you had more than one
I remember having to restart mine back in the day all the damn time. It would overheat constantly, but I do live in arizona and at the time lived somewhere that only had a swamp cooler. This was like 2003 or so.
I had one with a fan soldered in and zip-tied over a large hole cut in the top... 😆
Kinda surprised this didn't become a standard. Like a Home or SMB version of actual rack equipment. I could have seen NAS and other third party equipment following the same form factor.
I had a mountain of those back in the day.. the switches, routers, and about 5 of the 54G's with DD-WRT, used to do site Wifi for events with them as a closed lighting control network. one thing that sticks in my head with them was the later lesser ram models would take FOREVER! to accept some changes and refresh the page.
Oh man, I have so many memories of the 54G! Flashing DD-WRT was definitely one of my first experiences with modding hardware with open firmware.
Same!
@@clabretro same
Same. Made a world of difference reliability wise. I gave the router away to someone else and they used it for years afterward, never a complaint.
It’s funny, I have experience with early ubiquity stuff and as soon as I saw the ddwrt interface which I have no previous experience with I could immediately see the lore.
You know all those ubiquity founders did exactly this too.
As a 22 year old College networking student and nerd, you earned yourself a new sub! I love these!
thank you!
I own a few of these also. That "bigger barrel connector" is called a reverse TNC jack.
Linksys WRT54GL, what a fantastic piece of hardware it was. We switched in the very late 2000s (2010?) to DD-WRT and it was running in our house till around ~2015.
I still run my OG WRT54G v5 to this day. Incredible little devices.
I originally purchased a WRT54GL specifically for it's 3rd party firmware support. Ended up putting Tomato firmware on it, and it worked without issues. I only took it out of service to upgrade to use hardware that supported wifi N.
I tried tomato for awhile on one of mine back in the day. Wifi N was also the reason I eventually retired my original WRT54Gs.
this brought me back to my happy days cant believe those speeds just to get all the downloads done just fine
WRT54G + DD-WRT was the best home router setup for years.
I remember that beauty. It served me well growing up
I use one of these to this day as a wired switch in a lab setup for work.
I loved my 54G i had one when i was in high school and i used it to attach to the neighbors WiFi that was WEP so easy to hack. Such gear memories
I think I still have one or two of those routers somewhere in a box in my basement lol. I used one of those dongles for the longest time too.. Something like 2000-2009 or so... (Give or take a couple years.. I'm old lol)
My parents had one of these and it was eventually replaced with an E2500. I have no idea how I even remembered that model number, it's been over 10 years. But after almost every single router/modem in the country switched to Xfinity, I flashed DD-WRT to that and used it as a switch until 2017.
My grandpa had a switch that we used up until 2019 when we finally retired the computer it was on and switched the printer onto the network directly then.
Our first Wi-Fi was with the WRT54G and im still using the WPC54G CardBus adapter on my dads first laptop
Hey! Great video. My dad started off with his WRT54GL and OpenWRT. Or a fork of OpenWRT called Gargoyle. It was super duper cool, and I guess he had DSL/ADSL back then as well, then it transitioned to being a wireless bridge for some other device.. After that, this kickstarted my network journey, so my dad gave it to me after he switched to a TP-LINK router that could run OpenWRT. I flashed it to DD-WRT and set up networking at my grandma's house. Ironically, at my own home, the router currently used its a Linksys EA8100 running OpenWRT.
I think my dad had a Thomson Speed Touch series ADSL modem, saw it before haha. Most of the cable modems here is a Motorola SBV5121, as only one ISP provides Cable Modem service.
Thanks! Very cool. I've never used OpenWRT but I did flash Tomato onto one of my WRT54g's back in the day to try it out. It was so cool to unlock the wireless bridging on these old things.
@@clabretroyeah tomato is cool too! I flashed Tomato to one of a D-link router, that doesn't support DD-WRT nor OpenWRT, I think it was the DIR-865L.
Also, I think your neighbour showing up, its because of Legacy Compatibility, even if your network is capable of N/AC, it may fall back to B/G for backwards compatibility for older devices.
I'll bet you're right. I just hadn't had a router that supported B in so long I figured it was all G and up these days haha@@LeeZhiWei8219
Great video! Im subbing. Speed test comparison and showing more of the ddwrt would have been cool!
Thanks! I had planned to do some sort of speed comparison test but totally forgot. I'll add that if I ever get these into a video again!
802.11B also makes for a decent free guest network that offers minimal functionality without eating all your bandwidth.
I'd have to eyeball the connector better to be certain, but those are either SMA or RP-SMA on the PCI card, and TNC or RP-TNC (the RP is reverse polarity) on the routers. At the time it was a nightmare to get ahold of those connectors, now they're easily available if one wanted to make cables or adapters.
The 54G is definitely the OG router.
20:35 ah that Fry's Electronics price sticker.....the nostalgia
My first wifi modem was a motorola 54g wifi cable modem. I kept it untill 2019 when we got massive speed upgrade from 20 Mbps to 100 Mbps due to Reliance Jio 4G and Fibernet revolution!
That was the exact first wireless router I ever owned, makes me feel so old to think that these are now considered "retro" 😂
I also had a matching Linksys PCMCIA WiFi PC Card in my laptop!
Yeah I kinda couldn't believe it when I realized during filming that these were 20 years old haha.
As someone who was born in the perfect time (2004) where the internet was still young but was quickly changing it's always fascinating to see technology like this. To think just 20 years ago this was state of the art crazy to see how fast the world changes within such a short amount of time.
Nah 2004 to new. It was way more fun being able to trial all the crazy devices and Wild West internet versus it have being figured out and monetized fully by the time you were ACTUALLY using it. Versus someone born about 89-95
I still have a WRT54GL,I believe. It's got DD-WRT on it,and it's been working reliably for 2 decades at this point. I just got another 54G,I think it's a Ver. 6.0, that I plan to put DD-WRT on. It's a shame that they crippled the later versions with less storage and RAM..and that weird VxWorks thing. The older versions are Great with DD-WRT installed,if you can find one,and can deal with the slower 54Mbps/G speed.
Back in the day I had one setup as a wireless bridge/client to a couple of various open networks,using a can-tenna (Way faster than the dial-up I was stuck with at the time!).
My Favorite feature of DD-WRT is being able to turn the wifi radio on and off via the front button! I'm like you - hardwire everything. BUT,if I need Wifi,I can turn it on..and when I DON'T need Wifi, _I can turn it OFF_ . Makes things a little more secure. ;-)
Oh,I just remembered...It did get flaky,and I had to replace a couple of capacitors in it a while ago..but it's back up and running great! I also like the overclocking feature in DD-WRT. (because overclocking everything is just a given.) You can also hack SD-card storage onto them,along with some other nifty things(serial console,LCD display,etc.) You can tell I've been down the rabbit hole with these things.
Nice job fixing that flaky one with the re-cap. I had mine overclocked back in the day as well. I also picked up a version 2.0, might have a follow up video someday.
i worked in ISP tech support in the early 2000s and i keep thinking about customers who called in and called it "Linksky"
Working with the public is always fun. I had someone call in when I worked for a phone company and she asked about a "WeeWee" phone. She meant Huawei.
I check this channel daily for videos lol. Great work as always, keep the content coming!
ha thank you! always more projects on the way.
I still have my v.3 running tomato. 😊 Loved that thing. Now I'm stuck with the cable supplied crap.
Oh, the nostalgia! Now I've got a box full of that era Linksys stuff and don't know what to do with it.
loved these routers
I had one of these routers non Wi-Fi connected to my cable modem back in the day.
This brings back so many memories of high school! We had a converted shed that I used as my tech cave since it had electricity and A/C. The only thing it didn't have was Internet. I had a couple of these Linksys WRT54Gs and so I flashed them with DD-WRT and put one in my bedroom that was on the side of the house with the shed and I put the other in the shed. I used them to form a wireless bridge to get Ethernet access in my tech cave for all my old PCs. Worked great!
perfect use case!
16:59 "We will be reporting this error directly to Microsoft"
I still have my WRT54g router I'm no longer using it but I still have it and I have a linksys network switch actually have I have a few of them including a new one that I bought at best buy a few months ago. I've had the best luck with Cisco/Linksys gear.
I remember flashing DD-WRT to a Netgear R6300 and doing exactly what you did to get a wired network for my devices. Saved me purchasing a wireless adapter for each device I owned at the time.
Oh wow, thanks for the memories!
We used to have that linksys router well into 2015ish
I'm still running a WRT-54G with DD-WRT between my cable modem and my gigabit switch, because when I set it up our service was "up to 100Mbps" so it was adequate. I'm replacing it with a pfSense router this weekend because it does gigabit and with a recent service upgrade our modem's now the bottleneck.
Hah, I've got about half a dozen of them on my shelf. Including one still in its shrinkwrap.
Used to mess around with all sorts of things on them, including mesh networks and captive portals.
haha awesome
I had an early 5port gigabit switch from them which also was grey colored like that cable modem.
I think that the b network that your neighbor has is just the backwards compatibility. On my ASUS router that was released in 2015 (which still gets firmware updates to this day still), under the wireless mode there is an option to disable 11b.
yeah I bet you're right
“For years”, more like over a decade now! I remember exploiting the GPIO on these things to trigger relays in my apartment before Arduino’s were really a thing. How I never burnt anything down is beyond me 😂
Haha I keep hearing about the GPIO shenanigans, but I've never tried it. Might have to now.
I know that there are other routers and network gear that you can actually flash open wrt to as well I remember a while back buying some Aerohive 120 APs for cheap off of Amazon and I was able to flash a version of open wrt to them and manage and still use them even by today's standards
I used to have an old Linksys hub that looked just like those, don't remember the model number. This was way before wifi existed, like in the mid-late 90s. It was pretty sweet at the time.
Might have been the BEFSR41
@@clabretro that sounds familiar so probably!
Working on a LAN party right now where the theme is early to mid '00s, and couldnt do it without picking up one of these for everyone to connect to! We got thinkpads, acer travelmate 8004s, and a bunch of cool desktops connecting to these no problem and it's a blast testing it out so far. Can't wait to see everyone having fun on them. We even got a WoW server running on a Poweredge 2850!
Nice!!
That sounds pretty neat, if I did a themed land party I would probably do a early 2010's theme because for me and my group of friends that time was the best, multiple spaceheater gpus and a spaghetti mess of temporary wires coming out of an electrical panel because those computers were so power-hungry I would trip even the kitchen counter circuits in my parents house
@@coolsnake1134 That exact power hassle is one of the reasons why we limited to that era lmao
We grew up on these era of games and there's a certain feeling you just can't get any other way. We also plan to play some older titles
@@bluein_Doom, quake, q2, duke3d, blood & sw were the older titles I pray.
I've had about 9 or 10 WRT56G's, however the BEFSR41 has more nastaglias for me as it was my first 'hardware' NAT router. v 1.0 10 Mbps only for the WAN side.
So cool! I should have kept all those routers. Chances are you bought one of mine off of eBay! Keep up the great work.
haha quite possibly
After I got my WRT54G I never could go back. So I always bought routers that had the capability to flash DD-WRT.
It was after Asus started to make good router OS that I jumped the wagon, but I always put a custom firmware on those.
It was with the WRT54G my interest in hacking begun.
I remember my dad trying to install one of these. He was so angry by the end of the weekend
10:15 Confirmed. They were making these as late as 2005. In fact, I remember these popping up on Newegg as late as 2006, but at that point, I think it was stock they were looking to clear out of their warehouses.
It's interesting to see that they used non-removable antennas on the v8 as the v7.2 that i still have laying around does have them
yeah sorta interesting
Those blue USB antennas aka dog chew toys if your dog was tall enough to be enticed by the forbidden Linksys chew toy
Be glad that you were in the US, in Europe these things were expensive. And with a no used market to talk about, you had to buy new.
I had a modem once upon a time... probably 2009ish. Wasn't this Linksys one though, I just remember having the call the cable company and fight with them to activate it for me.
I've used a number of these with dd-wrt and couple of directional antennas as cheap, point-to-point network links.
ah man, so many fun think with the 11Mbit version
flashed the Dlink firmware in it, so many more options hehe
@4:33 usually uplink ports on older switches/hubs/routers would be bonded to the last port so you could use one or the other and the uplink port was crossover vs standard, later on with Auto MDI-X this was no longer needed.
oh interesting, didn't know about that. thank you!
Yeah, an extra 2-port *normal* *uplink* (use only *one* at the same time!) was cheaper as an extra switch if you have free space. A port costs 3 cent these times, an extra switch 10 cent (with extra fault for the normal user!), and was easy to handle if you known this then the plastic writing in same colours of the background is hilarious.
Auto-Uplink/Auto-MDI-X can be failed these times too and so do you need special cables all the times. So are extra 2-port devices was a big helper at these old times. 😂
Yes and the uplink port required the use of a crossover Ethernet cable….I think. Such things are moot with auto-negotiation/Auto MDI-X….
@@alexdhall No. If do you have an extra uplink-port do you need a normal 1:1 patch cable, the crossing is built-in in the port. Do you use only a special crossover cable if the port is normal e.g. use switch only to all your 10 MBit / 100 MBit Hubs only. Do you need only one full switch inside the scenario - all other can be (cheaper) hubs.
Today do you can use crossover cable till 100 MBit - all switches switching automatically.
Man I really miss those routers.
(Not the speeds relative to now though, lol)
ha, agreed
I bought a couple of the very early WRT-54G routers with all the extra lights up front. They do ok, but only an older version of DD-WRT will work on them, as newer ones will eventually crash on the web GUI. I forget which last version worked well with the WRT-54G hardware.
Good stuff. I keep a handful around to keep my Wii and other older Wireless G devices connected to.
I had these, they're amazing!
That's right, hardwire everything! I did a full CAT 6 to my house 2 years ago. Sure it has wifi, but all my retro gear and WFH office is wired to drops.
Nostalgic stuff. Well done
thanks!
Ah, the good old WRTs. Remember them very well; had one on my cable-modem, DD-WRT running, AND the SD-Card-Mod. And of course: selfmade Antennae, mostly the directed ones (remember the pringles-antenna? :) to link networks with friends who had a BIG DSL-connection back in the day, later a bi-quad for giving the garden some wifi :)
...can't do that with the gone-on-the-fritzbox anymore... (well one can mod them, but it's essentially no use to do so)
I had forgotten about that SD card mod! I've never done it... might have to try it now. I remember folks with the custom cantennas back in the day too :D
5:20 the 2000s Halo Xbox LAN party setup where you dragged a heavy TV to your friend's house or the party house. There was a point where I drove around with a TV in my backseat of my car protected in a seat belt just in case somebody said LAN party. I wanted to be ready