WRT54GL

Jesus, I installed maybe almost 100 of those (mostly the GL, reflashed)…. It really was the king! And it’s only 20 years ago.

Not sure about the G, but my WRT54GL was strictly 10/100. I loved that thing to death, but I outgrew its badwidth the moment I was able to get rid of my ADSL connection. Not that wireless clients had too much chance to max out the 25 Mbps ADSL using 802.11g, but I didn't care about wifi that much.

Got an old Fujitsu Futro S920 for basically free, threw in some cheap, 2 port Intel NIC, installed OPNsense and called it a day. Switching is done by 2 (also cheap) TP-Link managed switches and I have a UniFi AC-PRO for my wireless needs. Gives me enough flexibility to have a few VLANs, while not breaking the bank either. 1 Gbps is enough for me now - maybe I'll upgrade some stuff in the future if I'll have actual demand for it.

I had a Linksys WRT54GL, and I thought that router was awesome at the time. I've also had one of those Asus routers, and I thought it was pretty good. I had installed 3rd-party firmware on mine though; I had DD-WRT on the Linksys (though you might need the GL version for that rather than the G), and I ran Tomato on my Asus router. Currently, I have a Netgear Nighthawk R7800 router (which is capable of running DD-WRT), which is currently [$90 on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0192911RA). But that model is at least 5 years old now, and I imagine there are probably better routers available (though not sure how affordable they are).

I actually retired a WRT54GL running DDWRT that was in my parents cabin last year! Still worked great, only had 30mbps WISP ptp wan so no huge need to upgrade. I still have it. It's sitting in a box at the cabin, I couldn't bear to send it to the dump

I still have an OG WRT54G in the attic in a box.  Also the AC 1900 TMobile Personal Hotspot, reflashed to what it is, a rebranded RT-AC68U, it's working flawlessly as a wifi mesh node. 

You can't even buy the WRT54G. I know because I still hoard a stack of WRT54G-L's in storage because I loved them so much I couldn't part ways with them. That being said get one of the Asus models in the $100 price range. They're perfectly capable and running Merlin firmware can do so much more.

Networking equipment should not be BIFL. Technology changes and gets better. Just because something CAN work doesn't mean you should still use it. My old Linksys WRT router was awesome, but it could never go faster than 54mbps on wireless. Later devices were faster, but struggled with more than a few wireless devices. My old router would max out at 10 devices and then pretty much self destruct. My current stuff can handle hundreds of devices, but I have access points that are gen 5 and can't do the faster speeds. Even now, I'm wishing I had 2.5gb or 10gb ethernet capabilities, and if I could actually come up with a practical use case where 2.5 or 10gb would make my life better, I would drop $200-400 on a new switch to allow me to upgrade.

Rule of thumb I tell customers is you can usually troubleshoot issues if it’s younger than 5 years. 5 years and beyond if you have trouble you can put a bandaid on it but start making plans to replace it. My favorite thing is when customers call and they’ve got N150s / WRTs / etc like “WHY AM I NOT GETTING MY SPEEDS”, no fucking kidding you aren’t