the wrt54g sucks, what should i replace it with?

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hans007

Lifer
Feb 1, 2000
20,212
18
81
I have had a wrt54g 3.1 for years now.

And well what I have concluded is this. All manner of 3rd party firmware will never fix its "slows to a crawl and turns into crap" problem if you run torrents on it.

I have lowered the number of simultaneous connections (which i really shouldn't have to if it was say a real computer being used as a router) , put on the lastest hyperwrt , dd-wrt what have you and it still is slowing down.

All the customizability is great, but for actual routing of internet traffic uh. it sucks.

So what is a good replacement? Does linksys have a router that actually works well since I know this is a pretty old router at this point.
 
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Madwand1

Diamond Member
Jan 23, 2006
3,309
0
76
For massive torrents, you're probably best off getting an old/cheap computer and running router software on it.
 
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perdomot

Golden Member
Dec 7, 2004
1,390
0
76
Madwand1,
What do you mean "running router software"? I download a lot of anime torrents and would be interested in more info.
 
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TC10284

Senior member
Nov 1, 2005
308
0
0
I've been using an old computer with two NICs (well three now.....WAN, LAN, and DMZ) for a few years now.
Mine's rock solid and fast. I used to do a lot of file sharing a few years back.
I personally use IPCop on a P3 733MHz with 256MB of RAM. But you don't have to have a system that "new". You can run it on much older hardware.

There are many. Just do a google search. Here are a few however:

IPCop (in use)
SmoothWall (used)
BrazilFW (used - probably my second fav)
FloppyFW (used)
Freesco
Coyote Linux

Just get an old computer, two decent branded NICs such as two Realtek, Intel, 3Com, etc, and a switch and after setup, you should be good. Note that PCI works best. ISA NICs are a real pain sometimes to setup with about any router software.

I can't say much for support for any others besides IPCop and BrazilFW. The IPCop forums are sometimes hard to get logged in to.
 
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hans007

Lifer
Feb 1, 2000
20,212
18
81
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: TC10284
I've been using an old computer with two NICs (well three now.....WAN, LAN, and DMZ) for a few years now.
Mine's rock solid and fast. I used to do a lot of file sharing a few years back.
I personally use IPCop on a P3 733MHz with 256MB of RAM. But you don't have to have a system that "new". You can run it on much older hardware.

There are many. Just do a google search. Here are a few however:

IPCop (in use)
SmoothWall (used)
BrazilFW (used - probably my second fav)
FloppyFW (used)
Freesco
Coyote Linux

Just get an old computer, two decent branded NICs such as two Realtek, Intel, 3Com, etc, and a switch and after setup, you should be good. Note that PCI works best. ISA NICs are a real pain sometimes to setup with about any router software.

I can't say much for support for any others besides IPCop and BrazilFW. The IPCop forums are sometimes hard to get logged in to.</end quote></div>

well i've got a spare pc, that runs ubuntu 7.04 a celeron 2.66 with 512mb ram. i suppose if i just plug an extra nic into it that should be ok, maybe a little overkill but if it fixes the problem might be worth it.
 
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TC10284

Senior member
Nov 1, 2005
308
0
0
That is quite overkill. You can use anything as old as a 386 with some of those distros (floppyFW). But I'd stay in the PCI era which would be late 486 and up. I use advproxy and updateaccelerator with IPCop. Just some neat features you can look up after initially getting it installed and learn it.

I haven't really tried newer onboard NICs. But as long as they are common models that the distro supports, you shouldn't have any trouble. I sometimes have trouble figuring out which NIC is LAN and which is WAN, but other than that...
 
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perdomot

Golden Member
Dec 7, 2004
1,390
0
76
Hate to sound so ignorant but after checking out the links of IPCop, I still can't figure out what kind of advantages it offers for large bittorrent downloads. Can someone explain it a little more clearly? I currently have two PCs connected via gigabit switch and that is hooked into my router and cable modem. I want to get the best performance possible for any downloads I want so how would IPCop help? Thanks.
 
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TC10284

Senior member
Nov 1, 2005
308
0
0
Basically from what I've experienced, routers made out of old PCs/NICs won't "crap out" on you like some cheaper standalone routers that drop connectivity to the Internet. I've experienced it personally with Linksys and other standalone routers.
I recently replaced a cheap Belkin router at a nursing home that was dropping connection due to lots of users/traffic with a router made out of an old PC. So far, I have not heard them complain of any Internet outages due to their router.

And from what I've heard, certain versions (or maybe all) of the WRT54G gets really crappy when you have a specific amount of simultaneous transfers going on.
Where a PC-based router will help, is, as I mentioned, not crapping out with lots of transfers. You can always put in another NIC into your Celeron system, and make yourself a bootable BrazilFW floppy or USB key, and use it without even touching your Ubuntu install to see if it helps with your torrents or not. But of course, downloading a lot at or near your WAN capacity will still cause some noticeable slow downs just because you are using lots of your down BW. And if there are lots of people uploading from you near your max up speed, then you don't have as much up BW to send SYN and ACK packets for your downloads.
 
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yuppiejr

Golden Member
Jul 31, 2002
1,317
0
0
If you want an "out of the box" router, the D-Link DGL-4300 is known for the number of simultaneous P2P connections it will support (along with good QoS features). Otherwise the old Linux IPCop or ClarkConnect firewall should do the trick if you're a bit more tech savy and have a spare old PC lying about.
 
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