History of the WRT54G Open Source Firmware

At some point in early 2003, Andrew Miklas posted several times to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/6/7/164) about his discovery that Linksys was using General Public License (GPL) code in the firmware for the Linksys WRT54G. As part of the GPL, anyone who modifies the open code is required to release her modification back to the community, and Andrew was unable to locate the source for the modifications. Andrew opened communication with Linksys in order to get the modified software released back to the community, and he gathered some significant support in this endeavor.

Linux enthusiasts were made aware of Linksys’ use of open source software by several postings to Slashdot in June 2003.The Slashdot and Linux communities rallied to support the GPL, and made their opinions known that Linksys should comply with the GPL. Given the enormous pressure from the community, and a group of executives that understood the GPL at Linksys, Linksys released its modified code to the public under the GPL. In June 2003, Rob Flickenger posted to his O’Reilly blog about work that he had been performing during Hack Night sessions with Seattle Wireless. During these postings, Rob linked to the start of the tools for building your own custom firmware. Additionally, Andrew made some additional postings to the Linux Kernel Mailing List on methods and issues with cross-compiling code for the Linksys WRT54G.

From this point forward, we were able to create our own firmware, and many individuals did just that.This resulted in a number of different firmware versions, all with different add-ons.We will discuss a number of these firmware versions throughout this blog.

History of the Linksys WRT54G

Linksys began selling version 1.0 of the WRT54G in late 2002 as a home router, firewall, and wireless networking product. In the beginning, it was primarily intended to support wireless networks, and inclusion of additional features merely complemented the wireless capabilities. At that time, the device was relatively commonplace; it featured a wide area network (WAN) port, a four-port 10/100 switch, and 802.11b support.The device also shipped with a Web interface for configuration—a practice that had become popular with consumer devices in earlier years. Since the initial launch in 2002, Linksys has revised the hardware of the WRT54G several times to provide upgrades to the base unit.The device has proven popular enough that Linksys has spawned several similar models in the WRT54G series to deliver various features, speed enhancements, and form factors.

We will discuss a number of the models later in this chapter, and we will begin to see the natural progression that developments in technology have afforded the product line. This particular product line has been a very good seller for Linksys. Although sales figures for the device are typically not broken out from sales figures for Linksys as a whole, company executives have been quoted as saying,“We sell literally hundreds of thousands per month.”This popularity may be due, in part, to the ease with which you can modify the device, and as such a community of open source advocates and hardware hackers alike has embraced it readily.

With the recent official support from Linksys of third-party firmware through the release of the WRT54GL, Linksys is poised to sell even more units. We are currently seeing additional hardware revisions of the WRT54GL which, from an initial observation, seems to be following the trend of the original WRT54G series of hardware.With this continued development of the WRT54GL, and further adoption of open source methodologies, it appears clear that Linksys is committed to keeping the product line alive and well.This is good news for all of us who are tearing them open, and making them submit to our will!