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!