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Comment by yial | Hacker News Reader

I still have one of these in a box. Maybe two as I used to encourage friends to buy them years ago.

I only stopped using it(with some custom firmware) about a year and a half ago because it was just too slow - and had gotten this weird issue where it would cut off the internet to some devices while keeping them on the network.

It was really by luck that I had one of these in my teenage years initially to play with. I sometimes wonder what hobbies I would have developed if I hadn’t lucked out and found working computer in the trash, or my parents had bought something that wasn’t such an easily moddable desktop (AMD K6-2 was the CPU in the first computer they purchased).

Anyway - the WRT54G really was a fun piece of hardware to play with.

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> because it was just too slow

The WAN to LAN throughput on a wrt54g is only like 34mbits/s. It’s just too slow to handle a fast internet connection. I guess the fact that so many are still being used shows how ISP connection speeds have stagnated.

Or that there simply is no need for that high a bandwidth. Netflix, e.g., uses fancy compression algorithms and you can almost watch their HD offerings with ~3mbps. They do recommend 5mbps and 25mbps for their 4k content.

I so wished, I could get here a 6mbps connection for half the price of my current 65mps line.

So there's a need for it, it's just that you don't have a need for it.

I'm happy with my 1gbps connection where I can download a 50GB game in less than 10 minutes.

I know that there is use for it ("any space will be filled"). A buddy of mine has two teenage boys -- 'nough said. I just don't see that as explaining the market for 100Mbps+ connections to the home and such routers.

Your use case reminds me of the (mystical?) fellow who allegedly complained that his new graphics card didn't allow him to play his favorite 3D FPS game and watch a movie simultaneously.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Honestly I think you're a bit out of touch with how people use the internet today.

I've got two monitors.

I've played an MMORPG before where I have a YouTube video playing on the other monitor.

This has been possible for probably 10 years.

Also yes. People live in homes with other people either as a family or house/flat sharing.

Who all use the internet at the same time.

What if they all want to watch 4k video in their room? Whilst their consoles (Nintendo Switch, PS5 or Xbox Series X) are downloading games/updates.

If they want to maintain 4k streaming, they're going to need a fast download speed.

Google Stadia, Amazon Luna, Nvidia GeforceNow are game streaming applications, they require good throughput in addition to low latency.

Low latency requires an uncongested connection.

What if they work on photos and videos in the cloud? They can load them up faster to work on. Rather than requiring a signifant local storage.

Especially if they have symmetric upload speeds.

100Mbps+ is clearly beneficial.

You're conflating your lack of need for fast internet with everyone else not needing it.

I do this. I watch Netflix and play video games at the same time. So I guess my point is this is a use case which exists. My GPU handles it just fine though.

Another point is that old wireless tech is inefficient so it reduces your smartphone's battery life. Faster connection able to work faster, so the device can go to sleep state early, even when streaming Netflix.

You might not have a need for it but others do. It really sucks to buy a new game after work and see that you won't be able to play it that night because it has a 5 hour download time.

Bro, when I want to play games with friends I frequently have to update to play because I play so rarely. Speed means lower latency to startup.

If you still want to live that WRT life with something like OpenWRT/LEDE (I think they re-merged now just under OpenWRT but I'm running LEDE currently) then I can highly recommend this [0] updated version. I have it and I can get gigabit speeds (wired) through it just fine and don't have any issues with the wireless other than at the far, far end of my house and only sometimes.

My next router will probably be a Ubiquity setup so I can setup 2-3 AP's for full coverage and coverage out to the (detached) garage but that setup is not cheap or simple and my current issues are so minor that it will be a while before I pull the trigger on that.

[0] https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JOXW3YE/

I bought a WRT3200ACM back in 2018. I wasn't able to get Tomato flashed onto it (Shibby or FreshTomato). I've flashed Tomato onto what feels like every other router under the sun (many dozens of models with a handful of different techniques tftp included). I wound up returning it and sticking with my RT-AC3200 instead.

Do you know if the situation has changed? Or do you still have to switch to OpenWRT or similar to use it?

I'm still running a WRT54GL with Tomato firmware on at my parents place. I used it until I upgraded to a faster one, but the reason it's still running is that it provides the longest 2.4GHz range which is perfect for a large house. I've tried Ubiquity, newer ASUS routers and the range is shorter and their devices prefers to connect to the WRT54G. And my parents don't need super fast wifi, just a stable one.

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