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Ubiquiti devices all the way [1] [2]. They're the hacker's choice!

Before I discovered Ubiquiti, the Linksys WRT54Gx series was my goto. The problem with them is that, as a given WRT54Gx line matures, they usually shave down the specs. You can see that in action with the WRT54GS series here [3], which debuted with 8MB of flash and now only sports 2MB. Good luck getting anything useful into 2MB.

The other problem with the WRT54Gx's is that there's quite a lot of hardware and architecture variation under the hood. You're usually fine, but I do have one WRT54G-RG at home here that wouldn't even take OpenWRT. It's running DD-WRT, which is a ghetto. (I see some other commenters here feel similarly).

Anyway the Ubiquiti PicoStation 2HP, by contrast, has

  - 8MB of flash
  - 32MB of RAM
  - a nice Atheros SoC which transmits at the legal max of 1000 mW
  - can easily be outfitted with high gain external antennas
  - works perfectly under OpenWRT, and
  - is competitively priced at $78 [4]

The only downside: if you need extra ethernet ports, you'll want a separate switch or possibly a wired router. But I think it's worth it. You shouldn't put an all-in-one wireless / router device on the public internet. The commenter who runs pfSense on an x86 system has the right idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6829315

Source: I started a live entertainment company 4 years ago. We use Ubiquiti equipment in all our shows, and we've deployed about 50 PicoStations with our own OpenWRT packages to date.

[1] http://www.ubnt.com/picostation

[2] http://www.ubnt.com/nanostation

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_WRT54G_series#WRT54GS

[4] http://store.netgate.com/Ubiquiti-PicoStation2HP-80211bg-100...

For the unfamiliar... The Linksys WRT54Gx series were (and still are) incredibly popular, but to anyone considering buying one for use today: Please don't!

They've haven't been manufactured in years, will max out at about 35Mbps LAN-WAN throughput, have tiny flash (as noted above) and only support 802.11b/g.

There's plenty of modern-day equivalents to choose from. If you're really budget constrained, the cheapest widely available OpenWrt & DD-Wrt capable router I know of is the TP-Link TL-WR74x series which can be bought for <$20.

I still have a WRT54G from college. I didn't realize I had it until I had to work on my parents' network and found it plugged in. It did not survive the visit.

They were easy to set up and ran well at the time. Now, yes, definitely not something to pick up given all the vastly better alternatives out there.

I have to wonder what the difference in BOM costs there is between 8MB of flash and 2MB of flash? Consumer USB flash prices in the 10+GB range are around 0.05 pennies per MB. Surely at the point, the cost of the enclosure dwarfs the cost of the actual memory for flash chips in the MB range.

It seems like the cost of retooling would far outweigh any cost savings from spinning a new rev with 6MB less flash.

They sell a lot more than just the WRT54 and are terrified that the $250 market (or whatever) will collapse if people start buying low end models and reflashing to gain features.

Its a market segmentation game. They'd gladly pay $5 extra for less memory, if neutering the low end device saves the sale of a high end $200 model.

You may wish to look into who owns Linksys.

> You may wish to look into who owns Linksys.

I think you're referring to Cisco, who manufactures higher-end networking equipment. But recently, Belkin bought Linksys from Cisco: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57574628-92/belkin-complete...

Most of these router devices use NOR flash; much more expensive than NAND, which is the one you're used to seeing in USB sticks.

One thing I don't like is that Ubiquiti doesn't support real POE(802.3af/at). I would like to plug my 3xAircam, 2x AP, and Airvision NVR into my POE switch. But I have to have all these injectors hanging off my cables if I don't want to buy their switch.

Ubiquiti does make an 802.3af adapter.

http://www.ubnt.com/8023af

I know, but it just moves where I end up putting an adapter. It can't cost that much more for them to put in 802.3, they already have a DC-DC converter. They just need to drop down from 48v with 802.3.

Ah, only 100mbit and 802.11B/G.

I'm not familiar with anything past simple networking - is it possible to prevent your whole network being slowed to 100mbit while still using this device?

> Ah, only 100mbit and 802.11B/G.

Ubiquiti does have newer 802.11n / 5GHz APs too.

> is it possible to prevent your whole network being slowed to 100mbit while still using this device?

If you wire it into a gigabit switch, only that port on the switch should operate at 10/100.

And in my experience you don't even get 100 Mbit. Comcast recently doubled my download speed to 60 Mbit and I quickly realized my WRT54G was only capable of downloading up to 30 Mbit. Typically I'd expect to see close to 10 MB/sec over 100Base-T but I was getting about 3.5 MB/sec max. It seemed to only be on the WAN port because I was able to stream stuff from my NAS at close to 10 MB/sec. It was disappointing so I upgraded to the WNR3500L which is working great. Both were running DD-WRT and worked well with it.

>works perfectly under OpenWRT

Is the support really that good? The openwrt hardware page seems rather sparse[1] compared to more common devices. They are also harder to find in Europe but hopefully that will improve.

[1]http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/picostation2

> Is the support really that good?

Yes. Prebuilt images for the Ubiquiti devices have been a part of every OpenWRT release for a while now.

http://downloads.openwrt.org/backfire/10.03.1/atheros/ http://downloads.openwrt.org/attitude_adjustment/12.09-rc2/a...

Sounds like the wiki needs an update, then.

As someone who has no idea what they're asking, how do the different memory sizes affect "buffer bloat".

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