Linksys WRT54GL good enough for 100Mb?

wam7

wam7

wam7

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I used to own a WRT54GL which I sold when I got a ADSL line.
I am now back on 100Mb cable with Virgin but they now supply a 'Super' hub which combines the Modem and Router. The Super Hub looks wonderful but it performs like a piece of crap (flaky wireless & temperamental WOL), even with the latest firmware.

Fortunately it has a 'modem only' mode so I can add a router. I was thinking of buying back an WRT54GL but I am not sure it will handle the 100Mb WAN to LAN that I regularly download at. Even running the CPU at 250Mhz like I used to.

I am not that bothered about Wifi speeds. I just need something that does WOL reliably (which the Superhub doesn't or I would persevere with it) and can handle 100Mb WAN to LAN without being a bottleneck.

If the WRT54GL can't cut it are there any recommendations for something that's good value for money that will?
 
I think I read that around 20mb is around the useable limit for the WRT54GL, I had one on my 20mb ntl which was fine, but read about people on 50 saying it started to flake a little..
 
There's a chart here although I'm not sure how accurate it is, it states 53mbps for the WRT54GL as wan to lan throughput.

I've just finished building myself a Pentium PFSense box, nice little project if a bit expensive but it should be good for 1Gbit. :p

The RT-N56U looks to be the daddy acording to those charts.
 
mmj_uk said:
There's a chart here although I'm not sure how accurate it is, it states 53mbps for the WRT54GL as wan to lan throughput.

I've just finished building myself a Pentium PFSense box, nice little project if a bit expensive but it should be good for 1Gbit. :p

The RT-N56U looks to be the daddy acording to those charts.
Click to expand...

Hmm..that's higher than I thought. Good info.
 
It also depends on if you have any custom stuff running on the router. I know my wrt54gl dropped in max WAN to LAN throughput when i put tomato on it. It was still fast enough for my 20 Mb connection at the time, and the extra features of tomato were totally worth the drop in max throughput (which I couldn't even reach on 20 Mb anyway so no downsides).
 
I've got the WRT54GL running Tomato firmware and I'm able to get the full 38Mb/sec that my FTTC connection offers. I'm currently looking for a Tomato compatible router with gigabit WAN ready for when FTTC goes 80/20 and the Asus range looks to be the best based on the reviews they get.
 
Jamauk said:
I've got the WRT54GL running Tomato firmware and I'm able to get the full 38Mb/sec that my FTTC connection offers. I'm currently looking for a Tomato compatible router with gigabit WAN ready for when FTTC goes 80/20 and the Asus range looks to be the best based on the reviews they get.
Click to expand...

I love my linksys E3000's. I got 2 of them for a uni project and I now have 1 of them running a dd-wrt mini build (basically it can handle most basic router duties) and one running a dd-wrt mega build (which uses a usb memory stick attached to the usb port to hold the optware and can run quite a lot of extra services/small applications). it has the gigabit WAN port you are after and is more than powerful enough for new/upcomming home internet connections.
 
I also have the WRT54GL running Tomato firmware and have virgin 50mb and it runs fine. Get full speeds and is very stable, not sure how much more speed you can get out of it though..
 
11g won't do more than ~25Mb on the faster models, so 11n is the way to go. I've had a Linksys E3000 for over a year now and it's the best router I've ever owned. I've had to reboot it a grand total of zero times (not counting firmware updates and such of course).
 
ferret face said:
I also have the WRT54GL running Tomato firmware and have virgin 50mb and it runs fine. Get full speeds and is very stable, not sure how much more speed you can get out of it though..
Click to expand...

This, my trusty little tomatoed 54GL has been running a 50Mb connection since launch.
I have no doubt it'll trip over it's own digital shoelaces when 100Mb hits however.
 
BloodyL said:
Sorry, i missed the wifi stipulation. ooops.
the WAN to LAN is perfect, the wifi is too slow for 50mb let alone 100.

[edit] on second reading, the OP is asking about WAN to LAN, not WAN to WIFI. :) [/edit]
Click to expand...
Right. :) I think I'm just too into my WiFi these days. Can barely wait for 11ac. :D Yeah if it's just WAN-LAN then it'll be fine.
 
Managed to get one from a kind soul from the MM. I will report back once I've tried out DD-Wrt and Tomato.
 
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