Linksys Reviving The WRT54G Router In 802.11AC Form

Written by Michael Larabel in Hardware on 6 January 2014 at 02:31 PM EST. 15 Comments
HARDWARE
Many Phoronix readers likely recall the glory years of the open-source-friendly Linksys WRT54G router that for some is still a great device and there's still the thriving OpenWRT community. Good news out of CES today is that Linksys is letting the WRT54G live-on in the form of the 802.11ac-based WRT1900AC.

The WRT1900AC takes the WRT54G and updates it from 802.11g to 802.11ac while doubling the number of antennas, is relying upon a 1.2GHz dual-core ARM SoC, and is adding in eSATA and USB connectivity for the router.

The WRT1900AC will still be open-source friendly with Linksys pledging to work with the OpenWRT development community. Linksys has said they will supply hardware and SDK/API documentation to these open-source developers.

If you're hoping this open-source router would be cheap, sadly it is not, like most other 802.11ac WiFi routers. The retail price once launched on the Linksys WRT1900AC is expected to be $299 USD. This WRT54G successor comes less than one year after Belkin acquired the Linksys division from Cisco.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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