[Update 2007-03-19: LinkSys have finally released an official firmware update for the WAG54GS! It is available from the LinkSys site. The lying buggers have it dated “12/05/2005”. I have not had the opportunity to install the firmware and see if it makes the WAG54GS less crap!]

I’ve traditionally been a fan of LinkSys routers, especially those distinctive blue ones with devil-horn wireless antennae. But I must say, the WAG54GS Wireless-G ADSL Gateway has proven to be a little turd of a device.

I bought it when I got to the UK, it has the latest official firmware, it regularly (several times a day) stops routing packets. It really is quite remarkable that such a total piece of shite could have made it through QA. It just stops, the lights stop flashing (but all stay on), the web interface doesn’t respond, it usually wont even respond to pings when this happens (although sometimes it does).

I’ve read vague reports from others on the ‘net regarding similar behaviour so this doesn’t seem to be an isolated occurrence. There is talk of a “better firmware” that can be built from source; the little fecal box runs Linux apparently (just confirmed that, there are instructions for getting a shell prompt on the box out there). But roll-your-own firmware is just too much piss-farting around for a device that should “just work”, if I wanted that I’d have bought a dumb ADSL modem and a mini-itx machine for Linux! Some forums indicate that an unreleased firmware version (1.00.08) is available for download, maybe I’ll give that a go (but a post on that same forum says that 1.00.08 was a problem and 1.00.06 worked better). What I wonder is: if this “better” firmware has been around for so long why is the severely broken 1.00.06 version still the latest official one! Surely any bugfix is worth releasing properly; I suspect the unreleased version is unreleased for a reason.

The OpenLinksys site seems promising – but the lack of English is a bit of a barrier for me.

All in all my conclusion is that the WAG54GS is excremental in nature and it appears that LinkSys are in no hurry to do anything about it.

My recommendation: Don’t buy it! If it is from LinkSys and isn’t a little blue devil-horn box it isn’t worth the risk.

Note: To get a shell on the thing:

• Hit http://192.168.1.1/setup.cgi?todo=debug

And telnet 192.168.1.1

Where ‘192.168.1.1’ is the IP address of your WAG54GS. Everyone seems to think the ‘adslctl info –stats‘ command is exciting. I’ll leave that one to the ADSL geeks – I’d just like the bloody thing to do its job!

Oh, it also has really shitty wireless range – another area where it is significantly defective when compared to the devil-horn versions.

Finally, some interesting stats from the device (with 1.00.06 firmware):

Linux Kernel: 2.6.8.1
"OS": BusyBox
Flash Size: 4096k
CPU: Broadcom BCM6348 V0.7 (bogomips: 253.44)
Memory: 13652 kB
Filesystem: cramfs
Interfaces: eth0, lo, ppp0, wl0, br0 (bridging eth0 and wl0)
Interesting Processes: 
 mini_httpd - The link is "I'm feeling lucky"
 udhcpd
 ntp
 crond
 scfgmgr
 atm_monitor
 cmd_agent_ap
 pb_ap
 wizd
 ses_update
 Pppd
 upnpd
 reaim
 utelnetd (presumably not normal)
iptables highlights (the full set is *large*):
--------------------------------------------
Chain INPUT (policy DROP)
target     prot opt source   destination
DROP       tcp  --  anywhere anywhere state NEW tcp flags:!SYN,RST,ACK/SYN
ACCEPT     all  --  anywhere anywhere state RELATED,ESTABLISHED
REAIM_IN   all  --  anywhere anywhere
INPUT_UDP  udp  --  anywhere anywhere
INPUT_TCP  tcp  --  anywhere anywhere
DOS        icmp --  anywhere anywhere icmp echo-request
ACCEPT     all  --  anywhere anywhere state NEW
--------------------------------------------
Chain DOS (6 references)
target  prot opt source   destination
RETURN  tcp  --  anywhere anywhere limit: avg 60/sec burst 120 tcp flags:SYN,RST,ACK/SYN
RETURN  udp  --  anywhere anywhere limit: avg 60/sec burst 120
RETURN  icmp --  anywhere anywhere icmp echo-request limit: avg 60/sec burst 120
LOG     all  --  anywhere anywhere limit: avg 10/sec burst 5 LOG level warning prefix `[Firewal l Log-DOS] '
DROP    all  --  anywhere anywhere
--------------------------------------------
Chain SCAN (2 references)
target prot opt source   destination
LOG    all  --  anywhere anywhere limit: avg 10/sec burst 5 LOG level warning prefix `[Firewal l Log-PORT SCAN]'
DROP   all  --  anywhere anywhere
--------------------------------------------
Chain DNS (1 references) (in nat)
target prot opt source   destination
DNAT   all  --  anywhere 192.168.1.1 random 50% to:213.208.106.213
DNAT   all  --  anywhere 192.168.1.1 to:213.208.106.212
--------------------------------------------

What a strange way to deal with DNS, it hands out its own IP address via DHCP but why not just hand out the external DNS IPs?