Scott recently posted about his new WRT54G, and at the bottom of his post he stated:
Flakey: This is a flakey router. I have to reboot it once or twice a month. Also, when I flashed it this evening with the new Alchemy build (I was upgrading from Satori) I had to hold the reset button for like two minutes. Also, the power light wouldn't stop flashing (a bad thing) until I disconnected and reconnected the Internet cable (a weird thing) then everything started working again (a good thing.)
I was a very first customer of yours, and purchased your first router at Fry's. I loved this router. It was stable, never required reboots, and generally worked. Since then your products have gone down hill. For one thing, you never know what you are purchasing. You have devised a tricky scheme whereby you version your hardware, and your firmware. On your web site it never states what is what. When purchasing at Fry's it's a challenge to find a single box that was not returned, and different boxes state different version numbers such as v 1.1, v 2.1, v 3.2 for the same product line. To make matters worse, the firmware downloads on your web site never state which goes where. Finally, your firmware has a tendency to destabilize the product requiring numerous reboots.
The last time I bought something from you was last year. It was a Wireless Access Point, and it required reboots every 2 days. Every firmware version released made matters worse, and finally you gave up releasing firmware so you could release new versions of the hardware (see above).
To make matters worse, companies are charging $20 a year to send you firmware to replace your crap firmware. Can you believe this? That's right, people are making money on your deficiencies, and they are happy about it! I guess that is why you give away your source. You should consider getting them to do all your firmware development.
I hoped that when Cisco purchased you their first priority would be to clean up this mess. Seems it will take longer than hoped since your brand new flagship 802.11g router causes Scott Hanselman grief. And if it causes him grief do you think I'm going to place such a product in my home, or my family's home? No thanks. Instead I use the Microsoft Broadband routers which were discontinued. I know people that still scour the Internet for this product because it's the only thing that doesn't require a reboot every few days.
And finally, to illustrate my point. The only routers you should ever purchase are the ones on this page. This ensures that the router meets some decent level of quality. The Linksys WRT55AG that Scott has is listed there, but like this:
Linksys WRT55AG Dual-Band Wireless A+G Broadband Router Ver. 2
That's right, Ver. 2. How do you know if you are buying Ver. 2 when purchasing online? Beats the heck out of me. If you were at Fry's it's the one w/o any Return Stickers, and if you look closely, it will probably say on the side of the box.
What do I do about all this? I have a stockpile of Microsoft routers (2 MN-700s, 1 MN-100), my parents and sister each have MN-500s as well as Apple AirportExtreme for wireless bridging.