I fairly regularly get e-mails asking why I’m still recommending an “old style” router (802.11g standard) in my security e-book The Hacker’s Nightmare, even though routers boasting a faster/better/more modern standard (802.11n) have been available for quite some time.
It’s been on my to-do list to write an article explaining my reasons for this. However, I’ve just been saved the trouble by the appearance of an excellent article from the keyboard of PCMech writer Rich Menga.
Rich has summed up my own reasons very nicely, and I unreservedly recommend his article to you.
After trying a number of the new-fangled 802.11n routers, Rich has given them all the flick and ordered himself a Linksys WRT54GL — the very router I have long recommended and continue to recommend in The Hacker’s Nightmare.
While you can use it quite satisfactorily straight out of the box, the WRT54GL is very versatile in that it can be “flashed”, or loaded with, third-party firmware (similar to software). My personal third-party firmware favorites for upgrading the WRT54GL are DD-WRT and Tomato. Both are free, and applying either to the WRT54GL makes it a very hard act to beat for overall performance, reliability and versatility.
Of course, there is a lot more to the safe use of any router than just plugging it in, which is why The Hacker’s Nightmare contains extensive, plain language instructions on configuring and securing the WRT54GL.
So where to next?
- Amazon.com is a trusted and reliable supplier to the entire world, and you will find it hard to beat their prices. Click here for the WRT54GL at Amazon.com.
and…
- You can currently snap up a copy of The Hacker’s Nightmare at a 50% discount.
- Oh, and read Rich Menga’s article here.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Bill. I purchased The Hacker’s Nightmare about six months ago and followed your advice about buying and configuring a Linksys WRT54GL. Your instructions were very easy to follow but without them I know I would never have got the security settings configured correctly. The router has worked fine for me ever since and I know I am much safer as a result. Thanks for a great book. I recommend it to anyone who owns a PC.
Hello – I bought that very same router some years ago and managed to put dd-wrt on it and it worked-kind of. Stopped using it several yrs. ago but just started fiddling with it anew about 1 month ago.
I was wondering where I could learn to make sense of the many options that dd-wrt provides. Dd-wrt website is pretty extensive but I really don’t understand most of their tutorials. Thanks to PCMECH I’ve been aware of your book but had not purchased it.
Other night I stumbled across your fifty percent off deal and figured it wasn’t going to get any cheaper so I bought it.
Haven’t had a chance to do anything more than glance quickly through the book but I did take a close look at the chapter about this router and was amazed that you answered most of the questions I had for years about ip addresses and the like.
To me, that alone was worth the price of the book.
So thanks for the great deal on a great book.
Thanks for the kind comments guys.
It’s always gratifying to know when someone has gained from my efforts, and encourages me to continue to contribute.