Hi Philippe -

The WRT54GL's are available here (I'm in Canada), I'm sure it is also available down in the US.

That's good to know.

We like the Atheros hardware (fonera, meraki) because it's so small in comparison (unless your WRT54GL's are the ones with smaller footprint than the old big blue model?) and because it's less proprietary than broadcom hardware/drivers...

It is small - ok. Things I like about WRT54GL: JTAG (even if you hose the system completely including bootloader you can restore it), serial interface, wide range DC-input (5-20 Volts), doesn't die if you reverse polarity, low power consumption (3.6 Watts under full load). Up to 250mW transmit power. Makes it ideal for my solar-powered home and developing countries, outdoor nodes, disaster areas and so on. Open up the housing and have a look at those *three* individual DC-DC converters for every internal voltage.

Disclaimer: I am not working or getting paid by Linksys. I'm willing to utilize everything good that comes the way...

Of course I don't like using proprietary code, this is sad. You know Linksys/Cisco had to be forced to their own good. They must be selling those devices like crazy. We have WRTs running on churches in a noisy area with many competing networks, each one linked to 15-20 other single hop mesh nodes. Somewhere around 30 single hop neighbors there is a limit for the driver/chipset, I suppose. The driver works rock solid. As soon as Madwifi or ath5k (with OpenHAL) can compete with that I'll be much more than happy.

If I could utter a wish to a fairy coming my way I would also ask to have at least one good performing usb chipset for 802.11abgn that works with Linux as well. I'd start assembling omnis and directionals with usb-connector immediately ;-)

Cheers,

cu elektra