Linksys 54G Still Useful?

I was recently supporting a bike ride event called the Appalachian Journey. I was assigned to help out in the communications trailer as net control. It's always nice to have internet access for information. When Randy, KE4RL, built his communications trailer, he designed it to be a Faraday cage so it's impossible to receive a wifi or cellular signal inside. This gave me an opportunity to see if my old trusty Linksys 54G Router was still useful.

Comm. Trailer with Linksys sitting on top.

 

Randy had setup the trailer a day ahead and let me know he didn't have any cell service or internet available, so I rummaged through my old networking hardware for something that might work to fill the gap. I came across my old Linksys 54G router I had loaded custom OpenWRT firmware on and threw it in my bag to bring along. 

The campground where the trailer was staged provided free wifi, but the signal was non-existent inside the trailer. Luckily the weather was supposed to be good all day and I was able to simply set the router on the top corner of the trailer and run the ethernet cable inside. (Yellow circle in the image above.) I was able to configure the Linksys as a wireless client and use my laptop's mobile hotspot setting to share the internet connection with all the other computer equipment and phones inside the trailer. 

Me in the co-netcontrol seat.

In the image above, you can see the ethernet cable entering the trailer through a cable access to the left of the TV and connecting to my laptop on the table. 

The event went well, as you can read about over at our AUXCOMM website. While the internet connection was slow, it was quite helpful throughout the day. I was surprised how useful the old Linksys was as I haven't used it in many years and just goes to show that it can sometimes be useful to hold on to old antiquated equipment.