What happened to the WL-500gP? And how is the WL-500W?

[Bertie]

To my surprise it seems the Asus WL-500g Premium is more or less discontinued, at least in Norway. The router has suddenly vanished from online stores and also from the independent price comparison site prisguide.hardware.no. It seems a new router, WL-500W is on it's way, it's listed as "expected in stock" in online stores.. Although it's not listed on the norwegian Asus page (no.asus.com) - but on the global site (www.asus.com).

So I'm wondering: What happened to the WL-500gP, is it "deprecated" after only about a month in sale? Is it entirely replaced with the new router WL-500W? I'm a bit surprised that Asus releases an even more exlusive WL-500W router so soon after releasing the "top level" routers WL-500gP and WL-700gE?

How is actually the WL-500W? It seems to be a combination of the WL-500gP and the WL-566gM MIMO router.. Has anyone tried it? Anybody has some info to share? How about it's hardware? It's not listed in http://wiki.openwrt.org/TableOfHardware yet, can I expect it to be similar to the WL-500gP with 266MHz CPU, 8MB flash and 32MB RAM? Any chances of getting custom firmware on it (i.e. to run http server and SlimServer services on it)?

I'm dying for some info here, I was so close to bying the WL-500gP, but now I'm not so sure..

[jhoderd]

Hi,

I just got my WL-500gp -- it's still possible to get it in Portugal,
though they did tell me that a new model is coming out soon.

Perhaps they had to release a new model because the WL-500gp
seems unable to properly bridge LAN <-> WAN <-> WLAN.
(See my other forum post on the matter)

Cheers,
Jean

[Bertie]

It seems the WL-500gP hasn't dissappeared completely after all.. Today I can see the router is back in some of the online stores it dissapeared from yesterday.. I.e. komplett.no now offers both WL-500gP and WL-500W (the latter still "expected on stock..").

But what about the WL-500W? I'm guessing this too uses Broadcom, and if so it must be using Broadcom's Intensi-fi chipset?

"Intensi-fi is Broadcom's implementation of the 802.11n draft specification"
(http://www.broadcom.com/products/intensi-fi.php)


"The complete Intensi-fi solution includes a draft-802.11n media access
controller (MAC)/baseband chip (BCM4321) and a finely-tuned, dual-band
radio chip (BCM2055) that can be configured for a variety of high-speed
wireless applications. Broadcom also offers a high-performance network
processor (BCM4704) that provides advanced routing and bridging capabilities
for router and gateway designs."

(http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=846280)

Anyone have some more info?

[Antiloop]

the WL500W is just the (final) replacement for the WL-566gM (MIMO) to 802.11n standard

it most likely will be powered by broadcom

[markhorneyuk]

Hi,

I too have to agree to what ever happend to WL-500gp?, THIS ITEM WAS COMPATIBLE WITH 3G/UTMS/HSDPA USB's mobile broadband devices....yes it was, though you had to download the tweaked firmware.

We have a chalet on the isle of sheppey in the UK, there is no landline telephone or broadband line, what so ever and no wireless around, long ago, my father purcashed a 3G HSDPA broadband USB device from three.co.uk, we got sick and tired of shareing it and argue who's turn it is to use it, so we ended up getting a computer to connect it to and share the internet wirelessly on one of my old routers, it was annoying though, turning it on and turning it off and configuring it each time just to use the internet.

I have been reading up about some routers which allows sharing internet through mobile internet devices and during my search, I came accross WL-500gp Model when I searched "three 3g wireless router", there was a forum on how to setup a WL-500gp to such devices, I thought excelent, I save this to history, looked on ebay, I have to admit, most of the offered 3g wireless routers going online was expensive and inaccurate, the WL-500gp was quite cheap, so I took a chance, 4 days later, had the time and was amazed of how easy it was, I downloaded the firmware, uploaded to the router upgrade and all the menu's changed, followed instructions and Walla!, got wireless broadband through a little UMTS device.

I was told about a Tesco Internet IPA-1000 phone adapter which connects into the WL-500gp, allowed me to make calls to other tesco phone users and cheap calls abroad...etc, it allows me to connect any normal house phone at all into it.

So I don't think this device should be discontinued, without it, I would of never of though of creating a landline telephone in a chalet where there is no telephone line around and it is easy to just leave it on 24/7 without turning it off and on and configurating it all the time like the pc, it's there just like a normal standard house adsl router.

This device has saved a lot of agravation, it's not there just for looks I can tell you that, I don't think that ASUS intentionally invented it to work that way, but someone found a way of creating a firmware and using it that way.

Shame really, got a friend who would like to have the router, now it's hard to find her in the UK, I just got lucky on ebay to find it there.

Mark.