Buffalo WCR-GN IEEE Wireless-N Router & Access Point $11 at Amazon

not dd-wrt firmware flashable.

Heres a cool idea. Buy at least two (rebate limit is 5) and connect them via WDS wireless links.

Now you have a closed WDS network. Home one to your existing router and place the other elsewhere as a repeater and/or client bridge. Of course, add more if you like, it's only $11 a pop.

WDS is generally superior to universal bridging (the most common alternative), but poor compatibility across manufacturers is what makes WDS troublesome. But obviously thats not a problem if youre using the same devices!

Or perhaps you wish you could keep your router located elsewhere from the modem, maybe nearer your smartTV, esp. if it doubles as your NAS (maybe via USB). Well, take that same WDS network and patch one to the modem, the other to your router's WAN!

P. S. Someone over @ dd-wrt has actually installed it, but it required a serial cable and some soldering skills. So not very practical, but perhaps a good sign for the future, and at least possible for those interested. Personally, I think at this price, lack of (easy) dd-wrt support can be forgiven (when's the last time you saw a decent 150N router this cheap?), and as I suggested, you can use them rather creatively to solve problems.

Something I've been wondering is if you have two different (hardware) routers running DD-WRT, can you save the config file from one you have set up and load that config and have it work on the other different model router running DD-WRT?

^^ It's never safe to load the saved config of one make & model of router to another make & model, even if each is using the same firmware. The saved config contains various settings from NVRAM (non-volatile RAM). When you restore based on that saved config, those NVRAM settings are reestablished. But those settings could be incompatible if loaded to different hardware. One router might be dual band, another single band, or some other feature(s) not available on both. You might even think its safe if theyre the SAME make & model, but youd be wrong. The MAC addresses belonging to the router (WAN, WLAN, WAN) are also copied to NVRAM and used for the firewall, filtering, etc. Its therefore possible to end up having the same MAC addresses in both routers, which is never supposed to happen (MAC addresses must be unique across all network devices). Trust me, it can happen, Ive seen it and its a weird experience. I did a double take the first time I saw the results, and eventually realized what had happened.

So the simple answer is, NEVER do it. Its not safe. At best, you stand a good chance of creating some goofy configuration that would never have happened had you used the UI. At worst, it might not boot, or will boot and work incorrectly (g, two routers end up w/ the same MAC address, and thus both end up responding to the same ethernet traffic). Just not worth it.

^ Thanks for the info, though something like coming back later and changing the MAC adddress on one wouldn't be much of an issue.

However, just about every router now has a reset switch that'll clear the NVRAM contents at boot-time, yes? If so it doesn't seem all that unsafe to try. I just wondered if anyone had tried.

^^ True, but it's an example of what could go wrong, and I bet many ppl wouldn't even notice. And if it leads to problems, how long would it take before you figured out the cause? I place that in the category of risky since I dont want to spend days or weeks diagnosing whacky behavior because I shortcutd my router config. But hey, it may be acceptable to you.