Linksys WRTP54G is a Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...

 capable router with VOIP capability from Linksys

Linksys

Linksys by Cisco, commonly known as Linksys, is a brand of home and small office networking products now produced by Cisco Systems, though once a separate company founded in 1995 before being acquired by Cisco in 2003...

. Launched in 2005, it is similar in function to the popular WRT54G

WRT54G

The Linksys WRT54G is a Wi-Fi capable residential gateway from Linksys. The device is capable of sharing Internet connections among several computers via 802.3 Ethernet and 802.11b/g wireless data links.-WRT54G:The original WRT54G was first released in December 2002...

, the device is capable of sharing Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 connections amongst several computers via 802.3

IEEE 802.3

IEEE 802.3 is a working group and a collection of IEEE standards produced by the working group defining the physical layer and data link layer's media access control of wired Ethernet. This is generally a local area network technology with some wide area network applications...

 Ethernet

Ethernet

Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....

 and 802.11b/g wireless data links, but it also has two POTS

Plain old telephone service

Plain old telephone service is the voice-grade telephone service that remains the basic form of residential and small business service connection to the telephone network in many parts of the world....

 ports for VOIP telephony.

VOIP service providers

The router was being sold pre-configured for providers Vonage

Vonage

Vonage is a publicly held commercial voice over IP network and SIP company that provides telephone service via a broadband connection. The company's name is a play on their motto "Voice-Over-Net-AGE"....

 and EarthLink

EarthLink

EarthLink , is an Internet service provider headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. It claims 1.94 million subscribers.- Business :EarthLink provides a variety of Internet connection types, including dial-up, DSL, satellite, and cable. Both dial-up and high speed Internet access are available...

, but was also available without any pre-configured service. In the latter case one needed to configure the VOIP settings oneself. It sold for about $130 on launch, with a Vonage monthly plan of 500 VOIP hours priced at $15, after a $45 service charge. A PC World

PC World (magazine)

PC World is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal-technology products and services...

 staff blog post in 2005 warned the reader not to be mislead to think that the initial, and the only advertised price, was the total cost of ownership.

Phreaking potential

An Associated Press

Associated Press

The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...

 story from August 2006 reported that "Arias Hung, a security professional with Media Access Guard in Seattle", showed how to change the MAC address

MAC address

A Media Access Control address is a unique identifier assigned to network interfaces for communications on the physical network segment. MAC addresses are used for numerous network technologies and most IEEE 802 network technologies, including Ethernet...

 of a device registered for Vonage service that "could intercept calls made to a legitimate Vonage user and make calls that would appear to come from the user's phone number," recommending that "The general consumer should stay away from this router."

Internals

In a departure from most of the WRT54G series (which featured mostly Broadcom

Broadcom

Broadcom Corporation is a fabless semiconductor company in the wireless and broadband communication business. The company is headquartered in Irvine, California, USA. Broadcom was founded by a professor-student pair Henry Samueli and Henry T. Nicholas III from the University of California, Los...

 chipsets) this router features a Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...

chipset. Texas Instruments chips are common to almost all current Linksys VOIP products.

The screws to open the unit are under the rubber pads.
These units are often locked with a particular VOIP vendor's information. A Freeware program "cyt46.exe" can help.