On Friday, I decided had a go at fixing the occasional dropped connections I’ve been seeing between Windows machines and my LinkSys WRT54GS (v5,1) router. As part of the process, I upgraded the firmware to what I assumed was the latest version. That was a mistake. After the upgrade, the router’s DHCP server would no longer dole out an IP address to Mac OS X or Linux clients, either wired or wirelessly (Windows XP clients seem unaffected).

It turns out that the solution is to get the latest latest firmware. The Cisco/LinkSys page offers version 1.50.9 of the firmware as the most recent version for most models; this version exhibits the problem. Instead, try version 1.52.2 available here:

LinkSys WRT54GS Firmware version 1.52.2

The solution is simple, but took me a while to find. Hopefully, this entry will save time for anyone experiencing similar problems.