>>>I spoke with someone last night who uses DD-WRT on their linksys router. Says it gives him access to a lot of higher-end functionality thats on the router but blocked off on the lowercost models. Cant say i've used it myself.
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>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DD-WRT
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>>dd-WRT is terrific - I've got a number of clients using it, it's rock-solid.
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>>When discussing alternate firmwares like dd-WRT vs. the stock Linksys/Cisco firmware, it's not so much that the latter "blocks off" certain features, it's more that the former offer more features in the first place. A modern consumer router like the Linksys WRT-54GL is actually a fairly capable computer with a 200MHz MIPS processor, 16MB RAM and 4MB flash memory for the firmware. The firmware is actually an embedded version of Linux, so the router is really a computer running Linux. Because it's Linux, it's open-source, and various hobbyists have modified it to add functionality. That's why there are alternative projects like dd-WRT, Tomato etc.
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>Thanks Al. I will have to look into it. Are you going to see a speed increase with something like DD-WRT? And are you able to restore the firmware to the default vendor settings?

I'm not sure what you mean by "speed increase" - if you mean higher throughput to/from the public Internet, usually no. What you do typically get is fewer bugs and better stability under load, which may seem like more speed ;)

Although I haven't done so, I believe you can restore factory firmware in most cases. There might be problems if you have one of the later-model "crippled" Linksys WRT-54G models with limited RAM and flash. But I can't imagine why anyone would want to go back to stock firmware.