This was one of Asus' first offerings in the WLAN area, and in the time it has been on the market it has built up a loyal userbase, who appreciate the device because of its extensibiliy and hackability ^_^. Numerous custom firmwares have been produced to use the device's capabilities to the fullest - Oleg's firmware for example - and also OpenWRT, although not specifically intended for the WL-500G Deluxe, is an excellent solution for this. I originally picked the WL-500G Deluxe because of its two USB ports - it's a pity so few routers out there offer something similar; either you have to resort to a real network printer or an extra USB to RJ45 converter - anyway you spend lots of money on that.
I've put on Oleg's firmware almost immediately after I purchased the router. Both Oleg's and Asus' firmware support some hybrid form of WPA they call "WPA AES". Technically WPA uses the TKIP encryption scheme, which is very similar to WEP's structure, but without the inherent flaws of the latter, while WPA2 uses CCMP, an AES-based algorithm, which is more advanced. CCMP also works in a different way than TKIP, so they aren't really interchangeable. OpenWRT Whiterussian (the previous stable branch) did support this form of hybrid WPA encryption; with Kamikaze (7.xx) this is no longer the case; you have to take your pick - 'only' WPA or full WPA2. I choose the latter :-P.
Lots of general firmwares (DD-WRT for example) are integrated very tightly, but offer scarce support for the USB ports available on the router. It is often very difficult to integrate extra features onto the device. Almost all of those firmwares use the ipkg package management system, initially used on the Zaurus PDA. This allows you to install additional packages (like USB kernel modules for example), however, OpenWRT is (imho) lightyears ahead of other solutions here. Configuration and installation is far easier than on the web interface oriented firmwares. In the end this flexibility and maintainability was also why I decided to run OpenWRT on my router, although the initial setup requires a lot of work, and the upgrade process is less user-friendly because it wipes your settings :-P.

The WLAN is protected by a random computer-generated 63 bit WPA2 key, so if you're in the neighbourhood, feel free to hack :-P. I also added a MAC filter but it seems those are easily bypassed; nevertheless, it's another hurdle for the noobs.

Hardware specifications

• Broadcom BCM5365 Revision 1 200 Mhz MIPS (system on chip)
• 32 MB RAM
• 4 MB flash storage (soldered on)
• Broadcom BCM4306 802.11b/g wireless adapter
• 2x USB 2.0

Setup
I won't get into the gory details here. Let it suffice the router is up and running from the moment OpenWRT has been flashed in, and configuration is done by the command line (unless you grab the X-Wrt web frontend or installed a firmware image with X-Wrt integrated). Wireless is disabled by default, so that does have to be set up (you'll need to set an AP name, encryption type, encryption key, etc. anyway, so...).

lspci output
00:00.0 FLASH memory: Broadcom Corporation Sentry5 Chipcommon I/O Controller (rev 01)
00:01.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation Sentry5 Ethernet Controller (rev 01)
00:02.0 Network and computing encryption device: Broadcom Corporation Sentry5 Crypto Accelerator (rev 01)
00:03.0 USB Controller: Broadcom Corporation Sentry5 USB Controller (rev 01)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: Broadcom Corporation Sentry5 PCI Bridge (rev 01)
00:05.0 MIPS: Broadcom Corporation BCM3302 Sentry5 MIPS32 CPU (rev 01)
00:06.0 RAM memory: Broadcom Corporation Sentry5 DDR/SDR RAM Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 Host bridge: Broadcom Corporation BCM5365P Sentry5 Host Bridge
01:02.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 61)
01:02.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 61)
01:02.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 63)
01:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)

lsusb output
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 03f0:6204 Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 5150c


Yes, you see that right :-). My printer is connected to one of the two USB 2.0 ports the router has. Networked printing is so <3.

/proc/cpuinfo contents
system type : Broadcom BCM5365 chip rev 1
processor : 0
cpu model : BCM3302 V0.7
BogoMIPS : 199.47
wait instruction : no
microsecond timers : yes
tlb_entries : 32
extra interrupt vector : no
hardware watchpoint : no
VCED exceptions : not available
VCEI exceptions : not available