Rating: 
Summary: Died on me after less than 4 months...
Review: Bought November 16th, died March 12th... Now I have to go through the painful return process.... Before that it was working great, and I thought bery highly of the product.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't even think about ...
Review: ... using this with the WMP11 PCI card without upgrading the firmware first (on both of them!). Unless of course you would like a wild ride through hell during installation. Linksys support for their wireless products is near non-existent. I was on hold for more than 3 hours and then I gave up (good thing I have headset phone!). I tried again the next day waited on hold for 1 hour and then gave up. I was about to return the WAP11 and WMP11, when I decided to upgrade the firmware on the WMP11 (I had already upgraded the firmware on the WAP11). After the firmware upgrade and hours and hours of frustration, it worked! I have the WAP11 in my basement and my computer with the WMP11 on the main floor, I get 73% signal strength and link quality.The reason I bought the linksys WAP11 is because it supposedly features "bridging" between two access points. Whether it is supported or not is highly questionable after what I went through.
Rating:
Summary: It works...with problems
Review: Basically the product works, and works nicely. However, the manual is unreliable and misleading in some places. The software and firmware are buggy as well. For example, the SNMP management utility requires a password to manage the device - but the current version of the firmware (1.4i.1) does not accept the password shown in the manual, nor the one suggested to me by customer service. So the SNMP utility is unuseable until the next firmware upgrade, which is a shame because some features are only accessible through the SNMP utility. Also, one of the advertised features is misleading. They say the device has hardware support for 128-bit WEP - they don't tell you that firmware prior to 1.4i.1 only supported 64-bit WEP. 1.4i.1 is the currently shipping version of the firmware, however, so if you buy now you should be OK. My experience with customer service has been good overall.
Rating: 
Summary: Fairly easy install - holes in documentation
Review: I purchased two of this unit to act as an Access Point host and client. This is apparently considered an ancillary feature, and so it is not as well-documented as the primary features of the unit. I have a WinNT LAN that I wanted to connect a device to outside the reach of the network wiring. I configured one unit as host and the other as client per the manual (updated version, downloaded from linksys.com along with the updated configuration software and firmware). I could not get the two units to talk to each other no matter what I tried. After searching the somewhat limited support options on Linksys' web, I sent an e-mail to tech support. The response came only hours later, despite the fact that it was late on a Friday, PST (good form). I needed a crossover ethernet cable to connect the remote unit to the WAP11. This undocumented requirement was the missing link, and it worked immediately upon installing a separately-purchased cable. Still evaluating performance, but based on this and a Linksys broadband firewall/router I've been using for several months, I would buy another Linksys product. Just know it may take some searching to find the configuration that works for you.
Rating: 
Summary: WAP11 and Apple Airport Card
Review: I bought a Linksys WAP11 Wireless Access Point and an Apple Airport card for my Titanium Powerbook G4. Initially, I had some trouble maintaining a consistant connection (the Powerbook would connect to the WAP11 but if I put it to sleep or restarted it, it would not find it again unless I rebooted the WAP11). Well, after updating the firmware in the WAP11 and Airport card to their latest versions, I'm happy to say they work just great together!!! I love Apple stuff but $(...) for their Airport Base Station is just a bit too pricey for me. So, I bought the WAP11 for around $(...) and I'm a happy camper. I haven't tested network printing and/or Appletalk. I think the WAP11 supports Appletalk but you will want to be sure of that if that is important to you. For browsing the web and any other TCP/IP related uses, it works just fine. By the way, I'm using 128-bit encryption feature on both the WAP11 and the Airport card. That involves entering in a "password phrase" in the WAP11 configuration software. The software then converts the phrase into a 128-bit hex number. It's a long number so you'll want to write it down. When your Airport finds the WAP11, you'll want to the 128-bit key in the password field but make sure it is preceded by a "$" sign. After that, you should be able to connect. One other thing to consider, you will need a PC with a USB port in order to update the WAP11 firmware. I tried updating the firmware using the Mac and Virtual PC but it would not recognize the WAP11. So, you might want to sneak into work at night or on the weekend to update the firmware...hehehe Long live Apple!!!!!!! Happy computing!!! :-)
Rating:
Summary: between 2 buildings - good results
Review: I have the WAP11 with the WMP11 wireless PCI card. The access point is in my office which is a separate building. The Computer with the PCI card is in my house and is in the room furthest away from my office. The access point is sitting in the window. So the signal is leaving my office, traveling about 100 feet to my residence, going through an exterior wall and 2 interior walls. The setup was straight forward. When I first installed both, I couldn't get a link. Somewhat frusterated, I walked away and ate dinner with some friends. Later when I returned, it had a signal. The signal strength is only 13% and the Link quality is only 20% but I still get great results and fast speeds. (2-11MB/SEC) and over 600kb Internet speed. I haven't noticed any disruptions or dropped packets and it's been very stable and constant. In fact, I'm writing this review on the Wireless PC.
Rating:
Summary: Easy setup
Review: I was a little apprehensive about adding wireless to my home network, after all I heard too many horror stories about the days and weeks it took others to set this up. Bought the WAP11 and a Linksys PCI Card anyway and to my surprise, I got it up and running within 30 minutes. It was a breeze to set this up and it works well within my wired Ethernet 100 home network. I highly recommend this product.
Rating:
Summary: Works well for me
Review: Easy to setup. Works between floors. Performance is good enough for surfing the net and sharing files between computers.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good.
Review: Fairly easy to setup and use. WEP doesn't affect throughput much. Works well, and is very reliable with firmware from Dec 2001 onwards (the problems some people have with WAP11 locking up requiring reboot are fixed now). Firmware downloads are available at... Some reviews here mention poor range with WPC11 cards - that was a problem with some old versions of the card, which apparently are now fixed, and are not a problem with the access point at all. Think of this more like a network switch rather than a router - it doesn't have features like DHCP built-in (you can use a computer or separate router to provide things like that - a linux/unix box is ideal, although windows ICS, proxy server or ISA would also work). What it does is bridge between wired and wireless ethernet, and does it well. Unlike some APs it does have SNMP statistics for some things, although they can be a little awkward to use them at times (the mailing list archives on bawug.org are one good source of information about these). Recent firmware allows the WAP11 to act as a client to another WAP11 access point ('ap-client mode') - so you can have both computers and remote networks connected through a central AP at the same time (this is different to the point-to-point bridge mode, which is also available, which only connects networks together and doesn't allow individual computers to connect). When configured as AP-client mode, if you use configuration software designed for the reference system from Atmel which the WAP11 is based on (snmpv1743.exe, you don't need to edit any .ini files for this), it is possible to carry out a site survey (i.e. show a list of APs which can be heard along with signal/noise information).
Rating:
Summary: Awesome if you can get past the set up on XP home
Review: I was using a WPC card on my school's network and wanted to have the same ability at home--so I bought the WAP11. Setting this up was very difficult on my Win XP home machines--I'm thinking that this will only get easier once the XP updates are out (I told the WAP11 that it was getting set up on a Win2k machine and ignored the dire warnings). I almost sent it back but what saved me was the excellent tech support dialogue I had going with a Linksys techie. THE KEY TO LINKSYS TECH SUPPORT: email and patience--don't try to do it over the phone. I had a 1.25 hour hold time and a not very helpful techie. But email--email was a different story. I'd give you her name and email address but then she'd be deluged because this installation will almost always necessitate at least one call to tech support. But once you're up, you're up! Enjoy.
| 
