Rating: 
Summary: Great Product! Tweakable too!
Review: I don't know why people always bash the linksys WAP11 but it is truely one heck of an access point! I use my WAP11 with 2 cards: the WUSB11 (USB wireless card) and the standard Linksys PCMCIA wireless card.Being someone who is a licensed HAM radio operator and a network administrator, I know that any radio device can be modified to increase it's range and reliability. I found out that Linksys builds these units with 100mw radios! (they're only set at 20mw at the factory). The radio is controlled by software and all you need is an SNMP manager to do the tweak. I offer more information on my website on how to tweak the WAP11. I also offer a link to download a SNMP manager that runs on windows, which will enable you to increase the output of your WAP11. HINT: since the antennas are removable and feature standard TNC type connectors, one could mount external high gain antennas and connect them to the WAP11 and triple the coverage area of the WAP11!! (a friend of mine has done this between two buildings in Boston, both 5 miles apart but within line of sight with each other) Since this mod doesn't affect the hardware I would assume that doing this has no effect on the warranty, but check with linksys first! After setting the radio to maximum output, I was able to increase the range to about 5 houses down the street in all directions and still stay connected to my LAN! (HINT: I now sell wireless internet to my closest neighbors!) The WAP11 also allows you to control who can access the WAP11 through MAC address authorization. This enables the WAP11 to reject signals from cards who's MAC addresses aren't in the MAC Address table within the WAP11!!! Overall well designed product! Grab your today! and visit my site to increase your range! Keep up the good work Linksys! ~ A very satisfied WAP11 owner
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic product
Review: Once again Linksys has made a quality product. It worked out of the box, after about 4 minutes of setup time. The instructions were dead on and it works perfectly w/ my Linksys 4 Port Cable/DSL Router. I also got a Linksys PCMCIA wireless network card to use w/ the WAP, and it worked perfectly too. Believe it or not, I don't work for Linksys, but I will now continue to buy their products without hesitation. If you're a novice or networking guru, you really can't go wrong with this product. The advanced features are plentiful and some helpful, but you don't need to set them for this to work right away. Big thumbs up.
Rating:
Summary: Very pleased with performance
Review: I recently upgraded from dial-up to a cable modem. I first installed Linksys Broadband + router and connect my PC and my daughters. Installation took about 5 minutes. Worked great except now I have cables running down the hall. So I bought 3 of the WAP11 Access Points. One for my pc, one for my daughters and one for the router. Had to use cross over cables to connect the WAPs to the PCs also the WAPs on the PCs had to be configured as Clients which is easy to do through the web configuration screen. I moved the router, cable modem and Host WAP to the basement where the main cable comes into the house. The house is about 2500 Sqft, with 2 stories, plus a 16foot tall basement. Both PCs are on the top floor of the house. Performance is very good, ZDnet shows a download speed of between 400kbps and 700kbps. I also downloaded a 2.8MB file from cnet...took 15 seconds. Very happy with the performance. Set-up took about an hour. The Client WAPs have to be set with the MAC address of the HOST WAP...also need to set unique IP address to each WAP or configure to have IPs assigned by DHCP. Each WAP needs to have it's own resource name assigned. Did not have to call tech support. I highly recommend.
Rating: 
Summary: Linksys WAP11 Nice and Easy USB setup with good manuals
Review: I am an Australian who was in the USA for one week in May 2002. I decided to buy a wireless lan at CompUSA. They gave me a US Robotics kit, but I could not make it work. The problem was that no-one had any experience with it and the manuals were quite poor, probably written by someone who had three computing degrees. Also, it required a wireless connection to set it up, and more information was on a website which I did not have easy access to because I was travelling.
So I returned it all to CompUSA and swapped it for a LinkSYS which was a little cheaper.
LinkSYS had a USB connection (and cable) which allowed easy setup via my laptop (rather than having to make a successful wireless connection first). The linksys instruction books (WAP11 and WPC11) were both quite detailed and well written. It explained what was actually going on and what the device did, although the terminology about the DHCP setting is a little unclear.
In my house there are many brick walls and reinforced concrete floors. When the WAP11 was upstairs beside my cable modem I could not aquire an adequate signal in the front of the house (100 feet). I brought the WAP11 downstairs and 30 feet closer and plugged it in to another ethernet point - now we have medium or weak but always connect. Overall - its great.
Rating:
Summary: Works great; range as expected.
Review: I bought the WAP11 v2.2 from Amazon about three weeks ago. I had it installed and working in about an hour, most of the time was caused by mistyping my SSID. Once I corrected that, everything worked flawlessly. Encryption took another five minutes to setup. The range is about what I expected. I have a usable range of about 120 feet but this is through several walls. I used a netgear ma401 card as the client.
Rating: 
Summary: Go somwhere else
Review: I just went through two of these. I was on the configuration web page and I made some minor changes to the settings. The connection timed out and the WAP11 became unpingable. At the suggestion of tech support I rest the WAP. This resulted in wiping out the firmware. Uh-Oh. That right, Linksys doesn't have firmware available for the WAP11 v.2.2. The same thing happened to a second box with a different tech support person. Do yourself a favor. Don't buy this box. BTW, I am a system administrator for a large university. I know how to configure hardware and software.
Rating: 
Summary: Final Update to "Free at Last!"
Review: I had a Linksys WAP11 die on me after 14 months. I had always been happy with it ... so I immediately ordered a replacement. It turned out to be the new v2.2. The Linksys v2.2 wouldn't work reliably when WEP was enabled (neither 64 nor 128 bit). Also, I seemed to have much more trouble with signal strength. So I tried a second one assuming the first was defective, but the with the same results. So I gave up on the Linksys WAP11 v2.2 and tried the SMC2655W (even though it's supposedly based on the same electronics) and guess what? It not only worked flawlessly with WEP enabled, but it gave a stronger signal, and is about half the size of the WAP11. I DID get the WAP11 v2.2 to work well, though not as strong as the SMC, if I disabled WEP. Looks to me like a move in the wrong direction for Linksys.
Rating: 
Summary: Serviceable; buggy firmware, flawed security
Review: A perfectly decent access point as 802.11b goes. Range is good, physical construction is decent. Inside the WAP11 is the same PCMCIA-based card as is used in SMC and other access points; they even run the same firmware. Ditch the illusions, though: there is no security. WEP is totally flawed, and there are a dozen academic analyses demontrating why. If you plug this thing into your LAN, you're exposing that LAN to anyone within a hundred yards, whether you use WEP or not. You should never install an access point without restricting its traffic with a firewall only to an encrypted, authenticated transport system like IPsec or PPTP. The configuration software is decent, except that the unit needs to reboot after every change of a setting (which takes about 3 seconds). The embedded webserver tends to crash. LinkSys tech support has a passable email-support turnaround but does not deal properly with bug reports. The upstream vendor who makes the firmware has a lousy security record -- it took them four major releases before it occurred to them to add authentication to the configuration interface. Problematically, the configuration is accessible over the wireless link, and consequently to a wireless attacker (remember, WEP is no help.)
Rating:
Summary: Worked like a charm!
Review: I got this up and running in under 5 minutes,
using a non-standard (dhcp & encryption on a
home lan using ms connection sharing).
The range seems ok - I can connect from anywhere
in my house (WAP is upstairs in a center bedroom),
as well as from my hammock in the yard... :^)
(The link margin is much lower outside.) The only potential glitch was that the access
point initially came up with an IP address outside
the subnet I was using. (I use 192.168 - the
access point came up with 169.something I think),
so initially I couldn't ping, even though the radio
link connected. Typing ipconfig/renew_all (From a
dos window) solved it, and it's been fine ever since. Configuration: 5 node home lan, using connection sharing
of multilink PPP connection. (Access point is being
used with a Latitude CPI laptop, using the linksys PC card
and win98se.) My skills: Reasonably PC literate (used to do PC support
as a sideline to my regular UNIX sysadmin career.) I Would recommend to anybody who is otherwise qualified
to install/configure PC network cards.
Rating:
Summary: Works great, but tricky
Review: If you're the type of person that prefers easy set up and great documentation, this device might not be for you. True, the device connects very easily, right out of the box - however, customizing it is tricky. Paper documentation that comes with the device doesn't tell you what IP the device is configured through, or what its initial password is. I had to check out the documentation on the cd, which was also tricky - even though the setup program had a link to the file, it wouldn't open (I had to locate the documentation by browsing the CD).
As a wireless switch, the device works very well. It's easy to configure (once you get IP and password information), and works without a hitch. It also has quite a few options to configure.
As far as distance - could be better. I often have difficulties a couple of rooms over (and I don't live in a large apartment).
Overall, if you're a techie type of person, buy it with confidence. At its price, it's one of the best around.
If you're at all not sure, I recommend a little more researching first.
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