Rating: 
Summary: The BEFSR81 Works for Me
Review: This product is doing everything I bought it to do, at a very resaonable price. It allows multiple systems to share an ISP broadband connection. It also acts as a firewall (attacks to the home PC have stopped according to NetIce Defender). Please note, that I am only using this product as a gateway and not a router!Today, I share my ISP connection between home PC and work laptop computers {via a VPN tunneling product). I expect to have additional home computers in the future. I am confident that I'll be able to safely (securely) share printers and files between them. I particularly liked BEFSR81's ability to configure the WAN port hardware address. This allowed using the home PC hardware address. If needed, this allows easy trouble shooting. I can remove easily remove the Linksys router and test the ISP connection with the home PC. If you do this, I recommend providing the original Linksys hardware address to the ISP in case the programming is removed. I did (no sense jeopardizing your relationship with ISP)! The documentation was good, except around setting the hardware address. It is clear what to do to the Linksys router, but completely lacking in information about how to determine your computer's hardware address. For MicroSoft operating systems use either winipcfg for Win98 and ipconfig for NT or Win2000. My last learning of interest, concerns accessing the router after you connect with the ISP. My ISP configured a proxy script on the home PC. I wasn't able to access router until I disabled the script (easily checked on/off in Tools/Internet Connection/LAN settings). This demonstrates the security functionality! The router's LAN address is on your private network. The Linksys router is a firewall between it and the public network containing the proxy server.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent product for Home Networking and small Business.
Review: The Linksys Instant Broadband EtherFast Cable/DSL Router is the perfect option to connect multiple PCs to a high-speed Broadband Internet connection or to an Ethernet back-bone. Allowing up to 253 users, the built-in NAT technology acts as a firewall protecting your internal network. Configurable as a DHCP server, the EtherFast Cable/DSL Router acts as the only externally recognized Internet device on your local area network (LAN). The router can also be configured to block internal users' access to the Internet. A typical router relies on a hub or a switch to share its Internet connection, but the Linksys EtherFast Cable/DSL Router channels this connection through the blazing, full duplex speed of its built-in EtherFast 10/100 4-Port Switch. I think - its the best in today's time..
Rating:
Summary: LinkSys does it again - Great product
Review: Linksys BEFSR81 EtherFast Cable/DSL Router with 8 port 10/100 Switch is one of the best broadband routers out there. This router/hub allows you to share your single internet connection provided by cable modem or DSL to multiple computers. I used to own the 4-port of the same box and decided to buy the 8-port version when my brother took my 4 port box. This box contains 8 auto-sensing 10/100 ports. Installation is a snap and no software is needed. This box has such advanced functions as dynamic and static port routing, DMZ hosting, filtering and forwarding, and Quality of Service capabilities. And all of these functions can be easily configured through a web browser. It also supports VPN via. IPSec, PPoE and PPTP. In a nutshell, the Etherfast Cable/DSL router is very simple to operate yet powerful and easy to manage using the web based admin app. A must buy if you need to share your Internet connection. I have about 4 Linksys products near or on my computers now - Great job Linksys.
Rating: 
Summary: throughput problem...
Review: I liked the specs on this device so I picked one up today. I was especially looking for the QOS abilities as I often have a download in progress (ftp, scp, etc) and I want to give my web and ssh connections priority so I can do real work while the downloads are in progress. Set it up, nice interface. Set the QOS to the way I wanted it. Did some web browsing, file transfers, ssh connections. Then after about 5 minutes I noticed that ftp's would suddenly 'stop' for 10-15 seconds, then resume (using hash mode so I could see progress). This is a linux to linux xfer. It got really bad, then my web pages started slowing down. I was using MRTG to plot the traffic flow on graphs since the router does SNMP. Traffic showed an average of 56kbps on a 1.54mbps dsl connecting to servers one hop away! I rebooted my pc, the dsl modem, the router, my flourescent lights and the the kid next door. (ok, I'm kidding about the lights. And the kid) Still jerky downloads, even when NO other traffic on the link. After about a half hour of frustration, I put my 'old' SMC Baricade (about 2 years old) back. All the issues disappeared. Sure wanted the QOS, but getting it meant I lost QOS. I hate to say it but I have had problems with other linksys stuff (56k wireless). Taking it back to Best Buy, sorry guys you'll have to make Linksys pay... Cisco Makes great stuff. I hope they can apply some of their abilities to Linksys. I hate to put in a negative review, especially since there (may be) other positive reviews. This is just my experience. Also, I am not an 'average consumer' but someone who has experience with 'real 'Cisco stuff, especially ds3 and gigibit routers. Please Cisco, fix these guys stuff!
Rating:
Summary: Good for about 9 months - then flaky - then fialed
Review: I set up a fairly comprehensive home network with all linksys gear. Three 8 port switches, a BEFSR81, a BEFVP41, and Linksys cable modem. All worked great for about 1 year. After that time I started losing my internet connection. The problem was the BEFSR81. Only unplugging it/replugging it would clear it. Sometimes the diag light would come on, most of the time everything looked normal. It worked well for a year, but I had it in a very comfortable environment (in my dry basement with fans cooling all - cause I thought all this hardware ran a bit hot.) It seems from all the reviews here that this is the usual way this device goes. As a last ditch effort I was going to reload the firmware and see if that helped, even though I had reset the device several times. When using the linksys firmware install program the install died in the middle of the process and now I can't communicate with it or reset it at all. I'm done with it. Don't waste your money or time on this product. So far my other linksys hardware has been OK, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Rating:
Summary: Throughput problems
Review: I bought this router so my wife could share our cable connection.
She works from home, and often participates in online "webinars"
with a live audio conference feed. The throughput was terrible,
with audio dropouts rendering the presentation unintelligible.
Bypassing the router and using the modem directly proved it was
the router, since all other computers on the network were off. Amazon sold us the latest v3 version of this product, which had
the latest software from late 2003. After complaining, Linksys
replaced the router with another, which had NO throughput. They
then replaced that one with an older v2 model. That model has
given us no problems, but we essentially got no work done for
two weeks.
Rating:
Summary: BAD LINKSYS ROUTER
Review: I use routers to share a connection so i can run a bf1942 server this is the third router ive bought from linksys ive had a wireless that eventually would disconnect a couple times a day. so i then decided to get a non wireless router which was a 4 port and i had it about a month and it started disconnecting regularly now i bought the 8 port lol it worked for 1 day on the server now it will disconnect everytime i try to connect 2 computers to a bf1942 server linksys stuff is cheap it should only be sold at walmart linksys is so worried ABOUT THERE WIRELESS STUFF BUT THERE HARD WIRED STUFF WORKS LIKE CRAP AFTER A MONTH OR SO TRUST ME I CANT TELL YOU WHAT A GOOD ROUTER IS BUT IM TRYING A NET GEAR OR BELKIN NEXT MAYBE THEY WILL HAVE CUSTOMER SUPPORT THAT SPEAKS ENGLISH TOO
Rating: 
Summary: BEFSR81 Causes Packet Loss Problems
Review: I have had this router for 18 months when I first experienced packet loss problems. I confirmed that the problem is with this router by connecting my PC directly to the DSL modem and pinging yahoo.com. When my PC was connected directly to the DSL modem, I had zero packet loss. Next, I returned the BEFSR81 to my network and connected my PC to this router. Pinging yahoo.com resulted in 25%-50% packet loss. It took a while to figure out the problem with this router. Web pages would load very slowly, which I initially thought was due to network congestion. Only when I lost connectivity today did I realize that this router was making my Internet access unstable and slow. I would not recommend purchasing this router. ************** Update on Linksys Tech Support I contacted Linksys Tech support using their website. It has been over 4 weeks and they have not even bothered to respond.
Rating:
Summary: Nice price, great product
Review: If you need to connect moren than 4 pc's (max 8) to the internet (e.g. (A)DSL at your home or office) this is a very good solution at a great price. Lots of features that you may or may not need but might come in handy after all. Some providers for example use the hardware address of your computer's network card to allow you to connect to the internet, and luckily this router has a built-in feature to manually provide this address. Configuration is very simple and it's cheap compared to other 8-port routers.
Rating:
Summary: Won't go the distance
Review: I bought this router about a year ago. It looks nice and sets up easily and would be a strong recommend--if it would continue working properly. After only a few months, I started noticing the occasional internet access outage. Never even really thought about it. Then it grew progressively worse, up to 15 or 20 times a day. Not being a network guru, it's taken quite a bit of time and effort to trace the problem back to the router. Linksys tech support didn't even answer my emails (and phone support is now a 900 number). Don't buy this product unless you hate yourself and enjoy having your internet access fail whenever you seem to need it most.
| 
