Rating: 
Summary: Port Forwarding Nightmare
Review: After having the BEFSR81 for about two years it fizzeled out so I went out and bought a replacement the BEFSR81 V3. This was step back for Linksys. With the first router I didnt have many problems and was able to setup port fowarding for online gaming very easily. With the V3 router I couldn't even get on the internet until after a firmware upgrade.
Then I tried to forward ports for TeamSpeak and running online game servers. I could not get it to work. After a total of six combined hours of trying to setup the router and on tech support calls I have given up and it is going back for another product.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible throughput
Review: Apparently some have success with this unit and some don't. I bought the V3 unit and put the 2.50.2 firmware on it and 50k is the best download speed I can get. Spent time on the phone with LinkSys and they said take it back. Weird thing is, my upload speed is over 200k, about what it should be.
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.
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