Rating: 
Summary: Igor
Review: Constant troubles, reboot every day. Support is patetic. Do not buy
Rating:
Summary: Not Ready for Prime Time
Review: As stated in many prior reviews here, the WRV54G is simply not ready for release as a consumer-quality product. My friend was looking for a wireless router with VPN, and he bought this one simply because it was the only such unit at CompUSA at the time. I have used many Linksys products before and have been very satisfied with their quality, so I initially thought it was a good choice. Boy, was I wrong.The setup was indeed simple, and the unit was up and running in a few minutes. There were a few snags getting 128-bit encryption running, but overall the interface seemed pretty intuitive. The big problem with this unit is reliability. Connected behind a standard cable modem, this unit loses its DHCP settings frequently (usually in a day or two, sometimes sooner, and at every reboot). When this happens, the connection to the Internet is gone. It's still possible to connect to the administration page on the router itself, though, at least usually. The only way to restore the DHCP settings is to go to the Status tab on the administration web site and click on the DHCP Renew button. Even power-cycling the unit doesn't work, as DHCP is always messed up when it reboots, but clicking the DHCP Renew button causes it to work again. On three occasions, the wireless unit seemed to fail. Connecting to the router with an Ethernet cable, rebooting the unit through the admin interface, and manually renewing DHCP worked twice. One time, even connecting to the admin interface via the Ethernet cable failed. My friend bought another unit to install at a second home, and had Comcast install the unit when they installed the cable modem. Of course, they left everything at default settings and did as little as possible. Once again, the next day, DHCP failed and the Internet connection was lost; only this time, hitting DHCP Renew still did not renew the address, nor did power-cycling the unit. Tossing the router altogether and plugging straight into the cable modem works fine, though, but of course that defeats the purpose of a router. I can't review the VPN functionality, because it's never been stable enough running as a plain router to even begin worrying about VPN yet. Upgrading to the latest firmware version did not help. My advice: stay clear of the WRV54G! If the issues are firmware-related, perhaps future upgrades will fix this unit. I wouldn't bet on it with my money, though.
Rating: 
Summary: Good if you like to reboot
Review: I have had the wrv54g for about a month, and it worked fine until I needed to web into the router or use the wireless. The box locks out the ability to web in to the management interface, not the external interface (WAN) but the internal interface. And the wireless access dies at the same time.
All the wired connections still function, as far as I can tell, and the firewall still functions while the management interface is locked-up. I have the latest code for the router, but I have had to reboot this thing almost once a day. This is a fairly pricey box for a home user, and Linksys has had some good products, but I would recommend staying away from the wrv54g.
The reliability, or lack of, has really been disappointing. Save your money, this product is not worth half the current price.
Rating: 
Summary: Pleased
Review: I purchased this item to start my wireless network. This was pretty easy to setup and use. The only complaint I have is the VPN setup is not very intuitive and there isn't a lot of documentation for it. I have yet to use it, but that is ok. It's other features suit me well. All in all I recommend. I have this and a 5 port switch wireless bridge from linksys also. Together they work great. I have full connectivity upstairs.
Rating:
Summary: DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT!
Review: I fell victim to the "how bad can it really be" statement and boy did I get burned. This is by far the worst piece of networking equipment that I have ever touched. I have been in the business 8 years, I am an MCSE in NT and Win2k as well as a CCNA. I say that only to state that I know how to setup networks and this POS box wouldn't even allow a consistent internet connection. Plus, like any good tech, you setup the network then and only then try to add the VPN. Well as soon as you turn on the VPN access in this router the machine completely changes it's local network settings. Do not buy this. Find something else. I'm going to get a firwall/VPN unit then try and add the wireless later. By the way, the tech support was horrible. I actually had to teach them things about networking, which means that they were useless for me.
Rating:
Summary: I should have believed all of the other reviews
Review: I couldn't imagine that a linksys product was as bad as everyone was saying. I bought it anyway and now I don't have to imagine.
It has problems. It crashes when I try to set the time zone. It crashes frequently!
Rating:
Summary: Too many bugs
Review: I have bought several routers in the past, 3Com, Buffalo, and a few others. This is the first and probably the last Linksys. the firmwear that came with the router was unusable. Upgrading to the latest improved things a lot. I can get most things working now. WPA works, the VPN works mostly. UPnP works OK.
On the down side you can't mix WEP and WPA which you can on my other routers, also you can't allocate fixed DHCP to partcular MAC adresses, you have to allocate the machines a fixed IP address, not possible on our laptops.
Worst of all, is that we can crash the router from the Internet side with our development software! (It doesn't crash our other routers). This is in the current Firmware revision. This is unforgivable. Avoid!
Rating:
Summary: Nightmare Product from Hell
Review: This product has many great documented features, but it doesn't deliver anything but grief as nothing hardly works. My dreams and aspirations were crushed as I became frustrated with the bugs, quirks, and general lack of functionality. Here are some of the many quirks I came across.
--- wan dhcp client broken as it gets invalid addresses
--- wireless overall unstable - disconnects for unknown reasons
--- non-tcp protocols cannot route between wireless and lan (problems for mac os 9 w/ appletalk)
--- sometimes my own dhcp server wouldn't work across wifi and lan lines.
--- security features causes problems
------- mac filtering made some clients wifi cards not work w/ router
------- WEP would make other clients wifi cards not work w/ router
--- routing features don't work for Internet access, e.g. if you have subnet of 2 (192.168.2.0/28), all computers on that subnet cannot access internet. Problem with router's NAT facility.
--- routing cannot support classless routing, e.g. 192.168.1.32/27. And because you CAN ONLY NAT out from 192.168.1.x type of addresses, routing feature is 100% useless.
Essentially, I have to find creative strategies around the many flaws of this device. The scary part is that I cannot secure the wi-fi network, which allows neighbors to snoop around or clog our bandwidth.
UPDATE: Called their tech support about their routing problems. We couldn't reach level 2 technical support because they were so busy, so he told me to e-mail support. I did, and after a week, I have heard nothing from them.
Rating: 
Summary: Product Seems To Work Fine For Me
Review: After reading all the negative feedback I was very hesitant to purchase this device. I researched other manufacturer's VPN devices but I decided to purchase it anyway based on my previous experiences with Linksys.
I've had it running for a week and all seems well. I did upgrade the firmware to 2.36 as soon as I got it running.
I have successfully created client connections with the help of the very comprehensive FAQ area on their website. My next step is to purchase another one and setup a site to site tunnel.
One unexpected gain was the performance increase over my previous WRT54G. I have not experienced any of the problems reported by the other reviewers.
I will update my review if I notice any degredation in performance or functionallity, but I think this is a very good device and would recommend it to anyone looking to setup VPN access to their small networks.
Rating:
Summary: Worthless piece of junk
Review: I got this router because of its advertised VPN capability. But I discovered that it is completely worthless. The wireless access point cannot maintain connectivity with any client--XP, Linux or Mac OS X--for more than 90 minutes. It will not make a VPN connection. After spending 7 hours on the phone with Linksys, their tech finally admitted that he had never successfully established a VPN connection with one of these paperweights.
I'm going back to my reliable Airport Extreme and a software VPN. Save your money and avoid Linksys.
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