Rating: 
Summary: Good Product, good technical support
Review: Having a large music collection (1000 cd's and growing) I decided to take advantage of the various products to stream music from the computer to the living room stereo. So, the first thing to do is go wireless, since I don't plan on drilling more holes in my house. Bought the Cable Gateway and a Linksys USB Wireless network adapter. The instructions for setup were clear and simple. Took only a few minutes to connect to the computer and attach the internet cable. Loaded the driver, followed the clear directions for setup, called my Internet Service Provider and gave them the MAC address, and BOOM! I was connected at the speed of light. Added the Network adapter, installed its driver, everything running clear and consise and BOOM! I had wireless internet. The system actually picked up my neighbor's wireless network and they live about 50 yards from me! Used the Web base utility to make my network 64-bit WEP protected and changed the name of my network. After I did this, I had no internet connectivity! The computer indicated that I had a strong signal, but limited connectivity to the internet. Called the tech support folks at Linksys, and after a 5 minute wait (hellow Dell!!!!!!!!!!), got a technician. Though he had an accent, it wasn't so bad that you couldn't understand him. He resolved the problem in about 20 minutes. Seems the windows firewall prevented an IP address from being assigned. Turning off the firewall rectified the situation. He also explained that there is a firewall in the Gateway, so the windows firewall is not needed.
So my experience is the product works like advertised, technical support was good, and it basically took about an hour to get everything working. No real problems. I would recommend this product.
Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't make it work
Review: I attempted to replace my rented cable modem with this
product. I spent one hour on the phone with a Comcast technician, but was unable to get a connection. I then
spent an additional hour on the phone with a Linksys
technician, but still counldn't make it work. She suggested
that I return it, which I did. Linksys service is fine, but
this product appears to have been defective.
Rating: 
Summary: Wireless G with uncomporable networking features
Review: I basically bought linksys because I had and existing cable/dsl router and was very happy with the features it had. This new wireless cable modem/router/switch is much much more and worth every cent i spent on it. It had features that wasn't available in highend modems/routers. I realize that owning a linksys router, we take ip forwarding and the likes too trivial. Alot of the features that comes with this unit weren't available in the units i was comparing.
In fact, after doing indepth research on each of the units, which I wanted to buy, the linksys WCG200 starts to shine compared to the others. It was a hands down decision for me. I'm very happy with it and will gladly recommend this unit for anyone who is looking to get a new cablemodem.
By the way, I have COX cable internet and it was easy as telling them the serial number and mac address to get my modem/router into their network. If other ISP are telling you it's incompatible, they are just giving you BS lip service. Oh, i'm writing this review on my wireless connection and it ROCKS. I even play games on it without noticing any network latency issues.
Rating:
Summary: Trouble was with Comcast
Review: I had the same experience David had. I spent hours on the phone with Comcast and with Linksys. Comcast support reps told me four different times that my MAC number had been "registered" when it had not been. If you cannot get a WAN address assigned the problem is with Comcast and all you can do is keep calling and talking to different reps until you get someone who will register you. It seems a regular modem does not have to be registered to work but a combo modem/router does. Also, I was told that I was in a "Wall Garden" file before I got registered - perhaps that phrase might help you out.
Rating:
Summary: Good functionality, could use a few improvements
Review: I have had other Linksys products before. If for nothing else, the clutter elimination itself, is worth the cost of the product. I replaced my router, my access point, and comcast's cable modem, with this single device.
Some user's seem to have the classic male symptom of being above user manual's and report issues with internet connectivity. The last stage of the user manual's set-up instructions, was to contact the ISP to activate the modem. I called Comcast, and they had no clue what I was talking about. So, I hung up and called back again. Sure enough, the engineer this time around knew exactly what I meant. He took down the devices MAC and after about a 30 minute wait, I was ONLINE and cruising.
The 2 gripes that I have about this unit are the following:
1> On the local area maintenance page, they use the PC's MAC and IP to identify devices. The old netgear router I had used to use the PC's names (from the DNS registry), which in my opinion was more user friendly. I have 8 PC/laptops at home, and trying to remember each one's MAC address can be a nightmare.
2> A dynamic DNS client would have been great (another feature the old netgear router had). This basically writes your WAN address to a DNS server on the web. I run an FTP server at home, and instead of typing in an IP address from a remote location to address it, dynamis DNS allows me to choose a simple name, to represent the IP. So, user's could ftp to myname.something.com instead of having to know my physical IP (which changes every now and then, thanks to DHCP). I found a workaround for this, by using a software dynamic dns client, that updates the dynamic dns server, everytime comcast assigns me a new IP.
Overall, I still think this unit rocks. Would have given it 5 stars, if it had the two other features, I mentioned.
Rating:
Summary: very impressed
Review: I purchased this gateway last week and haven't had a single problem with it. It was easy to hook up, the directions were clear, and the setup was simple. The management tool offers you many possibilities such as reducing the range of the wireless signal, different levels of encryption, status, and impressive firewall options. I thought it was totally worth the money and hope you do too!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent modem/router after overcoming problems at Comcast
Review: I saw Walker's comments and thought I was in the same boat.
However, the problem seemed to be Comcast's.
The modem could not get an IP address from Comcast.
The router had no problem assigning an address to the PC.
I also could access the modem via my browser.
I could see that the WAN IP address was not being set.
So I called Comcast. The comcast rep had no idea what
the problem was.
I called Linksys support. They were useless.
(I think they were in India reading scripted
answers.) After being instructed to reboot
the modem (as if I needed to be told that),
they told me to return the product.
I was not convince the product was defective.
So I called Comcast again and got another
rep. He told me Comcast was having problems
with the servers which provide the new customers
with IP addresses. (Maybe the DHCP servers were
down.) They were working on it for a couple of
days but it was not working at that time.
He told me to try again tomorrow.
So I called the next day. This time the rep
took my modem model number and MAC address.
In a short time, I was on the Internet!
This product works like a champ. The comcast
service and the modem are very fast. I used
to have DSL.
The moral of the story is that if you are having
problems with this product, it is likely that
it is on the ISP side. Keep calling back until
it is resolved. Each time you get a new engineer
who may help you get connected.
Since the problem was on the ISP side, I cannot
complain too much about Linksys support. Maybe
they could have solve other problems if the
ISP was not having problems. (However, I think
that they should have been able to give me some
commands to probe the product, which may have been
able to determine that the product was OK and the
ISP needed to correct the problem. Alas, they
didn't/couldn't do that. Rather they suggest to
return the product.)
Rating:
Summary: Everything you need in one package
Review: Replaces your rented cable, adds a four-port switch and a wireless access point. If you haven't set up an access point before, technical support is very helpful. Mine works flawlessly, and I have recommended it to many people.
Rating:
Summary: the ultimate setup
Review: This gateway rocks!! I've used Linksys equipment for a while and this is by far the best of the bunch. The signal strength puts my old router to shame (and I had one of the signal booster boxes from Linksys connected to it!). Configuration was a snap and the administration features are top notch. I would suggest getting one for anyone who wants the perfect all-in-one solution to their networking needs.
Rating:
Summary: Finally, a unit that combines it all and beefs up security!
Review: This is exactly what I have been looking for and it certainly helped in eliminating the extra plugs and ethernet cables running behind my desk (linksys cable modem, 4 port router, wireless access point AND a switch since I needed ONE more port). Now I have everything connected to this unit and don't need anything else extra. The USB connection is nice and actually gives you 5 ports instead of 4 on the router (4 ethernet ports + 1 USB). The biggest improvement I think I see is the configuration part of the unit which you access via browser. More control over security and settings! As a person who knows how to capture hack attempts made on my network or suspicious activity made against it (most seem to try to access by ftp'ing onto my linux server), this one helps further protect your home LAN by making your network 'undetectable' by means of pinging that must hackers use to find exposed networks and ports. People with kids would probably like the part where you can block access to certain websites and even keywords. It can even disconnect certain computers from the network at hours you specify. The only gripe I had was with amazon.com itself. The pricing is among the highest ($171.95 at time of writing) and I submitted a form that showed a competitor beating their price but after a week, they have not still budged on their pricing. I bought this from buy.com for $139.49 and the shipping, like amazon.com, was free.
|
