Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G Router

Rating:
Summary: great if you have a weekend to waste..
Review: I'm not a tech dummy. I've set up large (60+ workstation) networks. I spent HOURS trying to get this garbage to work. Went to tech support.. waited FOREVER. This product, this company SUCKS! Avoid! No joke!

Rating:
Summary: Installation problems
Review: First time installation was problematic. I had to call the Linksys help desk for support. Linksys customer service was surprisingly responsive and helpful. Once installed, the unit performed well. However, I moved to another state recently and had to re-install the router to a new cable modem. At first it seemed fine, but then it could not detect the signal. Called Linksys help desk again and they determined the router became defective. Only purchased it 4 months ago, so I'm a bit disappointed with the product.

Rating:
Summary: Flawless performance at a decent price
Review: I've had broadband for a little more than couple of years now and recently decided to add wireless capability also.

Before buying this, I read a lot of reviews about having setup problems and it needing a firmware upgrade, but I didn't need any of that. Maybe Linksys already has the latest firmware on the devices now.

I was using a cable modem -> netgear router which centrally links to every room in my house. This wireless router gave my enough wired ports to still have one wired desktop connection in most of the rooms and add wireless capabilities for my laptop. I have an apple powerbook, one HP laptop nc6000 with intel centrino and one sony vaio with Linksys WPC54G adapter. I have never had any problems with any of those devices. All in all, I connect 3 laptops wireless, 2 desktops wired, fileserver wired and a palm device with Linksys Wireless-G compact flash card.

My house is a 2 bedroom condo and I get full strength connection everywhere in the house as well as in the deck. I've also tried no encryption, WEP encryption, 128bit etc and they all work just flawlessly.

I got a better price from amazon along with the rebate ($58 -$10 rebate), so I guess it's a good deal.

Before buying this, I researched on 802.11b, g, with speedbooster, and D-Link Xtreme G(108Mbps).
- speedbooster wasn't an option since it needed a compatible wireless card (tight dependency)
- G(54Mbps) was a better choice than B(11Mbps)since it was quite polular and backwards compatible
- xtreme-G (108Mbps) was quite new and it seems like it was D-Link specific only.

Plus, since I also stream music over wireless from different computers and I needed something more that 11Mbps and G works just fine.

Overall, a great buy and the next upgrade will be when 108Mbps becomes more standard on wireless.


Rating:
Summary: Get netgear instead
Review: I purchased netgear b-band for my laptop. Set it up in 10 minutes. I purchased a new desktop pc and wanted to upgrade to g-band so I purchased a linksys router, adapter, pci card, etc... It took two weeks of agony before i finally returned it and got the pci card for my desktop through netgear. I set up netgear for my desktop in 15 minutes.

Get netgear!
Natalie

ps.. I have a dell pc, fyi.

Rating:
Summary: Easy Install
Review: I read some of the previous reviews before purchasing so I was a little worried when it arrived. It seems people have a hit or miss with linksys.

While I felt bad for the people who responded negatively using AOL broadband, I can say that I have DSL and this thing worked flawlessly right out of the box. I completed a wireless connection to a PC and have a mac laptop. Time from out of the box until installation and both computers recognizing the network, maybe 10 minutes total.

So far I've been able to take the laptop to any room in the house with full signal strength, even with microwave interference.

It works great and for a great price, but my only work of caution is like another reviewer who hooked up macs to their network, this router has trouble establishing WEP encryption with macs. I use my mac on at least 5 other networks without a hitch, it's the best computer I have. But something with linksys and the security settings are not meshing well.

I've tried Netgear and D-Link with mixed results. If you want a cheap access point that works great out of the box and delivers strong signals, go with this router. In fact, the only place where I lost the signal was out in my driveway on the street, which is good, that's the whole point.

Rating:
Summary: If you use AOL for Broadband with cable, don't buy this!
Review: I use AOl Cable with 9.0 optimized SE. I bought this from Best Buy where the staff informed me this was the most popular wireless router with 802.11g and the best deal for $69.99 So I take it home and spend the next 4 hours trying to install it with its "EZ setup" feature. After arguing over and over with Linksys and then AOL I find a tiny thred in their terrible support forum that only the following routers work with AOL at this time:
BEFW11S4
BEFW11S4 v2, v3, and v3.2
BEFSR41
BEFSR41 v2
BEFSR11
BEFSRU31
BEFSR81
BEFSR81 v2

As you can tell, these are the older 802.11b routers and are fast fading from tge scene.

Furthermore, the AOl Braodband department advertises this router as the best one on their very support page. It's a crazy world.

Rating:
Summary: Great product. The best choice for console gaming!!
Review: After decideding we needed wireless internet access in our home we purchased this to replace our wired Netgear router. Setup was a snap. Being our first wireless product I was a bit nervous about it being complicated to setup but I actually spent more time installing the Wireless PCI card we bought (also Linksys) than setting up the router. It was practically plug and play as we were up and going within 20 minutes.

The web configuration utility, as others have pointed out, is the way to go for setup. Naturally for security reasons you want to change the default SSID and disable SSID broadcast. Also enable WPA encryption.

The latest firmware upgrade contains a number of great configuration options. For example, we can designate our PS2 to have priority over our PC when playing online - this is great when you want to maintain a fast connection.

Unlike our previous router, we were able to play every Playstation 2 game we owned online without enabling port forwarding or turning on DMZ (even with the router's Firewall turned on.) Presently we have 2 PS2s, an XBox, 2 wireless computers, a wireless game adapter, a 4 port switch, 5 port hub and 3 file servers all using the router and we have not encountered any problems.

Rating:
Summary: LINKSYS WRT54G WIRELESS ROUTER
Review: So to start off I am in the tech industry working on Wi-Fi,WLAN, UWB and so on, yada, yada. The 802.11G standard is for 54-108 Mbps. The next generation is 802.11N which is 480 Mbps second but guess what, your access and speed is ONLY as good as the internet allows. My points are intended for the average user here:

1. The difference between this and the Super G router as someone pointed out is the extra flash memory which is not much. Save your cash. A couple of companies I have been at use nothing but this router and we had 20 or so folks on the network with no problems. I'm sitting here downloading 1-5 Meg files as an example fairly quickly.

2. Most hotels offering broadband access run at 10 Mbps or the lower end of the 10/100 standard, so 1/4 the speed of this routers capability. Most T1 lines in business are running at the higher end or 100 Mbps but the pipeline is usually running pretty full due many folks on the system.

3. I'm a road warrior traveling globally so I have been the Guinea pig for my last 3 companies and IT departments. So this router works flawlessly through my present companies VPM through which I'm typing this review right now.

4. So for the quick and short of it, ordered on Sunday evening at around 10 PM Pacific Std Time and 3 days later on Wednesday I have my wireless router up and running. So kudos to Amazon for another great job in delivery!

5. This router replaces another Linksys Router, the BEFSR41, which is a standard router we have had for > 3 years and still works great. I did do a firmware upgrade about a year ago. The reason I'm replacing it because it is hardwire router and it's a problem when my wife and I both want to use our office, with one desk, at the same time. So now I'm using my laptop on the kitchen table about 60'away from where the router is and getting 3.7 Mbps speed via Comcast cable through my VPN connection. This is based on a measurement speed test by going to either www.cnet.com or www.2wire.com and running their bandwidth meter test to see actual connection/throughput speeds. These are both free sites so check out your connection.

6. Setup - got it with the disk but had some difficulties running and connecting to the internet after disconnecting the old router per the instructions. Called tech support, got a very nice lady in Argentina who was very helpful and gave me a couple of helpful suggestions. Had to disconnect the power plug on the Comcast cable modem box for 10 seconds to reboot the cable modem box, which was still reading our old IPCONFIG address. This got me connected to the internet again after the IP address reset itself. Doing the normal START/CMD/Ipconfig /release & /renew for some reason didn't release the Ipconfig address in the cable modem I guess.

INSTEAD OF USING THE CD that comes with the Linksys router, was told to go to www.linksys.com/easy which ran a more sophisticated setup wizard program that configured the router, the WEP Security protocol and I imagine the VPN protocols as well and was up and running within 10 minutes through my VPM. Very cool, wish my Adobe Acrobat 6.0 upgrade went that easy recently. (In all fairness to Adobe, got that upgrade running but not till I had several phone calls and downloads to do with Tech Support who also were great).

Some General Comments from other reviewers - why in the heck do you want to upgrade your distance from 200' to 2100' as one person pointed out? If I want to go drive almost a half mile away from my wireless network what the heck do I need my laptop for? Are you downloading music at a friends or what? I'm really curious about that.

Amazing what reading directions and being POLITE to technical support can do............if you call with a lousy attitude and tear up the person on the other end of the phone, don't expect good results. Most of the tech support people I have dealt with are trying in most part to do a good job.