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Linksys BEFSR41 Wired Router

Linksys BEFSR41 Wired Router

List Price: $79.99
Your Price: $49.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Flawless
Review: I have not had a single problem with this router.
And I have had it for 8 or 9 months.
We run 3 to 4 computers at a time on it.
I have had Pentium 4, 3 gigahertz plus computers
to Celeron 500 mhz computers running through this with not
a single glitch. Overall I highly recommend it.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I traded this is a game pad for a bike
Review: I traded this router and a game pad for a bike at college. My new bike's value: ~$150. This router and the game pad (with a few sticky buttons): ~$10. I got one hell of a deal.

Now you might be asking, "Why did he give up his perfectly good router and sticky game pad for a bike?" Well my dear friend, listen to my words. Linksys released a new version of this router, known as Version 3.0. DO NOT BUY THIS ROUTER.

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM
The router would freeze and stay non responsive until I forced a manual reboot on the router. Even the reboot button was recessed into the router so I had to find a paper clip to get it. If you do over 100KBs(doesn't matter if it's through the WAN or LAN), then your router will sporadically freeze. Don't even think about using this with a college/business 10 or 100 mbps ethernet. I did, and as soon as I would go over 100KBs; manual reboot. I left the router on for a couple of hours/mins; manual reboot. I breathed in it's general direction; manual reboot. Get my drift?

TECH SUPPORT? YEA, RIGHT
Updated the bios: No good. Called Linksys support several times, and they gave me the oh so wise advice to lower my MTU settings and put my computer in the DMZ. Of course, that did not work. I even RMAed the router and found the same problem with the new one. If you look on the internet, you'll find a plethora of other uses with the same problems I have mentioned.

A BIT ABOUT VERSION 3 OF THE BEFSR41 ROUTER
Now, if you are still reading this, you probably noticed I mentioned something about this being the 3rd version of this router. My friend has an earlier version, and his works perfectly. The router says right by the serial number & bar code, BEFSR41 Vx.x, where x.x is the version of the router. If it is anything below three then your router will probably be fine.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR A ROUTER
I now have a D-Link DI-604. I bought the router online for about 30 dollars. What a deal. This router has a great graphical user interface, amazing options for the price, and best of all, it has never froze on me! I've put a 900+ KBs stable off-campus download through her, and she keeps routing away. The only con is that the WAN port is capped at 10mbs. However, the average home broadband user will never make it near 900KBs anyways. The DI-604 is my suggestion over this lousy router.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Working Great
Review: I've had my Linksys BEFSR41 for over a year and have yet to have a problem with it. I run my small business network with it as the primary router and it has performed flawlessly. I also have the Linksys Wireless B WAP stacked on top and connectivity is great, I've had one of my computers with wireless stay connected for months at a time. I would recommend this product to anyone who wants a great router. The only thing I have found lacking in this router is the ability to configure router-to-router vpn. The BEFSR41 V3 dosn't have the vpn server ability but the BEFSR41 V2 does. If you need the router-to-router vpn (which most people don't) buy the V2. For everyone else this router is perfect.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Died
Review: Bought this router because it was a known brand and had the included 4-port switch. It worked well for a year and then started to die each day. The connection to all PCs would hang and the router would have to be power-cycled to get back online. I don't know whether the issue was with the router, the switch, or DHCP, but it was been replaced.

Save your money and buy another brand.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Solid and reliable, in my experience
Review: I've had one of these up and running on PacBall DSL for 3 1/2 years now, serving two Macs and two PCs. One Mac is running OS X, one OS 8.6, and the Windows boxes are running XP and 2000. Early on we were having trouble staying connected, but the trouble was conflicting network protocols on a Win 98 box, now retired; once the unnecessary protocols were removed, we stayed connected for weeks/months at a time. Check the company website for firmware updates every once in a while and Bob's your uncle.

My company (a rather large tech-y enterprise) adopted Linksys as the standard hub for areas without enough network ports, as they rarely have any problems with the Cisco backbone hardware. I wouldn't recommend anything else.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Pretty good router
Review: THis router works great for the two computers that we need wired for our house. For some reason ive had trouble connecting more than 2 uses to the router though...but the third and fourth arent needed. Good router. Good price.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Great design... questionable quality
Review: This router set up very quickly, and I had tree computers networked behind it within 30 minutes. I also set it up to route secure shell request from the internet to my one linux machine. All great huh?... 3 days later all the lights on it were blinking (including power) and it was hot to touch. Needless to say, it didn't work at all and couldn't be reset.
I replaced it with another, so I obviously still think it's a good product for the price, but I would not use this product where robustness and reliability are required.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good for home use
Review: The BEFSR41 v3 Cable/DSL Wired Router is an excellente router for home use, it has DHCP capabilities (To assign a pool of IP addresses to your PCs), NAT (To allow the connection of more than 1 PC to the internet using only 1 public IP address), VPN passtrough (so you can connect 1 PC at home to a VPN server at work), it is UPnP aware (capability turned off by default, but you can turn it on and if you use Windows XP you can configure the UPnP Fowarding services within the OS).

It has 4 LAN ports to connect up to 4 devices to it (PC, Hub, Switch, Router....) and 1 WAN port to connect your Cable/DSL Modem to it.

Setup is real fast, assuming your ISP assign a Dynamic address, it includes 1 UTP Cat5 Straight patch cable to connect your Cable/DSL modem to the WAN port, you will need however a UTP Cat5 cable (straight or crossfoward, doesn't matter, it's autosensing) for each PC you want to connect to the LAN port, connect the PCs, turn on your cable/dsl modem, the router and the PC, and Voila!!! ready to surf.

If your ISP assigns Fixed IP address, you will need to know (ask your ISP) at least, Public IP address, Network Mask, Gateway and Primary and Secondary DNS Servers, maybe the domain name suffix and If using a DSL service with PPoE, username and password, don't worry it is easiest than it sounds, the only real difference with the steps for the Dynamic IP is that you need to log in to the router and add the information manually for the 1st time (by the way, don't forget to configure the PC to obtain a Dynamic IP address). Router Web Interface at http://192.168.1.1/ by default, and password "admin" without quotes, and please, be sure to change the password after 1st logon.

My router came with firmware 1.4012, new firmware 1.4017 is avaliable at linksys website, don't upgrade unless you need some of the new capabilities or specific fixes, you are warned.

Any question or comment, see my profile.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Does not work well with PPPoE
Review: If you have a DSL modem, I would think twice about getting this router. It works fine for intranet communications, but it is constantly dropping the connection with the DSL modem. Often when it does try to reconnect, it will say the LCP Negotiation has failed (whatever that means), and there is not sufficient documentation that explains why this problem occurs. After all, if you are buying this router, you should always have your connection on, and not have to worry about the LCP Negotiation. It doesn't "just work," something I supposed I have gotten to used to using Macs.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: simple setup, works great
Review: I've had this Linksys router for over 2 years, and it has been quite solid and reliable.

Setup is a breeze - configure through a web browser. Just enter your PPPoE account info and go. Built-in DHCP server makes home networking easy.

VPN works, though you may need to open some ports for gaming, such as Warcraft III. The only minus is file transfer doesn't work with ICQ, but I think that applies to all routers/firewalls.


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