Rating: Summary: good buy good product Review: [...]. the only drawback to this item is that youhave to reboot your cable modem, router and pc at least once a week to maintain a good connection. I havent had any problems with it so far. Setup and install was simple. Good product for great price
Rating: Summary: Excellence through simplicity Review: Let me preface this review by saying that I'm a professional network engineer. It's my job to put together global networks, using the arcane syntax of Cisco's IOS, or Extreme's CLI.So when I built my home network to support my 3 PCs, work laptop, and my two roomates PCs and Macs, I was looking for a product that was versatile, durable, and reliable. The LinkSys BEFSR41 is all that and more. Set up is a snap. The web tools are fantastic, the guide is extremely well put together. Even flashing the BIOS -- a relatively uncommon, esoteric task by anyone's standards -- had a well thought out, easy to use tool. I've now had this product running for about a year and a half, sitting under my roomate's printer table. It's totally maintenance and headache free. I've used it to telecommute, host a web site, and just plain fool around. I would recommend this as highly to the most descriminating engineer as to the average home user.
Rating: Summary: Worked great - for one year Review: This worked perfectly until last week (one year later). Now I have 30% packet loss to the internet--but it comes in solid bursts (30-60 seconds at a time of no connectivity). I've tested all other parts of my network, and the linksys is the part that crapped out.
Rating: Summary: Simple way to share internet access Review: The Linksys 4-Port Cable/DSL Router is, in my mind, the cheapest, easiest way to share your broadband internet connection with your LAN. It serves as a gateway, firewall, and DHCP server, all fully customizable via a standard web browser. Setup is a breeze. Plug in the power jack. Run a standard ethernet cable from your cable/DSL modem into the WAN port, the lights will blink on. Then either hook your computers into any of the 4 jacks on the built-in switch via standard ethernet cables, or just use the uplink jack to hook it into your existing hub/switch. It includes enough documentation to get you up and running, but not much more. I have never had to use customer support on this item, so I can not rate on their reliability. There are several nice features, such as port forwarding (forward specific ports directly to a local IP), or DMZ host, but I would like to see an option to allow a specific WAN (internet) IP to access your LAN without the firewall blocking them. One problem I have noticed is that, when several users are downloading several files (or even just one system downloading many files from a file network), the router will simply stop. Any systems on its switch will stop recieving network traffic, and no internet access will remain to the network. The only way I have found to fix it is to cycle the power. If you want an easy to use, cheap way to share your internet connection, look no further.
Rating: Summary: Complete DHCP Router/Switch Review: The Linksys BEFSR41 Etherfast 4-Port Cable/DSL Router has everything you need for hooking up four PC's and one printer server. I used to hook up my Internet Cable Modem to my main PC thru network card (#1) and the second network card (#2) went to a Linksys 5-port hub. The hub connected to 3 other PC's. The only problem is that the Main PC had to stay on all the time. I also shared a printer connected thru this PC, which was on all the time. With the Linksys BEFSR41 Etherfast 4-Port Cable/DSL Router and the Linksys EPSX3 EtherFast 10/100 PrintServer3 (3-Port), I can hook it up to the network and any PC can use the printer server or the Internet connection. They are now all independent of one another. I setup each PC for DHCP mode and IPX/SPX Protocol, which can make the PC's visible faster. I have been running the new hookup for around a month now and have no problems.
Rating: Summary: Awesome ease Review: exceptional router, very easy to install and seems to be real reliable.
Rating: Summary: Easy Setup and works with my 2 VPNs Review: I have AT&T Broadband (Mediaone). There are 2 of us that work from my home and we connect to our corporate network through a Nortel VPN. I also network 2 other personal pc's to it. Setup was easy. I followed the quick install instructions (didn't use the cd at all). I had to uncheck the proxy that was set in my browser, and then restart the pc, but then it worked just fine on the one pc. Then after restarting, I went into the configuration in the web browser and set the one pc's mac address to my pc's mac address under Advanced, clone. Then I shut down and restarted. Then I logged on the other 3 pcs and it worked instantly. No other reconfiguration required. I then just chatted AT&T and had them remove the $10 networking fee and the other 3 mac addresses! That's it. One thing is, the mac address of the pc you use in the cloning has to be on for the other pcs to work!
Rating: Summary: Router for DSL Internet connection used by multiple machines Review: This inexpensive router will easily allow multiple machines in your household to share your single DSL internet connection. My ISP required two pieces of software to be installed and I was unwilling to do this. With this router I could connect any "visiting" laptop to my home network w/o installing my ISP's connection software. Although the setup/configuration screen is easy to use, the naive computer user will need to consult the manual for help when installing. The included "Quick Installation" sheet did not meet my needs.
Rating: Summary: So awesome I had to put up a review!! Review: Normally I don't do a review of things I buy. But after recently buying this Linksys router, and putting it to use in my home I just have to tell someone about it. I received it the day my cable company was coming to put in my cable modem. At first (as do most guys!!) I just plugged it in and tried to get it to work, no luck! But after regaining some sense I opened the book and read the instructions. Voila, in 5 mins I was zooming along. My wife's MAC G4 was also a breeze to setup, and it's FAST!!! No more having to share the phone line, waiting to use it or having to get kicked off to receive a phone call. I truely recommend getting it, expecially if you are concerned about security, it uses NAT to "hide" your PCs behind a sort of firewall. It also has quite a number of features available to configure, since the one I got was a revision 2 product. So, if you have a number of PCs that need access to the net and you wanna share files with those PC within a private network, get this!!!
Rating: Summary: Almost Too Easy! Review: What can I say -- I unpacked it, set it up, it worked, and I haven't touched it since! IMPORTANT: Be sure that you change the router's default password! Otherwise, anybody will be able to break into your home network, by using the default ADMIN password. For additional security, I also use the free ZoneAlarm software. Plugging everything in was simple. I've steadily used the product for about 3 months without a failure. I will probably upgrade to their wireless product.
|