Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cheap, cheerful and very, very good, 2 Nov 2007
I have used Linksys' larger WRT54GS Wireless Router very happily for years so when I found myself needing WiFi in an apartment during a work assignment this compact - and cheap - router was an obvious choice.
And it worked a treat.
Physically I connected the Linksys to the ADSL modem's Ethernet port using the supplied cable. NOTE: the router does not have an inbuilt ADSL port so it's no good if you are expecting to just plug it directly into the telephone line.
The second supplied Ethernet cable connected to my laptop to do the initial configuration, which is easy enough assuming that you have some basic TCP/IP and WiFi knowledge. You don't get any printed manuals, they are all PDF but that's pretty much standard practice these days (and better on the environment obviously).
Config is all done via a very straightforward browser interface and you should be online within 10 minutes. It supports encryption on the WiFi link and I recommend that you use this. You can also lock down at the MAC address level, and I recommend that you do this as well. Plus, the DHCP server can be limited in how many clients it releases, and guess what, I recommend that you set that up as well. And it sounds obvious, but change the default internal IP address and Admin password - otherwise it's just too easy for a war chalker to slip in unwanted and undetected. But with these types of limits in place your WiFi should be nicely secured against snooping and there is no obvious impact on the routers performance.
In terms of speed, most WiFi routers are used to go to the Internet so you are limited by the ADSL/Cable speed, not the router. I found things no different...I had 802.11g to the router, then a more mundane 1.5 Mbps down the wire. At one point I had three laptops running WiFi at the same time and the Linksys handled them all with no obvious performance issue.
My fairly spacious apartment had the router in the main bedroom and easily provided full signal at the dining room table, which was two walls away (to be fair, those walls were plasterboard, not brick or concrete). Occasionally I would Skype video-call friends and walk around the apartment to show them my humble abode, and the signal was faultless no matter where I walked. In terms of the distance I'm talking, think line of sight of less than 50 feet.
However, at home with double brick, concrete rendered walls and two stories to contend with this router was not so punchy. Out of interest I put the router upstairs and the laptop downstairs, and unlike the twin antenna WRT54GS signal strength was nonexistant. Not that I'm really complaining about that - it's clearly not intended to drive WiFi furthest or fastest. So while I would not suggest this router if you have a large house and plan to roam around, if you live in a smaller apartment or your PC is close to the router you should not have any issues.
Indeed, I like this router so much so that I'm buying another one for my apartment in London.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent, small wireless router, 20 Nov 2006
This router is tiny, and is easily hidden away from view, and works well with Telewest cable set ups.
Set-up was a doddle : Switch everything off, connect everything, switch on the router, then the modem, then the computer and everything autoconfigured flawlessly.
I'm accessing the 'net from a laptop wirelessly, have a wireless webcam, and a wired X-Box all working in harmony with minimal setting-up.
Transmission and reception is very good, far better than my old Netgear DG834G ADSL Router, even through proper brick walls.
My only gripes are that there's no manual included in the box, not even a slim basics leaflet and that the LED's interfere with one another, making it difficult to make out which are illuminated in subued lighting.
Overall and excellent product.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
effortless setup, much faster than the Belkin it replaced, 12 April 2007
Wow - I have had many linksys routers and I have never been disappointed, and this is no exception. I had a basic Belkin wireless G Router for the last 9 months, and it has been quite flakey ever since I plugged in a second hardwired device to it: it crashed every night, lights turned amber from green, power boot was required, etc. Belkin admits there are problems with this router and they may be sending me a new one. But I had already ordered the linksys.
But now I have it I can see that it is a lot faster. I have two wireless macs connected to and they can now transfer files at a rate of about 1.8Mb/sec. That's 1.8M bytes/sec upstream from one mac and another 1.8M bytes/sec downstream to the other mac, which is 3.6M bytes/sec which is about 36Mbits/second, which is not bad for a system rated at 54Mbits/sec. Much faster.
Let's just hope it stays up 24/7 like it's supposed to!
The only setup issue I had was that it shared the same network (192.168.1) as my cable modem, so I couldn't get onto the internet. Once I guessed that was the problem and changed the LAN address to 192.168.0.1 everything just started working again.
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