Linksys Etherfast Cable and DSL Router

Linksys Etherfast Cable and DSL Router

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Sunman
Epinions.com ID: Sunman
Location: Southern california
Reviews written: 42
Trusted by: 4 members

Not as Reliable. Terrible Tech support

Written: Mar 14 '01
Pros:Nice looking box, Easy browser setup and configs.
Cons:Port forwarding issues, Not as fast for home lan. Terrible Tech support. Lousy product.
The Bottom Line: Do not buy this product if you want to run a network at home where you run FTP or anything. Expensive compared to Others. Terrible Tech support.

Good:
Sleek design. OK for average home users who just want to browse the internet and use email.

Bad:
I bought this router after reading opinions from other members here. I was very excited once I received the router and had it installed in under 15 minutes (since I do this for a living). Everything worked fine for a couple of days, till I wanted to setup my FTP server, and did I run into problems with this thing. After setting up port forwarding on it, since my FTP server is not on port 21, only 1 computer could browse the net, get email, other workstation could only ping the IPs but not get any email and internet access through the browser, after enabling 5-6 different ports and resetting the Router things are still not working fine. Sometimes the windows98 computer just can't get on the internet even though it was working 10 minutes ago. My FTP server works now (intermittent) after reading 100s of newsgroup posts on http://www.practicallynetworked.com.

Tech support:
Virtually they do not have tech support. You call the 800#, leave voicemail and they will call you back in 4-5 hours, if you're lucky. The techsupport person(s) I dealt with were very rude. Basically their attitude was "you bought it, now deal with it".

Firmware:
This is like the bios of the router. Looking at Linksys history, they have been upgrading their router firmware almost every month. Usually you would think, ok this is an upgrade and it would save all my previous settings, but NO!!! The upgrade erases all your settings and you have to restart from scratch. Most of the times it breaks your old and new config and you would end up resetting the router.

Documentation:
Poorly written documentation.

Price:
It is ok, not too expensive. But there are other routers out there that do the same thing and better for cheaper. Look into SMC, Zytel, Netgear if you want something reliable. You can read full review about them at http://www.practicallynetworked.com (and NO I have nothing to do with that site)

I have already returned my linksys router and gotten a Netgear.

Recommended: No

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