Great Buy For First Time Buyers Looking To Set Up a Wireless Home Network I
Written: Mar 30 '05 (Updated Apr 13 '05)
Product Rating:
Ease of Installation:
Ease of Use:
Pros: Designed for the home user and the business user.
Cons: Configuration is so vast with little instructions making it confusing.
The Bottom Line: Besides being a good start to a home network, the Linksys WRT54G is also compatible with add-on's that will help make the process of setting up a home network easier.
lynus's Full Review: Linksys WRT54GS Wireless Router
INTRODUCTION
There are two ways to approach buying a wireless router to create a wireless home network.
One way includes visiting a Best Buy store, and telling a store associate that you want a wireless home network, listening to their trained babble and purchase items based off their recommendations and when put on the spot set up an appointment for them to come out to your house to install and set it all up. Painless (except to the wallet) yet easy.
Or, if you want to spend less money, be less stupid, and look at things differently except what “money can buy you” - you can do the research and purchase the needed devices yourself. Honestly, setting up a home network isn’t extremely hard…read on.
LINKSYS V. THE COMPETITION
I am going to be no help to you in discussing why I ended up with the Linksys WRT54G instead of any countless other models available for sale. My first thought went with the Linksys brand solely because I have friends who work for Cisco the parent company of Linksys. Additionally, I have a family member who works as a computer programmer for a major online company – and he uses Linksys. Best of all, Santa delivered it!
WIRELESS-G v. WIRELESS-B
I’ll try to stay away from getting really technical here, but the best explanation for what the difference is between a Wireless G model and a Wireless B model is simply a matter of the naming convention for wireless routers, similar to version numbers for software products.
Take AOL (America Online) for example. Many, many years ago (it seems, but it has only been around 12) AOL had version 2.0 (at least 2.0 was the first I remembered), then came 3.0 and 4.0 then quickly came 5.0, then 6.0, and so on until I think the latest here in 3/2005 is 9.0? Much the same with Wireless routers. First there was A, then B (which became very popular), and maybe there was a C and so on (Google was a little vague when I searched them out) but eventually the naming convention got to Wireless G.
All you need to know is that G is currently (3/2005) newer than anything that came before it and newer things are commonly faster than their older counterparts. If you are a number’s person then you can look at it this way…Wireless-B can transmit 11Mbps whereas Wireless-G can transmit 54Mbps. 54 is a larger number than 11!
WHY BUY ONE?
You would want a wireless router if you wanted to connect various devices in your home to the same Internet connection (cable/DSL) and allow these devices to communicate without the need for running wires all throughout your home.
Now, I’ll tell you why I wanted it. I wanted it because I am normally on the computer a lot (many hours spent writing for Epinions). My wife is a teacher and just like most jobs out there – Education is getting more and more involved in evolving computer technologies. She now has to do her grade-book and her lesson planning all online. It is a requirement now! Which means, she too now has to be online a lot, and before we got a wireless router we had to share one computer. And sorry Epinions’ – “teacher work” trumps “writing reviews”.
Additionally, we have had a Tivo for over a year now and they recently released version 7.1 which allows us to transfer television shows recorded on our Tivo to our PC’s and then burn them to DVD.
INSTALLATION
After opening up the box I quickly read over the included instructions provided by Linksys and read that there were two ways to install the Linksys WRT54G. The recommended way was to insert the included CD-Rom and follow the onscreen instructions. The other way was to follow the steps printed on the written instructional manual. I decided to go the recommended route.
After placing the CD-Rom into my PC I was greeted with a welcome screen and asked very nicely to click Next. I did so and then the system checked for an active Internet Connection – once it found one it told me to follow the diagrams to hook up the cables from my cable modem to my router and then to my PC and also how to hook up the power cord from the router to my surge protector.
My installation would have gone smoother if at this point I didn’t pause and check the written instructions. You see, I have always been told that when you plug in or unplug anything into the back of your PC you always do it while it is turned off. The instructions on the CD-Rom didn’t mention turning the PC off. So I double checked the written instructions --- and on the written instructions it said to turn the PC off. I was confused! In the end I decided not to follow the on-screen instructions and I turned the PC off (which of course made the onscreen instructions disappear). So in this case, the recommended instructions were wrong.
side note:
I would like to point out that my Installation wasn’t as smooth as many other writers have written about here on Epinions – but – the MAIN reason for that was in how my Internet connection was configured.
I, perhaps like many, had my cable modem attached to my PC via a USB cable. To use the router you will need to connect to your PC via Ethernet cables. Your cable modem will connect to the router via Ethernet and subsequently the router will connect to the PC via Ethernet. I was fortunate that my PC came with an Ethernet Network Adaptor I just had to figure out (and this was the most painful part of the installation) how to switch my connections from USB to Ethernet.
Unlike 99% of hardware installations I have done, the setup for the Linksys WRT54G was the easiest and the most confusing. For starters, there is no installation CD for users of Windows XP. Windows XP does all the work for you and that’s it. At this point, things became different. Because of there being no installation from Linksys itself there wasn’t anything in the Start menu to click on to access the new hardware. Returning back to the written instructions I read that I had to open up Internet Explorer and type in “http://192.168.1.1” and enter in the “default password” to gain access to my router. After doing so, I was then greeted with the confusing task of configuring my router yet these were very important final steps.
CONFIGURATION
Like any device on the market these days especially computer products, the Linksys WRT54G is designed to work with a wide range of clients (buyers). Some of the features are basic (login, password) others are more technical (security, IP addressing, etc.) – and there are some there that even I had no idea what they do but I’m sure they do something for some users!
I knew that one of the most important steps to complete here was to change the default password for gaining access to my router. Because the router ships with a “default” password – anyone who knows the default password could gain access to my router if I left it using the default password. So I changed it…
Next, I gave my router a name. This was done so that other wireless devices in my home would know what the name for the router was and be able to connect/communicate with it. They would be able to this because of…
SSID broadcast.Don’t lose me here! SSID is the choice to “broadcast” just like how a television station broadcasts its programming – the name of your router -- to anyone who can receive your signal. When it is broadcasting, devices can “see” the broadcast and choose to “tune” to that broadcast and in this case – use that Internet connection. But, I don’t want “everyone” to see and connect to my broadcast just people in my house, therefore…
I secured my wireless network with a password – and this is where things got a bit confusing for me. There are numerous types and levels when it came to wireless security. The most basic is a WEP key. A WEP (wireless entry point) key is basically a password that you know and your router knows and all other devices in your house that you want to connect to your router knows – but no devices outside of that network knows. This is not the highest level of security of course – but it will do in most cases. And in most cases you can forget this…
The WRT54G by default comes configured to broadcast both a Wireless-B and Wireless-G frequency. The main reason for this is to allow the WRT54G to be “backward compatible” – the ability to work with devices that came before it. If you have older wireless devices or Tivo’s without software version 7.1 than you need Wireless-B. If not, then you may want to consider changing the default to broadcasting only Wireless-G so you can take full advantage of your purchase.
To conclude, the Configuration screen looked and acted like a standard web page with links that separated the different sections listed across the top. There is a help link to assist in every step if need be. The only confusing part again for me was the security feature for besides WEP and the surprising the default (using no security) the other choices were too confusing to understand as was the documentation.
QUICK THOUGHTS ON THE LINKSYS WRT54G
► There is no off switch, so the router has to stay on all the time, unless I turned the whole surge protector off. The only button on the router is a Reset button. One press and the router turns itself off and then back on (good for when all the lights on the front are blinking in unison and you are getting no response from it and you can’t seem to get it to work). Hold down the button for 10 seconds and the router will erase all memory (reset back to the default admin password, forget its name, etc. – return to how it was when you took it out of the box).
► The Linksys WRT54G is a 4 point switch on top of being wireless. This means you can connect up to 4 devices directly to its base using Ethernet cables. The only time you need to use wireless is when the other devices are at a distance away from the router or you want to be able to have the “wireless freedom” to roam around without being hinged because of a wired cable. If you have a “computer room” with 4 or fewer PC’s than you can connect them all directly to the router without having to go wireless.
► The wireless feature can communicate with almost an endless amount of devices. The future can be endless unless you are a business user and need several wireless connections.
► Although small, the green LEDs on the front display of the router give off pertinent information. One shows power to the router. Another blinks when the router is communicating via wireless means. There are 4 lights for each of the four port switches, and another blinks when the router is communicating via wired means.
► There are two antenna’s, one for receiving and one for sending. Makes the data less congested.
► The router uses the 2.4ghz band as do many household cordless phones do. Upon using our router we haven’t experienced a complete and utter frustrating blackout from using our phones but the other day I did hear my wife state, “say that again Mom – the phone went out for a few seconds”.
► We have had two instances so far when we have been unable to get other devices in our home network to connect to the router. I have narrowed the field of possible issues to the communication between the router and the cable modem. In my situation, I have to leave both the router and the cable modem on all the time (even though the modem comes with a Standby feature). Before when I put the modem into Standby while gone to work and then turn it back on upon returning home the router and the modem had trouble making a connection. The only fix was to turn both devices off, then turn the modem on first, followed by the router. Because of this, we now leave both devices on all the time (running up our power bill slightly!).
MY HOME NETWORK
I thought you might want to know how I polished off my home network (at least for the moment!).
Linksys WUSB54G – these are the wireless USB connective devices that allow laptops and other devices designed to support the Wireless G standard the ability to connect to the router. My wife’s laptop uses one. The installation was very simple. We connected the device to her laptop via USB and inserted the included CD-Rom. Within a few seconds the software had recognized the existence of our home network (it saw the broadcast of the SSID and we were able to click on the name of router and click Connect) and my wife can do her work on her laptop, in the living room while I can fool around on my computer, in the bedroom.
Linksys WUSB12 – these are popular portable wireless-B devices. They are the size of small compact highlighter pens. Pull off the cap to expose a USB connector and push back a release button and the small antenna pops out. These are extremely popular with home networks that use the Wireless-B frequency but they are also compatible and highly recommended by Tivo to use with their device to connect the Tivo to your home network. As I mentioned in a previous paragraph – these devices were the only way to connect Tivo to your home network – but that has all changed. Tivo’s with software version 7.1 can now use Wireless-G devices with their Tivo – although Tivo has said that there are no benefits in terms of speed between the two devices.
OVERALL
Did I mention that while I was writing in this review in the bedroom my wife was working on her laptop in the living room doing her school work and she was using Tivo to watch her favorite television show Charmed while at the same time I had Tivo transmitting the television show Alias to my PC? This is the power of home networks!
I don’t see any need to pay some conglomerate to install something that you could do yourself with a little time and patience. If your system is already using Ethernet your setup will be even less painless especially if you use Windows XP. The WRT54G is fairly easy to setup and you can be up and running fairly quickly. Best of all, the WRT54G is made for both the small and the large consumer. There are features there that I have no idea what they do but after reading some of the summary paragraphs on sites like Amazon.com some of those features are extremely important and in some cases lacking from other wireless routers. For the home user who just wants a home network then you couldn’t start with a better product than the Linksys WRT54G.
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