Linksys WRT54GS Wireless Router

Pros: cheap, easy
Cons: must have broadband connection to use

Wired house about ten years ago with ethernet cable and a simple four port switch. We could share printers and files and the dial up internet connection. Just switched from dial-up access (26 kbs!) to Wild Blue satellite. Had to replace switch with ...

Pros: Works well once installed, Linksys reps were EXTREMELY helpful.
Cons: A pain to set up with a Mac

I originally bought this product for my dorm room but I don't get back for another month so I set up a temporary home connection for my family. Well let's see I got this in the mail yesterday and it took forever to install. It would have been easy if I ...

Pros: Easy to set-up Reliable Cheap Port-forwarding works
Cons: No WPA yet

I bought this router to replace my P.O.S. Dell TrueMobile 2300. It was a snap to install: Truly Plug 'n Play. Once I was up and running I downloaded and installed the 2.00.8 firmware. In glaring contrast to my old 2300, I have experienced no problems whatsoever with this Linksys model. It hasn't once lost my cable connection or not given me a clear wireless signal.

The range is adequate. My laptop sits 2 floors away from the router in the basement. I get a clear signal all the time-- usually "High" but occasionally (Once every 2 hours) dropping to "Low" for periods of ten minutes or so before bouncing back up. Of course, even the 36 mbps connection I get with a Low signal is extremely fast and makes the G protocol a worthy investment.

The port-forwarding feature works flawlessly. Finally, I am able to create games in Warcraft III.

Pros: Reasonable price, fairly good tech support, very fast for wireless.
Cons: A little finicky when it comes to setup and software.

I have a company issued laptop with a built in Wi Fi card and wanted to get a wireless router for home use. I stumbled upon this one at Best Buy and decided to give it a try. The setup software was pretty easy to use and for the most part the on line security was not too hard to manipulate. The trick is getting the encryption set up correctly; you pretty much have to call LINKSYS technical support. They aren't bad (Phillipines) though they are a little hard to understand at times. Overall, though, they had the problems worked out fairly quickly. I will say that the router is a little finicky when it comes to accepting security changes (I had it all set up and had to power it down and then up again for the settings to fully take). Once up, though, it has worked great. Very fast. There are also 4 wired positions so it also serves as a wired 4 port switch. Overall, if it holds up should be well worth the purchase price of $69.

Pros: Fast wireless networking, easy setup.
Cons: Lack of UPnP.

The Linksys WRT54G was a replacement/upgrade to my Linksys BEFSR41. Setup of the WRT54G is simple. The latest firmware of the product has fixed many of the initial problems the router had. The router currently servers 3 wired clients and 2 wireless in 802.11b/g mixed mode. There is a lack of Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) which may make setting up certain file sharing programs difficult. Personally, I don't use UPnP on any of my systems and this has never been an issue.

Pros: Excellent customer support.
Cons: The unit doesn't actually work.

I had a lot of problems with this product. I had one that quit after working for a few days. Then a few exchanges from the store didn't improve the situation. It's possible that the store just got a bad batch. The customer support is quite good. They were knowledgeable and helpful.

Pros: It works fine if you don't need any help.
Cons: Incredibly bad customer service

Beware of the incompetent customer service for Linksys. After easily setting up a wired/wireless network I called for help making it secure. 4 hours and 4 phone calls later my internet service didn't work, my network didn't work, my internet service didn't work, my router didn't work, and Linksys said it was a faulty system (it had worked before I called for help). I had to call Earthlink to fix the internet connection and then bought a Motorola. They had it fixed and secure in 15 minutes. I told a friend this story and she said she had a friend with a similar Linksys customer service nightmare. Beware! Also, I never received a rebate from an earlier item I bought in '02, even after calling about it.

Pros: The 2 wired connections still seem to work the same as before.
Cons: Offshore tech support, skimpy documentation.

We were excited to finally have a way to wirelessly network an upstairs computer to a downstairs hub (we have some nasty wall problems preventing wired connections). Our older wired Linksys router has performed flawlessly.

We spent 6 hours of trying to get a signal to the router, working with the documentation, tech support, and the online articles. Tech support described software and hardware as looking different from their actual appearance. Tech support articles provided conflicting information. Some parts worked at the beginning - none of it works now.

I'm ready to return all of it and drill a hole through the ceiling to drop the Ethernet cable through.

Pros: Fairly easy to set up, does some of the things it's supposed to.
Cons: Can't properly share files between computers, horrible tech support.

I'll keep this short and to the point. Setup is fairly easy, you'll have to reset it about once a day (unplug then plug it back in) to reconnect to the internet, and it has a major file transfer flaw. The tech support (as everyone mentioned) is really bad; I think companies feel that providing horrible 24/7 tech support is for some reason better than good 12/7 tech support. Back to the point, here's what you can do... surf the net, share your internet connection. You cannot easily transfer files between computers going from wireless to wired. Based on that, it sucks.

Pros: you need to have the computer on top of the router for a good signal
Cons: Poor range, slow transfer, awful techsupport, what else can I complain about?

I bought this thing because I thought i could trust a big name like linksys, man was i wrong. To sum it all up, i am dissatisfied with every aspect of this router. I updated to latest firmware but still had problems with the VPN passthru, and what seemed to be a finicky GUI. For having 2 antennas this thing sure sucks. I couldnt get this unit to go thru more than 1 wall and 20 feet. 2 or more walls seemed impossible, but now matter how close i was the wireless transfer rate was nauseating. When i finally got thru to tech support, which took nearly a combined 5 hours on the phone they didnt know what the problems was, or how to speak english. Finally they said that it might be a defective unit, so they sent me a replacement and there was no differance, what a surprize! after more than 2 weeks of wasting my time I bought the Netgear WGR614 and it worked PERFECTLY. It gets a good signal anywhere in my house, and its almost twice as fast on file transfers. VPN passthru works beautifully.

Pros: linux + flash RAM = flexible fantastic computer/router/WAP
Cons: power adapter is 120v only (in US model)

This is an amazing wireless access point for geeks. It ships with Linux under the hood, but you can very easily flash new software into its ROMs from www.openWRT.org and have a flexible full computer in your router/WAP. It can do all sorts of amazing tricks, from MESH networking to DHCP forwarding to IPv6 to acting as a web server. These are all simple to install, things that people have already set up. But you can do your own tricks with it too; the limit is your imagination. A true geek-worthy machine!

Also, the case can be opened without even a screwdriver, and with a little soldering you can activate the otherwise unused USB port, so you can eg connect multiple WiFi USB dongles.

My only issue: the power adapter is 120v only. Most things like this are 110-240v, which (being a citizen-of-the-world type) I would find much more convenient.

Pros: ease of installation. speed of installation. quality
Cons: none to this point.

I had gone through the US Robotics experience. A disaster.

I bought this as an alternative. I had the wireless network going in 15 minutes.

I had spent two months with the US Robotics system and never did get it going.

The instructions were easy to follow. Follow the steps as described by them and installation is smooth.

Pros: easy to set up
Cons: Doesn't work!

Purchased at Frys electronic store. This product was on sale and the sales person said it was a great product for the money. This was installed easily with a bit of customer support (because there were no WRITTEN instructions) in maybe half hour. It worked great with no problems for about 3 months. HOWEVER, this product just STOPPED working after about 3 months. So i'd advise you to pay a bit more and get something that works for a bit longer! Now, we are back to having a huge long cable through out our home because our wireless didn't last.

Pros: Great interface/features, and local loopback!
Cons: Does not support CustomDNS

Based on the familiar Broadcom 54g MIPS-based router chipset (found in other manufacturer's products such as Microsoft, Belkin, Dell, Buffalo, etc.), this little guy runs an embedded Linux.

Configuration is a snap - just plug it in and go to the IP address. Local loopback even works, which makes it much easier to develop on your personal webserver from inside the firewall!

Wireless range was on par with the old Linksys WAP11 Access Point I had. Throughput seems a bit higher.

One of the features the router supports is Dynamic DNS services. Unfortunately, the Custom DNS service from DynDNS.org is not among the supported types. I assume it's only Static or Dynamic DNS service. However, with Linksys' track record, this will be corrected in a soon-to-be upcoming firmware release.

Overall, great product, and the quality you would expect from Linksys.

Pros: Easy to set up, clear instructions.
Cons: None found yet.

I went to Best Buy Yesterday and bought the Linksys WRT54G for $79.00. I also purchased a wireless card for my laptop. I put in the instructional CD, followed the directions and in 30 minutes I'm in business. I thought this was an easy and relatively cheap way to give me mobility to any room in my house as well as outside.