[X4U] Linksys

[John Bryan]

Well, I won't buy one next time.  It may not be the product's fault,  
but I have not been able to come up with any other reason, after many  
trials.  Note this is not a wireless router.

I wanted a Netgear but Fry's didn't have one, and the wife^H^H^H^H  
finance committee had just approved the purchase, and I needed to  
act.  So I got a Linksys Etherfast Cable/DSL Router Model BEFSR41.   
Linksys seemed to be popular so I figured it was ok.  (I know, I  
know, don't remind me....that illogic has resulted in well known, um,  
situations).  This is a router with 4 ports.

I will give you a more detailed accounting of my experience off-list  
if you like, (or anyone else), but bottom line is that the thing does  
function -- just not well.  And by "not well" I mean web pages take  
forever to load, and images may or may not load at all unless you  
force load them.  I mean, it is unusable.  I have tried several times  
over the past year, the last one being more thorough and exhaustive,  
and have given up, with the router going back to the closet and the  
Cube acting as local internet gateway and DHCP server.

The firmware on the router is up to date.  I've diddled with the MTS  
values and also left them at default.  Tried static and dynamic local  
routing.  Tried having it do the DHCP for every box on the network,  
or assign locally static IPs manually.  I am convinced I have tried  
everything and the results are always the same.  Whether I am running  
OmniWeb, Safari, or IE on OS X 10.2, or .3, or .4, or OS 9.1, or IE  
or Firefox on Win98, (didn't get around to trying RH//Fedora Core  
Linux).  Linksys support wasn't much help other than to say "it  
should work".

Nothing seemed to help.

I get MUCH better performance when I let one Mac, either the Cube  
using Internet Sharing, or an old Quadra 610 with IP NetRouter.  I  
just don't understand why I am getting crap performance (with images  
especially, just normal images on normal websites) with dedicated  
hardware, and good to decent performance with software solutions.

I thought maybe this router is defective, but I have had it more than  
a year, so I guess I'll have to eat it.  I might try it at someone  
else's house and see if it acts the same.  I might borrow someone  
else's known good router and see if it improves.  But I don't now  
have confidence in this product.

Sorry, I've gone and rambled anyway.  Of course YMMV.

jb


On May 26, 2005, at 2:56 PM, Richard Nagle wrote:

> Does anyone have any good words, for Linksys wirless routers?
> looking to move into a wireless network.
>
> Model: WRT54G
>
> Richard