Cisco-Linksys WET54G Wireless-G Ethernet Bridge
by Linksys
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Cisco-Linksys WET54G Wireless-G Ethernet Bridge
Customer Review: I think they got it right in version 3
Summary: 5 Stars
Well, despite all the bad reviews I bought the linksys wet54g because d-link and netgear's bridges got equally bad reviews and I got the wet54g cheap ($71) on buy.com.
My box says version 3 on the bottom. Linksys's web site only mentions versions 1 and 2 so this must be quite new. I really hate linksys's versioning system because when you buy online there is no way to tell what version you are getting which can make a big difference because the different versions aren't firmware compatable. Mine has firmware 1.07.
On to the review: I bought mine to extend the range of my wireless because the linksys range extender sucks. WDS in general seems a bad idea because it is one radio doing both send/recieve so it immediately halves your bandwidth. I configured the WET54g to connect to my existing wireless and then placed the box where my laptop drops off to 20% signal. Because the WET54g is fixed I could carfully position its antenna with a reflector to get 85% signal to my WAP. Then I got a linksys WRT54g ($60) and set its wireless up as a different channel and ssid than my main WAP, and connected it to the WET54g by a 3ft ethernet cable. When my laptop is in decent range (>40% signal) of the WRT54g it connects through it and the WET54g to may base WAP and gives me 88% of the throughput my laptop would get when within decent range (>40% signal) of the base WAP. The same setup with the linksys range extender using WDS gave me 45% of the throughput, so this is a win.
When doing this testing I used the WET54g pretty hard and never had a dropped connection, which was the main complaint I read of the older versions. The other complaint of old versions was a weak antenna. Since I'm carefully positioning it with a reflector I don't really care, but decided to test it anyway. So I hooked the WET54G to my laptop by a 3ft ethernet cable and disabled the laptop antenna. Using the WET54g for my laptop wireless straight to my WAP gave me 10% greater throughput than the laptop's built in wireless straight to the WAP! This suprised me, but leads me to conclude that the WET54g antenna is as good or better than my laptop's built in wireless.
Overall I am very very happy with this purchase.
Customer Review: Stay Away from This Product!
Summary: 1 Stars
The WET54G performed very poorly, it is especially disappointing because I've generally had good experience with Linksys products. First off, if your network/computer is not on a 192.168.1.x (subnet mask 255.255.255.0) network, the set-up utility will NOT work -- you'll have to change the IP of your network switch or your PC to the 192.168.1 subnet which defeats the purpose of the set-up utility! Of course this issue is NOT mentioned in the manual. Once you have your network set to 192.168.1.x, the set-up utility offers almost no value, because you can simply point your internet browser to 192.168.1.226 to configure the parameters.
It took a little time to figure out how to work around the issue above, and based on positive experience with Linksys in the past, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt, "So what if the config is a little kludgy! Just 'long as the product performance is robust -- like my WRT54G wireless NAT, right?" WRONG!
Aside from other lesser bugs with the firmware (eg. config savings are only committed sometimes, other times the browser will just sit there churning until time-out), the most unacceptable issue is that the connection gets dropped constantly! Albeit having my notebook a couple feet away from the WET54G! I tried streaming pretty low-rez mpeg4 video (640x480 @ <30fps with medium compression) with the WET54G and when the device decides that it can't handle the load, it not only hangs, but decides to reset itself! This happens about once every 2 minutes or so! It is unbelievable how something so incredibly unreliable can be on the market! Some reviewers mentioned about the hardware version, the one I received was 1.1, and the latest firmware is dated 2003?! 3 years ago?! Enough said! If you are even THINKING about getting this P.O.S., DON'T!
Customer Review: (Setup zero stars)
Summary: 5 Stars
Works great once setup. Setup is a nightmare. Shipped model in April 2008 had 2005 firmware that did NOT support WPA2 (support never figured this out). Setup disk failed instantly on my Vista laptop with an obcure 2 word error message. Tried running setup on my XP Desktop, didn't immediately fail but could not find router even when plugged into the router and firewalls turned off (2wire 2701).
Solution after six hours of work.... Move WET54G to laptop for configuration. Reset WET54G by pushing reset button for 30 seconds. Setup static IP on laptop within default WET54G range of 192.168... so that laptop can find see WET54G. Bring up manual config web page by entering default IP of WET54G. Update firmware. Setup WET54G SSID, WPA2 security manually using web interface. Change my entire home network back to 192.168, since it was easier to do this, then try to get the WET54 to actually run on my 172.16 range I was using. Only after the above, could I move to my Slingbox setup which requires punching a whole in my firewall for port 5001. WOW, can "normal" people really do this stuff????
MAYBE, if you are lucky the setup disk works, but if not, and the above scares you, just return the unit. Support knows just enough to get you into real serious trouble.
But heh, if you can do this, the device works great, streaming all the Slingbox video I want seamlessly.
Update 03/07/2009: Had a Linksys 4-port hub downstream, between bridge and Slingbox, that was causing communication problems between the bridge and Slingbox. Pulled hub, which I can live without and ran ethernet cable directly from bridge to Slingbox, and Slingbox never lost settings again. Not sure if this was bridge issue, but thought I would mention it.
Customer Review: Only works for a day
Summary: 1 Stars
I've add nothing but trouble with the WET54G v3. The first unit was defective and would not connect to my wireless network. I couldn't connect to the web utility using the default password to debug it. I contacted Linksys support and they asserted that you should not use a username and a password of "admin". Even with a hard reset that did not work so I returned it and tried again with a second unit.
The second unit connected to my wireless network but had the same problem with the web utility. I finally figured out that you have to use admin for the username (even after changing the password). I have several Linksys products and this is the only one where you enter a username to access the web utility.
Currently it works for about a day and then goes south. I've tried it with both a laptop and a network storage device. In both cases it works fine one day and the next day the devices are no longer on the network. You can't ping either the WET54G or the attached device from other machines on the network. But all of the status lights on the WET54G say it is connected and working. If you reboot the WET54G (pull the power plug) then everything is fine again.
One other thing that I found confusing was the static vs. dynamic IP address. When you select static vs. dynamic you are choosing what the WET54G uses and not the attached device. I've tried both static and dynamic and it doesn't seem to make a difference.
Customer Review: Linksys/Cisco:"NOT FOR STREAMING, NOT for VPN..."
Summary: 1 Stars
If you are considering this bridge to do video/audio streaming inside your house, think again. This review is based on over 2 months worth of testing this unit and then working with Linksys/Cisco trying to figure why it does not deliver. A saleperson at a local store may have told you that you can stream MP3s over your wireless network, or perhaps you have two DVRs in your house and your want to stream recorded TV shows from one to another. This is not the device you want to use for this purpose. Don't belive me? Ask Linksys level 3 support. Its architecture is not designed to support high levels of network traffic needed for streaming -- it has very small or zero I/O buffers to handle it -- as a result, the device will crash after 2-5 minutes of streaming. You can power cycle it and it will resume for the next 2-5 min. But forget streaming for a moment, WET54G crashed when I was simply working from home VPN'd into my company. Not for that either?! Do you think that WET54G ver 2 is better than WET54G ver 1? Been there, don't waste your time -- the architecture is the same. Alternatives? WET54GS5 might be better, but I'm yet to find that out myself. I know you want to try it yourself. Piece of advice -- buy at a retail store, and if it doesn't work, return within 30 days. Do not get into RMA exchanges with Linksys - unless you enjoy 2 months of 2-3 hours/day trying to get your money back.