Cisco-Linksys WRT300N Wireless-N Broadband Router
by Linksys
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List Price: Our Price: $34.99 You Save: $116.59 (77%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Cisco-Linksys WRT300N Wireless-N Broadband Router
Customer Review: WRT300 N works fine !
Summary: 3 Stars
First I have to say that I bought the UK version which came with firmware 2.0.9 on it. And I have to say that I am a Network Pro so I was not that brave to challenge the installation, although all reviews I could find on the WRT300N have been very disapointing.
Here is how it went for me:
I powered of my broadband modem, removed the old Wireless Access Point (AP) attached the straitgh forward CAT 5 cable into the modems LAN connection and the other end into the AP LAN interface.
Powered the modem on wait until sync was ready, powered the
AP on and moved with my Linux based laptop physically far away into the
garden. Network Manager supports detected non encrypted wireless network with SSID "linksys" where I associated to without any problems. First I checked
if I can ping the gateway and I could ping 192.168.1.1. This encouraged
me enough to fire up a browser and see what I get. My homepage turned up - this was great.
After that I made a couple of tests with wget and I had to realize that
the download speed was fairly normal of what I got out before of my 10 MB/s line.
Now I fired up the Admin page of the AP (http://192.168.1.1) and I
changed the SSID to what I want and disabled SSID broadcast. The AP
rebooted but as I knew the SSID I could associate again with non broadcasted SSID. Now I studied the other settings but most interesting
selected the Wireless Setting TAB and checked if they would been taken
into account without reboot. This was not the case so I had to check if
I need some of the settings in the authntication section. If that would
be the case the game would be over setting the AP up from the garden. I changed to PSK2
(WPA2 in non Enterprise mode) put in the key and saved the config.
On my Laptop I killed all Network Manager processes and edited the
wpa_supplicant configuration so it matched the AP settings
.
It worked and the AP is now running over 3 days constantly without
any issues. This AP works out of the box without any hazzle. The magic N
speed could not be tested yet by me but I doubt it's actually that fast
as advertised. Although my only reason to buy a new AP was to migrate
from WPA to WPA2 with AES instead of TKIP this was the right decicion to
do even after all the awfull reviews.
If I would be not a techie and non interesting in latest technologies and would look for a reliable reasonable prized AP I would not recommend this device instead a standard 802.11 g with WPA2 PSK.
Customer Review: Problem with DHCP server
Summary: 2 Stars
I have a unique situation where we only have access to broadband through a local wireless company as DSL is not available and cable is too expensive. Unfortunately, we need to have line of sight to the tower which is only available on our barn. The house is about 150 feet away so I needed something with a strong range.
I was hesitant to get this router as it is a "Pre-N" router and not quite finalized. I tend to buy the latest technology but not before things become standardized. However, with my need for long range I didn't think I had other options.
Setup went pretty smoothly. I was up and running in no time. The signal was excellent (about 80%). I'm not using this to share files on a network so the speed throughput was not important. Everything worked smoothly for a couple of days and then nothing. The router was no longer giving out DHCP IP addresses. The old 169 IP... :( Hours and hours of troubleshooting... releasing and renewing ipconfig, restarting the router, swithing many settings, trying static ip's, firmware upgrade, etc. and no luck. Then after one final reset, it assigned the pc an IP address again and I was back up and running. I hoped that the IP issue was just a fluke. Sure enough, 3 more days go by and again no IP. Hours of troubleshooting again but this time no luck.
Frankly, I'm not exactly sure what the problem is. I don't think it is my PC (6 months old). I'm fairly knowledgeable about networking but this one baffled me so I gave up.
I just bought a Linksys WRT54GS as I have had excellent performance from this router in the past in our offices. My only concern was the range. I then discovered I can get a high gain antenna kit that extends the range considerably. (Linksys HGA7T) By the way, the WRT54GS uses a TNC connector for the antenna so any TNC type antenna will work.
Also, fortunately, the WMP300N Wireless-N PCI adapter will work with B/G/N so I can still use it with the G router. It has excellent antennas and hopefully between the high gain antennas on the router and this, I should pick up a decent signal. I can experiment with directional antennas if necessary. I wish the specs would specify whether or not the antennas could be upgraded and if so what type of connector. This info is hard to find.
Anyway, I don't think the Pre-N routers are really stable yet. I've read a few magazine reviews stating that the Pre-N's actually performed worst than the Draft N specs. Oh well...
Customer Review: This product should not have been on the market!
Summary: 1 Stars
I read all the reviews on Amazon and I thought "it cannot be that Linksys has got it so wrong". So many bad reviews, so many problems; they have to be for earlier versions of this product.
So despite all bad reviews I still decided to buy the WRT300N router that I found at my local PC store. I was with the belief that after so many months Linksys would have corrected all the problems reported. After all this was the silver coloured version of the router with version 2 written on the label. And I went for it.
This is the first time I am writing a review ever. Why? Because as an expert IT person I have never bought a product before (including all my previous routers with Linksys) that caused me so many problems and so much frustration!
This product loses it's connection to my laptop every 10 minutes and reconnects within a few seconds. Enough though to break my MSN connection (and any conversations I may have), to disconnect any remote ssh connections, to stop anything I may be downloading - including email downloading. Yes every 10 minutes or so. Then, after a few hours it will not connect at all. And I have to restart the router before any wireless device can connect to it.
I also have a desktop that has a Linksys WMP54GX Wireless-G PCI Adapter with SRX. This adapter was supposed to connect with this router "at the best possible speed" according to Linksys marketing. Wrong! It connects at 54mbps not the expected 108 or more as one would think. And it loses connection every few minutes just like my laptop does.
My wi-fi enabled mobile phone will also drop connection every few minutes and eventually will refuse to connect to this router until the router is restarted.
I have long and technical knowledge in configuring routers. This one defies all attempts. It is too unstable and it should never have seen the light of the day. At least until it was thoroughly tested and problems corrected.
This is a version 2 of the product and it is still very unstable. It is absolutely unacceptable and definetely not what I would expect from Linksys. I have been using Linksys products for many years. Now, I have lost faith in this company. What is wrong with you guys!? What happenned to all the good products you used to produce. I hope someone from Linksys does read these reviews and get their act together before it's too late and their loyal customer base turns elsewhere. In fact many have already done so!
Customer Review: Do NOT buy this router!
Summary: 1 Stars
First of all, I am a dyed-in-the-wool techie. I design products like this in my job. I know what every single one of those "what the heck is that?" settings in router set up screens are. So I do take a bit of umbrage when one reviewer called the many (most) who have had trouble with this router "MORONS".
Yes, I got it to work. It will work right out of the box IF used with most pre-N wireless cards and, definitely, if they are Linksys pre-N cards. That covers about 1% of those who would buy this router. After three hours of tweaking a dozen plus of the settings from default, I succeeded in getting it to "hand-shake" with b and g mode cards most of the time. It would still randomly lose the IP requiring rebooting everything. Not something my customer would accept nor would I sell.
Some of the techie specs are a long way from what Linksys claims. Linksys marketing obviously wrote the specs and ads then engineering tried to design to both. They failed. A non-techie spec important to everyone is range. It has 20% the range of an old b mode Linksys router I had sitting right next to it. Adding encryption dropped range in half again! The wired router portion of it works out of the box, no adjustments required. But you're buying this for the wireless function.
Yes, I could have tweaked some more and probably managed to get it stable enough to live with. But Linksys didn't used to be that way. I used to buy only Linksys considering my time worth too much to putz around with unreliable equipment to save my customers a few bucks on hardware. This is the third Linksys router in a month (the other two were g mode) that have been unstable or DOA. Then why did I buy this one? It was on sale and I wanted to give Linksys one more chance before they lost my business for good. They've now lost it for good. I exchanged the router for a Netgear and it worked right out of the box into a network running both b and g mode wireless network cards. Plus it was a lot less money.
Has Cisco ruined Linksys? Got me. Did all the good engineers cash out? I wouldn't be surprised. Are they rushing unfinished bug-filled product to market to meet quarterly profit numbers for Wall Street? You bet! I'll stick with Netgear and Belkin from now on.
Customer Review: *****EASY INSTALLATION FOR ME & IT WORKS GREAT******
Summary: 4 Stars
I purchased this router even though I've read so-so reviews in computer magazines.
Since I'm a "computer junkie" I figured that I should be able to easily fix problems that might occur.
Before installing the new router, I downloaded the newest firmware/drivers from the Linksys web site and ran the installation file. The program walked me through the installation and if you follow the instructions carefully, you wont go wrong. For beginners: Installing a router can be quite tricky. You have to connect the cables in a certain sequence so the IP address of your computer can be recognized. Installation was easy breeze. There were no hiccups along the way and every step of the installation process was detailed.
After the router was set up, I changed some of the security settings such as the PSK/TKIP Security Key and so forth. The help menu's in the configuration screens are really helpful and provides so much more information than DLINK.
Originally, on my laptop, I was using the BELKIN-PRE N card and I was getting pretty good signal. Once I changed the card to the Linksys compatible card, my speed almost doubled! So to get the best speed, you need this router with the compatible laptop card.
This sleek looking router has been working like a charm for about 2 months and I have not had to shut it off and reset it. (Sometimes DLINK'S need to be reset)
Hope my review helps.
DAN
*********AS A WORD OF CAUTION: MAKE SURE YOU CHANGE THE DEFAULT ROUTER PASSWORD, OTHERWISE HACKERS CAN ACCESS YOUR ROUTER AND LOCK YOU OUT OF YOUR OWN NETWORK!!! BELIEVE ME, IT IS EXTREMELY EASY FOR SOMEONE TO DO THIS. IN A WORST CASE SCENARIO, AND YOU DO GET LOCKED OUT OF YOUR NETWORK, DO A HARD FACTORY RESET (USUALLY BY PUTTING A PAPER CLIP INTO THE SMALL HOLE ON THE BACK OF THE ROUTER NEAR THE PLUG), THIS WILL RESET YOUR ROUTER BACK TO THE DEFAULT SETTINGS WHERE YOU CAN THEN ACCESS THE CONFIG PAGE AND CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD!! THIS IS THE FACT WITH ***ANY ROUTER*** NOT JUST LINKSYS!!! *********