Cisco-Linksys WRT350N Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link
by Linksys
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List Price: Our Price: $125.00 You Save: $108.66 (47%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Cisco-Linksys WRT350N Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link
Customer Review: works okay with some problems
Summary: 3 Stars
I have only had this for a week or so, so I am still playing around with the settings to get the best performance. A couple of things that you should know, however:
The range is advertised as 4 times the G routers. Not true. It might be slightly better, but not much. The throughput with a good to excellent signal will be much higher than a G system, 270 mbps versus 54. But, with a low signal, this drops off quickly. And the signal will be low in pretty much the same places as the G router.
This router does not like older G adapters. It is supposed to be backward compatible, but the range of my other laptop, with a linksys G card, is probably 1/3 to 1/4 of what it was with a G router. More than 30 feet away and it is not usable. I find this odd.
Setting up the network drive is a bitch. The instructions cover about half of what you need to know. I spent more than an hour talking to customer support. I hung in that long hoping to get transfered to someone that knew something. The level 1 people know absolutely nothing and read from a script. I know more about this stuff than the 2 or 3 people I talked to there. Finally, got it to work through trial and error and it seems to function as it should. One thing, though, is that it takes forever now to get to the My Network Places on XP. Seriously, click on that icon and go grab a smoke...
I have had to reboot the router a couple of times. The laptop with the N card would only connect for a minute or two and then drop. had to reboot the router to get it working again.
All in all, I am not blown away by this product, but it shows promise. Maybe with a firmware revision or two...
Customer Review: Good router....
Summary: 4 Stars
I purchased the 350N to replace a defective Pre-N wireless router from another vendor. The storage link option caught my attention as I thought it'd allow me to share mp3 files to other computers on the net without having to keep my main system on all the time.
Setting up the unit was easy. I was able to configure the following items with ease: dynamic DNS service, remote access, shared storage, opening ports for remote desktop and slingbox, reserve some DHCP addresses and wireless security in a few minutes.
I haven't been able to test the gigabit performance as I need to upgrade my network card, but I'm sure that'll work fine. Hooking up a 250GB USB 2 driver to the router was easy and sharing that to all the systems on the net works great. The 1.0 firmware had a bug that ocassionally dropped my shared storage, but the latest firmware seems to have fixed it.
The only reason why I gave this 4 stars rather than 5 stars is that the range of the wireless signal seems smaller than my previous pre-n router from the other vendor. At the same location of system and router, my signal appears to be about 30% weaker than with the previous router. This limits my mobility with the laptop for now, pending moving around the router to other locations.
But a good wireless router with good features and easy to use and setup.
Customer Review: Substandard
Summary: 2 Stars
I've been buying Linksys products for years without much disappointment, but I have to give this device a 40% rating. The ethernet and wireless features were fine, although I was not getting the kind of range on the 802.11 that I was hoping for (even though I have not switch my perephials over to N, I was under the impression that the G service would be somewhat improved). Internally, I never had a problem connecting between wired devices, but that should be a no-brainer. The feature that interested me on this router was the USB storage link features, which are pretty much useless. This is not a 'Media Server' in any sense of the word, and the data storage is rudimentary and problematic.
I connected a LaCie 500GB USB drive to it, and was able to get it to tell me that it was working properly, but never successfully wrote any data to the drive. Also, whenever I created a share on the external drive, my internet link failed and required a factory default restart. Every time. I tried every version of Linksys firmware to address this, and they all failed. I eventually flashed a 3rd party firmware to it, which seems to have bricked it for good. Good riddance, I say. I'm tossing this thing in the garbage and going with another brand. With hindsight, I wish I had paid more attention to the useful reviews on Amazon, rather than relying on my past experiences alone.
Customer Review: A great router if you install the rigth firmware.
Summary: 4 Stars
A few weeks ago lighting burned my ADSL modem, my old mighty WRT54G v2 and a 5 ports gigabit switch.
I was looking for a device with more memory and perhaps a faster CPU and I found the WRT350N v1. This Pre-N device has a Broadcom 4785 @ 300MHz (The WRT54G v2 had a BCM4712 @ 200MHz), It has 32 MB of RAM, 8 MB of flash, an USB port, a 4 port gigabit switch and it was compatible with DD-WRT (min. version: v24 - build 0616). I went ahead and bought it from Amazon (good price and outstanding delivery service). When I got it, and immediately after plugging it, I upgraded it to DD-WRT (v24 SP1 final - mega build). I cannot comment on the device with stock Linksys firmware, but with DD-WRT, it is an outstanding router. My laptop immediately recognized it and connected at 130 Mbps. All other wireless devices worked just fine. The speed was right and the coverage was on-par to my old router (increased TX power to 83mw).
I have not yet finished configuring all the additional features I intend to enable, but so far it has been a smooth and flawless experience. If you are having problems with a Linksys WRT350N I really recommend you upgrading it to DD-WRT, it is not as difficult as it first seems, and after you have done so, you will end with a much more capable and reliable device.
Customer Review: Ver 1.0 of this router still has major firmware problems.
Summary: 2 Stars
This review is for the version 1.0 router with Broadcom chipset. Linksys has a habit of selling the same hardware with completely different internals, later versions of this router have a Marvell chip set and users with this chip set may have a different experience.
I bought this router in the hopes that I could replace a 12 year old OpenBSD/DEC Alpha box that had been doing my routing reliably for a number of years. I wanted something that would use less power, provide fast wireless, QOS and reliable routing. I purchased this router even after reading the poor reviews. I hoped the latest firmware would have most of the problems fixed. This was not the case. The router was fast when it was working, but it required daily reboots, or more than daily if it was under high load.
I have since re-flashed the router with DD-WRT v24 RC3 3rd party firmware (only works on ver1 of this router) and have not had to reboot the router since. I really cannot figure out how the single guy that maintains DD-WRT can create a more reliable firmware than Linksys/Cisco. I am glad the hardware works, and that I can use the router with DD-WRT... but I am very disappointed with the product out of the box from Linksys.