kjell1979's Full Review: Linksys WRT54GS Wireless Router
A year ago I started a new job. They gave me a laptop that had a built in wireless card which I could take home and do work as necessary. Previous to that I had been an advocate of using hard wired Ethernet when possible because wireless creates what I saw as an unnecessary bottleneck in the cumulative bandwidth of your connection. Still, having kids who were quickly growing up made the convenience of wireless much more appealing. Besides, our old house had a great place to put the router where it could achieve a great connection in all rooms of the house and shield the connection from being picked up in neighboring yards. So I pulled the trigger a year ago, and since moving I'm glad I had this router.
Features
The Linksys WRT54GS Wireless router has your basic standard specs and features you'd expect from a wireless router these days. You connect your cable or DSL modem to the router and it splices the signal to all the devices either connected via a CAT5 cable or wirelessly. This allows multiple computers to connect to the internet by masquerading the entire activity behind the router as a single IP address, as seen by the outside world. So this router acts as a firewall in the process. What that means is that the router blocks access to specific computers connected to the router by limiting the exposed ports and addresses of those computers.
It's wireless signal is 802.11b/g compatible and transmits at a maximum 54Mbps on a 2.4GHz frequency. The Linksys WRT54GS supports both WEP and WPA encryption types via its configuration utility. It also allows support of static and dynamic IP allocation, DNS forwarding, DMZ hosting, and selective port blocking.
My Linksys WRT54GS Wireless router also has "Speedbooster" technology. What this does is chain the packets over the network to its destination for a slight performance boost. When working with other Linksys Speedbooster products, it boosts the performance up to 35%. Unfortunately, I don't have any other Linksys Speedbooster products so I can't comment on that specific performance aspect. Without knowing the specifics of the technology, speedbooster sounds somewhat similar to what Netgear does with its double channel wireless technology. The only problem is that both technologies cannot gain the maximum performance boost from each other.
Performance
When I first upgraded to my Linksys WRT54GS over a wired Linksys router, I noticed a significant performance improvement via a CAT5 cable connection when compared against my old router. The wireless signal works pretty good when providing internet to a small one floor ranch-style house. I put the router in the basement of our last ranch-style house and most rooms achieve a strong connection ("Very Good" by Windows standards, 50%-75% connection integrity by Linux standards). I was able to consistently get connection rates between 60K/s and 90K/s all around the house. This takes into account possible interference from TVs, electrical lines, and cordless phones. Most of the appliances like the microwave were off in obscure corners of the house where it couldn't affect the signal. One aspect of our old house that really cut down on the signal was the outer walls. Whether the signal was trying to penetrate the concrete foundation in the basement or the insulation and siding, I could just barely connect even when sitting right outside the house closest to where the router was positioned in the basement. I achieved speeds that topped out at 40K/s if I was lucky, but my signal integrity was either "Bad" or connected at 15% integrity according to my Linux box. This was good in the sense that I didn't have to worry about neighbors piggybacking on my signal and I frequently disabled the encryption to allow other wireless devices like my Nintendo DS access to the internet.
When I moved, the need for a wireless router became more apparent, but also I began to see more limitations in the performance. Our current house is a two floor house with a basement and an attachment. The house from above is shaped like an "L". The unfortunate part is that there's no place to put the router where it could reach all points in the house. Instead, I have it sitting in a window sill that can broadcast the signal to the attachment as well as the other floors in the house. Performance-wise I really began to see the limitations of the signal strength here. In the attachment, if I wasn't sitting near the bay window closest to the base of the house and the router, my signal strength only could top out at 45-50K/s. The signal strength also varied wildly when sitting even in a stationary spot in the middle of the addition. My connection would disconnect periodically, which is annoying because I had a Linksys Gaming Adapter that I used to connect my Xbox to Xbox Live. Every so often I'll just get booted out of Halo 2 to the point where it began to get really frustrating. The other rooms of the house and even the upstairs was much better. I was able to connect as speeds that sometimes topped 100K/s. Even the desktop upstairs has a stable enough connection to download a file all night without interruption.
The final step in this progression is comparing this router's performance against my new Netgear WGU624 Wireless Router. This is where the difference is considerable. My new router can achieve speeds that are much faster than the Linksys. Just the other day I saw a maximum speed of 150K/s and a speed of 90K/s in my house's attachment. In addition, the connection is always stable. I can even go out into my yard and still maintain a download for over an hour without interruption at a constant speed of 50-60K/s. The bad part about this is that I really need to have my WEP encryption enabled here because I'm positive this router's signal can propagate into my neighbor's homes, which are between 80 and 150 feet away.
Finally, I tested my Linksys router against several different things that might affect the signal integrity. At first I tried moving the microwave in between the router and my desktop. When turned on, I saw a 20% drop in connection speed and stability. When the signal had to be more concentrated like the transfer between the main section and the addition on the house, the signal dropped entirely, except for some intermittent successful reconnection attempts. I also tried turning on several cordless phones at once. Here, I didn't see hardly any connection speed difference. I think my download speed dropped by 5K/s, but that could be attributed to other factors as well.
Compatibility
The Linksys brand has always been known for having a high amount of compatibility with other networking products. During the year I had this router I had absolutely no issues with the wireless networking on my setup. With no encryption enabled, I was able to connect my Nintendo DS and all my other wireless devices to my router with no problems whatsoever. Using both WEP and WPA encryption, I was able to connect to this router using my Dell Mobile Wireless device for two of my laptops, my Netgear WG511U PCMCIA card for my other laptop, my Netgear WG311 wireless PCI card for my desktop, and my Linksys Wireless Gaming Adapter, all with no trouble. All of these machines ran a variety of different operating systems including WinXP Professional, Windows 98, Suse10 Linux, Ubuntu Linux, Knoppix, and Kanotix. I had no problems configuring the different encryption settings for each of the Operating Systems. However, on Linux it was significantly harder because many of the changes were command line based.
Ease of Use
I've always found Linksys routers to be the easiest to use. Their instructions are clear and involve lots of clear drawn out pictures. Their software does the best job I've ever seen to connect to different devices. What's even more amazing about this router is that it makes some of the more advanced aspects much easier. For instance, setting up my WEP encryption was a breeze. I simply put in my passphrase and a key was generated automatically. I even accidentally applied the change without writing the key down, but the software on the other end could determine the key based on my passphrase. Even if I forgot the passphrase, there's a small reset button on the router, like the one on many electronic gadgets, that could simply reset the entire configuration.
My biggest complaint though about the browser interface is sometimes it takes a while to find what you're looking for. There are so many tabs and sub-tabs that aren't aways apparent until you cycle through all the options. For instance, finding the DMZ hosting might take a few minutes of searching around. The good thing about all of this is that the terminology seems to be pretty consistent, unless you're using Linux.
Support
The Linksys WRT54GS Wireless Router comes with a three year warranty. I never had to use it, but on the surface it makes a lot of sense because of how quickly wireless technology is progressing. A longer warranty is always good, but chances are in 3-5 years you'll want to upgrade to a better technology. Even if you don't, chances are if you leave the router sitting on a shelf somewhere it'll last for a long time. I had a regular router that I had for 5 years with no problems before I sent it off to a friend in need of one.
As for Linksys tech support, I had to call them once, not for this router, but the wired one I had before my wireless one. What happened was my router couldn't connect to the internet on both the computers I connected up to it via my cable modem. I called up tech support and the wait on the line wasn't too bad, I maybe waited 5-10 minutes during the peak dinnertime hour of 5pm EST on a weekday. I suspect the wait time might be longer now that Linksys has more products out in the market. The tech support representative was very good. He was polite, knowledgeable and fixed my problem fast without any sort of snarky remark. Turns out I put in the wrong MAC address of the computer the cable modem was originally connected to. It was a simple fix, but I didn't realize the problem at the time. Overall, I'd say that the Linksys support was very good.
Construction and Durability
One of the first things I noticed about my Linksys WRT54GS Wireless router is how bulky yet light it was. I mean, if it stopped working, I wouldn't even be able to use it as a paper-weight. However, with the dual antennas sticking out of the back of the unit, it really takes up a lot of space. While you can remove the antennas, your range greatly decreases. In addition, the amount of area doesn't ge cut down by that much. One of the possible solutions to something like this is to simply mount the router on the wall. Unfortunately, I didn't notice any brackets to mount the router with. The only way to really get it out of the way is to build the router its own shelf and let the wires hang out as needed. That's unfortunate, and really could have been much better.
As for the durability, its light weight really concerns me the most. It means that the router can be moved very easily and could be subject to lots of falls due to cats, dogs, or small children. Even worse is that there seems to be no real padding to brace the electronics inside against a fall. While I've never dropped the router myself, I can certainly imagine what would happen. The plastic in the area that hits the ground would shatter. At the very least a small piece would break off and you'd hear a rattling sound inside the router until you summon up enough courage to open it up.
Besides its weight, the removable antenna feature is really nice in one sense, but not for a durability standpoint. The plastic antennas that attach to the router, while easy to remove, seem cheap and easily breakable. I haven't had any problems with them yet, but they should be more rigid than what they are. I can certainly see that being an issue if you move the antennas around a lot.
Conclusion
Overall, Linksys provides a serviceable router. It provides very little overhead on your desktop as well as an easy interface to access and tweak functionality. While it doesn't have the performance of some other routers, I wouldn't blame anyone for getting a Linksys router like this just for the sheer convenience and usability. I think that Netgear makes just as good of a router, but some of the steps are more drawn out than what I went through with this router. For home and small business users, I would recommend this router even if it isn't the best one out there simply because of the compatibility and ease of use can provide what you need without much hassle. For larger businesses or more serious computer/wireless users, you'll definitely be more disappointed with the performance and capability of this router. For me it was time for me to move on, but this router served me well, and it was a good first wireless router for me.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 70 Driver Availability: Windows only
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