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- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 32 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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4 out of 5 people found this review helpful
1.0 stars
"Big disappointment!"
Pros: From a guy who have setup numerous Wireless Router (IT Guy)
1. Pretty straight forward setup.
2. Very sleek design (almost too sleek)
3. Familiar interface if you're familiar with linksys WRT54 series (they never change!!)
4. Pretty cheap ($39.99)Cons: 1. Not much to configure, hence not much to debug
Summary: I got this to replace my old Linksys WRT54G. I customized that router with dd-wrt.com firmware and it was great, but only after serving its purposes for years, it's getting unstable and problems with leasing dhcp, so I decided to get a new one.
2. Range Sucks
3. Too much dropped signal, especially when not using WPA2 encryption.
4. Did not hide your WPA/WEP key setting in the web gui interface, which I see this as a big Security risk.
I was looking for Linksys line, so WRT54G2 caught my sight. It's so cool, so I bought one for $39.99 from local fry's.
Setup wasn't too complicated, almost as exactly the same as setup my old WRT54G before the customized firmware.
as soon as I brought up the device, my laptop took about 15 sec to connect to it (which i considered slow). I can browse the web, VPN, etc. only about 5 to 10 minutes later, i saw my Intel Proset client lost the signal and tried to reconnect. It did reconnect, and everything seems normal.
I decided to do a continuous ping to the router and to an external site. (ping -t www.yahoo.com). as soon as I noticed something is wrong, the ping lost packets, and the intel pro-set lost connection and trying to reconnect again, which happen like every 5-10 minutes or so.
I started to play with the settings, google it. Wow, I'm not alone!! Google "WRT54G2 disconnect" and followed some suggestions, also changed the encryption from WPA to WPA2, now it seems to work fine. the connection last about hours, and then it starts to lost connection again. I have to hard reset the device to gain back access.
It also has problem connect to my pppoE ISP setting, always lost IP from the ISP when I still have access to the router but no internet.
Also, there is no "reboot the device" button on web gui management, so I have to walk to my router and reset it all the time.
After 3 days of playing with it, I finally gave up and google "best wireless router" and replace this piece of crap with Trendnet TEW631BRP. It was really good, almost as good as my customized dd-wrt firmware. Check out my other review on cnet about this.
Overall, this is a big disappointment, either that, or I have a bad luck with that particular device..
Updated on Feb 1, 2009update: I forgot to mentioned that I had update the firmware to 1.0.01 (build 3) which is the latest, so everything I said is based on that.
Where to buy
Linksys Wireless-G Broadband Router WRT54G2 - wireless router:
$29.99 - $75.00
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
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$59.99 | Yes |
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$29.99 | Yes |
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$59.00 | Yes |
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$29.99 | Yes |
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$49.99 | Yes |
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