Customer Reviews

Cisco-Linksys WRT120N Wireless-N Home Router

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(73)

 

 

I hardly ever write reviews (like someone else said) but wow, what a piece of crap this is! DO NOT BUY THIS! The setup is easy but this router is junk. It will just stop working for no reason. I don't know if it is overheating or what. I have even tried flipping it over so the vents are facing up. It will just stop working once is a while. By once is a while I mean around 1-3 times a day. Sometimes I have to manually reset(unplug - the reset button doesn't always do it.). Other times it takes a few minutes to start working again. I had a $30 Belkin before and it lasted 2 years with no problems until the end. Once I find a good replacement I'm going to pull an Office Space on this thing.

The ratio of success with these units is about 1:5, meaning that for every five that we purchase, only one will function properly. I am an IT Professional and install several residential and commercial wireless systems a month and I have had great success with the previous line of Linksys Wireless Routers (WRT54G's), but these newer Linksys/Cisco Wireless Router must have a design or a component fault. Typical Chinese junk(IMHO). Don't get me wrong, I'm a HUGE Cisco fan, but I'm very disappointed in this newer line of consumer grade routers now offered by Linksys/Cisco....

I see quite a few negative reviews here from frustrated customers, but the truth is that this isn't a bad router. I've set these up for plenty of users and they've had no issues. You just need to know what's inside and how to configure it, and as an electrical engineer who specializes in wireless, I can tell you about this.

This router -- unlike most Linksys routers -- uses an Atheros SoC (system-on-chip). (Most Linksys routers use Broadcom chips.) This means that it has some quirks that are peculiar to Atheros. For example, most Atheros-based devices are well known to have what's called the "stuck beacon" problem in their internal software. The problem is not due to overheating, as is speculated in some of the reviews here, but it can be triggered by heavy network loading or noise on the airwaves. Without going into too much technical detail, this is a problem that happens when the router gets busy or encounters noise and misses its chance to send a "beacon" signal advertising its existence. If it doesn't get to send the beacon by the time it's due to send another, it sends out an invalid beacon that doesn't conform to the Wi-Fi standard. This can cause everything on the wireless network to disconnect abruptly.

Atheros should have fixed this problem long ago, but for some reason its developers do not seem to want to admit to the problem. And because Atheros insists upon providing the low-level code that runs the chips only in canned binary form (they call it a "hardware abstraction layer," or HAL) to most equipment manufacturers, and the code is difficult to understand and modify even if you have it, the majority of equipment makers who use Atheros chipsets have been unable to fix this bug themselves.

My advice for trouble-free operation is as follows. First, don't use the included setup disk, despite the stickers that say "Run CD First." All it will do is put annoying software that you don't want or need on your computer. Instead, configure the router via its internal Web interface. Update to the latest firmware and then set the beacon interval to a large value (1000 milliseconds or more) so that the chances of the "stuck beacon" bug cropping up are virtually nil. Also, set the router to use only ordinary 802.11b and 802.11g (Mixed B-G) rather than the nonstandard 802.11 "pre-n" that it implements. You won't see a slowdown (802.11g is faster than any Web site) and you won't see other odd problems. It also helps to set the router to use WPA encryption (only slightly less secure than WPA2) and use a long, non-guessable password. When you select WPA, the firmware will turn off some "features" that might be troublesome and you'll have a nice, stable network. Yes, it'll be 802.11b/g, but it'll be solid as a rock and very compatible. With these settings, it will work just fine with a MacBook, an iPad or a Kindle and will not trigger the WEP 802.1x authentication bug in Windows XP.

If you really thirst after true 802.11n, get an E-1000 or E-1200. But you won't see any meaningful difference in speed or range in normal use.

By the way, there are a few Linksys models you really SHOULD avoid: those based on Ralink chipsets, such as the WRT100 and WRT110. These now-discontinued models are hopelessly defective and will give you nothing but grief. Ralink chips aren't inherently bad, but Linksys products based on them have been uniformly awful.

The setup, configuration and connection took a while but was great.
The following day, the router won't transmit any signal from the modem.
I had to reset the modem and the router to be able to re-establish the wireless link-up once again.
It does work great now albeit from time to time, I get disconnected, then connected again in a matter of few seconds.

I do not think it's something of a major concern. Guess it's some slight design defect since this line of Cisco
routers is the first of its kind. Probably would need some extra touch or some sorta improvement from Cisco.

From the way it works now, I believe it gets really stable with time. Dunno if its stability gets established with time. But i could say now, my wireless network with the modem is very stable!
Data transfer is somewhat great. So, all in all, i think is a good value for the money.

Great Router, Once you know how to set it up. I called Linksys on this and they NEVER told me this.
Hope this helps someone, PRESS the button on the top of the Router WHILE you Plug it in until all the lights are on.
That is the ONLY way I could get it to connect and talk to My Comcast Cable Router and pull an I.P. Address.
After the set up I was\am amazed at how fast it is, 3 wireless pc's and a wifi Printer w\o issues.

Unfortunately, I was in the need of a small home router to work on a corporate network to connect 3 or 4 devices and settled on the Linksys (by Cisco) Wireless-N Home Router, WRT120N. I did not even use the wireless, but I can tell you this router is the worst one I have ever experienced (and I have used a ton of them). Linksys/Cisco should be ashamed, and the project manager fired.

First, the router cannot even keep a robust data stream going over the wired network (forget about wireless) RJ45 connection. Each port loses data and checksums fail for any application capable of keeping track of the data reliability. Second, one cannot even setup the router easily because connections are not initiated reliably, and can lead to several resets/on-offs. All this with the latest software update, which is even worse than the factor installed previous version.

I hope I have sufficiently warned you off this and save you some time. If you buy this, don't be surprised at the issues that arise. Some of them may even seem like your computer, but they are not, it is just bad network packets!

I rarely take the time to write a review but this thing is so bad it demanded a few comments. I finally jumped into 1999 and bought a lap top. My job demands it. I bought this for my home because it had ok reviews and the price good. It is made by Cisco, it couldn't be that bad. I hooked it up per the instructions and went to install the software on my computer with Vista 64. It caused my computer to crash every time I put in the disk. Keep in mind that this is a brand new computer out of the box. Nothing should go wrong. I called tech support to have them help me configure it manually and first got an Indian who did not speak passable English. The second person was bent on making the installation software work despite the fact that every time I put in the disk, I got a fatal error and had to restart the thing. I got passed off again to a lady who insisted that I pay $9.95 for the program that would allow her to remotely configure it. This is a robbery. Out of frustration I told her ok, dutifully paid my 10 bucks, and after a half hour of trying to get the remote session to work there still was no connection. She went through the manual configuration which took all of 3 minutes and it finally worked.

This thing is such a dog. It moves glacially. Half the time it won't connect to the webpage because it times out and the other half it loads it extremely slowly. My hard wired computers have the same problem, it's not just the broadcast signal. When I plug them into my old router they run like a rocket. I have since bought a mid-grade D-link ($120) super N router that works like a champ. Because I no longer have the box I can't even return it. The router is garbage and the customer service is garbage. This is a classic case of "you get what you paid for." Ante up a few bucks and get a better box. Best of luck!

I was about to purchase this router and then i read this review:

[...]

"Since the WRT120N can support only single-stream 802.11n, its maximum link (raw data rate) is limited to 150 Mbps--a fact that Cisco mentions nowhere in the product's web page, downloadable spec sheet or even its User Manual for the product."

This is the biggest piece of junk that I have ever owned. This thing kicks you off of the internet constantly! Unless you want to spend your entire internet time reconnecting and frustrated.....buy another brand! It will say that you are connected....yet, your not. Probably about a dozen times a day, we have to unplug the thing and let it reset. Cost too much for this amount of frustration.

Let me preface my review by saying that I'm very computer literate. I stay up to date on hardware, read reviews, fix my friends' computers, and even build desktops for friends. I know how to troubleshoot and fix things when they go wrong. I'm not going to get into all the technical reasons why this router isn't a good one. I'll merely mention my experiences.

That being said, this router is junk. I bought one, set it up and had it work fine for a month or so. Every so often after that first month I'd use my computer at night, go to sleep and wake up the the next morning to find that I wasn't connected to the internet anymore. Odd. I tried resetting it and messing with the settings and would eventually get it to work. I had to do this quite a few times over the course of 3 months until it one day stopped connecting to the internet altogether. I could connect to the internet fine via an ethernet cable and the modem (so the modem and the ethernet cable from the modem were not the problem), but I was unable to connect to the internet with this router. I couldn't connect via wireless or wired connection (using another ethernet cable that I know works) on either of my 2 computers. This means that the modem and ethernet cables were fine, and the problem was not with a wireless card or ethernet port on either of my computers. The problem was the router. Nothing I did could get it to connect.

I returned it and got another one, thinking maybe I got a bad unit. Nope. I exchanged the one I described above about 3 weeks ago. I set up the new one and had it work just fine for these 3 weeks. I woke up this morning to see that I wasn't connected to the internet anymore. I played with the settings, and still couldn't get it to connect. I'm currently using a wired connection with my CM100 modem, which has worked solidly since I bought it, I might add. I'm going to return this router to the store and get a different one. I'm sick of having to troubleshoot this model. A wireless router is meant to be configured and then left on. A good one requires no maintenance and won't drop connections. It will sit there and broadcast its signal. They're not meant to be turned on and off all the time. My apartment isn't hot, electricity hasn't been surging, and there are no other factors I can think of that would cause only this router (and not my modem) to fail randomly except that it's a piece of junk.

2 out of 2 failed. That means it's time to get something else. Please save yourself the headache of trying to troubleshoot one of these. WRT120N is trash, end of story.