Customer Reviews

Cisco-Linksys WRT400N Simultaneous Dual-Band Wireless-N Router

5 star:		(82)
4 star:		(43)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(19)
1 star:		(38)

 

 

Like many of you, I find it very difficult to get clear information on networking products on-line. Unlike other electronic devices, it seems that there are a ton of bozos out there all weighing in on how horrid their router is, when either they don't know what they're doing or they have physicial challenges that aren't the hardware's fault.

Suffice it to say that I did a ton of research before buying this product. As it turned out, Amazon has the best price (inclusive of shipping, of course) - but I checked out the reviews on CNET, NewEgg, and anywhere else I could find information.

The best resouce I found was here - at SmallNetBuilder.com.
[...]

This guy really puts the devices through their paces and seems to be relatively unbiased in his approach. I tip my hat to him.

This product is fast and relatively easy to set up. Most importantly it has TWO radios. What this means to you is that you will see TWO different versions of the router when it is on-line. If you'd like you can dedicate one of the channels for N and one for B/G. This is all laid out very clearly on the Linksys product website, should you wish to check that out.

You'll see many products that say "Dual Band" (it can operate in both frequencies) but be careful because unless the product says "Simultaneous transmission" it will not do so at the same time. So if you have, like we do in my house, N users and G users, and you want different security or other settings on the various channels Simultaneous Transmission is the way to go. There may be other reasons to go this route including Media streaming or gaming on the 5 ghz band - this is particularly true if you simply want to eliminate wires and aren't trying to stream your N/5 GHz signal very far.

If you have realistic expectations of what this product will do - and especially if you don't need a Gigabit ethernet connection on your network (I have a Gigabit switch for my wired boxes, which means that transfers to those machines get 'slowed down' to 100 GHz when they are interfacing with the wireless world, but from a practical perspective I haven't noticed any slowing!) this is, by far, the wireless router to get.

I'm not going to argue with the folks who say that they don't see a speed improvement, but I can tell you that we see speed improvements on both the N spectrum and the G spectrum relative to our old Belkin pre-N router.

Finally, the design looks funky in pictures and in the videos that I saw. In the home it's pretty swank looking and certainly less noticable relative to something with exterior antenae. So another tip of the cap to the designers.

Overall I'm very impressed with this device and pleased to give it 5 stars!

After purchasing the LG 390BD for playing Blueray dvd's and to watch streaming movies and older TV shows from Netflix I discovered my Belkin N1 router would not work with security settings turned on. A Belkin tech assisted me with setting the router up again and alah it worked. Unfortuantly after turning the Bluray player off and on again I could not log into my Netflix instant queue again. After hours of research I discovered that Linksys routers supposedly got along best with Netflix instant streaming. I purchased and installed the WRT400n yesterday. First the router, than the wireless network for my wife's computer and lastly the LG390BD. Linksys supplies software that works flawlessly for me. A Very easy setup. A graphic of the setup (suppled by Linksys)shows all connections to network including the LG390BD. I now have full security on my network and devices have worked perfectly since setup. This is my first review so a big thanks to all that take time to review items that haver helped me make wise purchase decisions in the past.

There were lots of mixed reviews on this. It seems to either be wonderful or to cause the downfall of civilization.

For me it falls into the category of "Greatest thing since sliced bread."

We have had internet through our cable company for years, and had gotten to the point where our internet speed into the house was much faster than our old 802.11b wireless system could handle.

We all just avoided watching videos because they were slow and choppy, but I finally decided to upgrade to take advantage of all that bandwidth.

Put in the Linksys cd in our main family computer where the cable modem and wireless box sit, and follow the super easy instructions.

Wrote down the new secret key and then went to the other computers and entered this into the setup for the wireless adapters on those computers. Now all laptops and desktops in the house are blazing fast and we can watch movies, youtube, whatever, with nary a problem.

On my own desktop, I had a -b wireless adapter that I upgraded to the Linksys dual-frequency wireless adapter. Now my own computer is on 5Ghz, while everyone else and the netflix ready blu-ray player (LG BD 390) are on 2.4GHz. As we can, we'll upgrade some other computers to dual-band to widen our options, or save the 5GHz for future products.

Anyway, just wanted to throw in my two cents on this particular dual-band wireless router.

It was insanely easy to set up and connect to all of our computers. We now have internet that is literally 3 times faster than last week, plus we can stream videos through Netflix on our blu-ray player because of this new Linksys box.

The whole family spent the weekend on the computers marvelling at the increased speed, and adding each person's choices to Netflix instant streaming and watching them on the TV, all because of this Linksys router.

Well worth the money for this device, and we haven't experienced any drop outs of signal or signal weakness either.

(Also, I bought this through Amazon, who had the best price I could find, used free shipping and still got it in 4 days. I've mostly had good luck with Amazon's free shipping. They tell you up front it might take a while, but out of probably 8 or so orders where I chose the free shipping, only one order ever took more than 7 days to get to me.)

I was looking to get longer range than my trusty Linksys WRT54G, so I go this WRT400N. The setup was very smooth -- no issues there except for one. Before I set up the WRT400N by computer took 2 minutes to re-boot. Afterwards it took 3.5 minutes. I'm not sure why, except that I think Linksys installed a Microsoft .Net Framework version that slowed the system.

If you can set up the router without the software, you're better off. Here's other notable issues:

1. The 5 Ghz is pretty worthless. It's range is far shorter than the 2.4 Ghz. So unless you're planning to use the 5 Ghz band in the same room as the router, or maybe the room immediately very immediately)next door, it is useless.

2. The 2.4 Ghz works well enough. It doesn't drop the connection or any problems like that. What I found was that operating in G mode only actually had a longer range than the N mode only -- go figure.

In my setup my router is in the main house, and the family room is in another building over the garage (small catwalk between the two). So I need a router to send a signal out of one building and into another, total distance is perhaps 50 feet. In G mode only the WRT400N does give a slightly stronger signal than the WRT54G. But in N mode, the strength of the signal drops enough that it is about the same as the WRT54G, and slightly less than the 400N's own G signal.

Adapter Experience
==================
I decided to get the Linksys wireless-N USB dual bank adapter for the family room, thinking it would match up best with the WRT400N router. Guess again...it didn't. The adapter was less effective than the old Linksys USB G adapter. The 5 GHz band at first detected nothing even though the WRT400N was broadcasting in N mode on that bank from about 50 feet away. After fidling with the position of the router and the adapter, I finally picked up the 5GHz signal -- but it was weak, and eventually dropped in use. I finally tried a cheaper SMC adapter and it received the signals from the WRT400N significantly better than the twice as expensive Linksys adapter.

Bottom line -- the router is a good router in 2.4 GHz band, and not much use in the 5GHz band. The range is decent, but not significantly better than the old reliable WRT54G (which is a great router).

After spending a ton of time looking over router reviews, I finally took the plunge with the Linksys Dual-Band Wireless-N Router. Since almost every router had extreme reviews - either they're great or disasters - I had a tough time making a decision. Anyway, I have had the Wireless N up for a couple days now. So far I can say 2 things about it: 1) set-up was a total breeze. I was up on 2 laptops wirelessly within 15 minutes. 2) reliable - have not been kicked off once in 2 days. I have not messed around yet with the advanced features but the 2 most important things for me were being able to get it to work and having it be reliable.

After considerable research I chose this product as a replacement for an old "G" router that recently started to drop all connections intermittently. I was basically looking for something with extended range capability that was friendly to set up and which was also secure and dependable. So far, this router has shined on all four counts. Currently I am running two hard-wired desktops and a hard-wired laser printer in addtion to wireless connections to a laptop, a Wii console and another desktop on my workbench in the garage. This router is handling it all, no problems, and was surprisingly easy to configure compared to the router it replaced. I would consider my networking skill level to be somewhere between beginner and intermediate, so I very much appreciate the user-interface software and configuration utiility that came with this product. Also, regarding the range, my workbench desktop didn't used to receive a signal from the old router because of the distance and number of walls between them, but with this router there is plenty of signal there to make a good wireless connection from the garage. Because it's working so well, was so easy to set up and does everything it advertised I have no choice but to give it the highest recommendation. Great stuff.

Just initialized the Linksys WRT 400N router with great simplicity - almost. Turns out that an "UNDOCUMENTED FEATURE" is that you must set the Security Key (also called the Passphrase) different for the 5.0 GHz channel than for the 2.4 GHz channel! I made the mistake of setting them the same, with all kinds of confusing outcomes. The Linksys Help Desk, fortunately, was easy to access by phone and graciously worked thru the fix with me. It did take awhile for us to get to the right initialization screen, and for the technician to realize I had set the Security Keys the same there. And then we had to go thru and delete and re-add everything in the Control Panel screen for wireless networks.

But actually, except for that error on my part - and I wish the documentation warned you about those Security Keys -- the initialization was very simple, and the wireless range is very good all over my 4-level townhouse. The router is in the far northwest corner of Level 3. At the far southeast corner of Level 1 it works some of the time at 5.0 GHz with an up-and-down signal - but ALL of the time at 2.4 GHZ with a strong consistent signal. Every-where else in the house both channels are fine, with the 5.0 sometimes stronger (faster) and sometimes the 2.4 stronger. Switching between them is a two-click deal from the desktop screen.

I would describe myself as an above average tech consumer (although, given that a lot of people say that, perhaps there's a new average). For some reason though, I had been using a B/G adapter for the past few years, and never really thought about upgrading.

Boy, am I glad I did.

The best part of the N aspect for me was the increased range. I never had trouble with speed with my old adapter, but the range just wasn't enough, even after buying an expensive (and surprisingly useless) wireless range extender.

The WRT-400N has drastically increased my range, and the power/bandwidth that comes with it.

I highly recommend an upgrade.

One quick cautionary note: there has been much hoopla made about dual-band routers, meaning that they broadcast on the 5.0GHZ spectrum along with the 2.4GHZ spectrum. The argument is that on the 5.0 spectrum, there is less interference from things like cordless phones and microwaves. It's true, but here's what you should be careful of: make sure your computer can pick up a 5.0GHZ signal before you buy one of these. Otherwise, you'll have spent more money on a dual band router, and you won't be able to take advantage of that aspect. It will still work on the 2.4GHZ, but then there's no need to buy a dual band.

Enjoy!

Do not buy this product if you have a DSL Internet connection. I have had to reboot the box daily. The WAN link seems to lose its IP address. There does not seem to be a fix to this issue on the Linksys web site. The last firmware update on their web site is about a year old. I do not have this issue with my older slower router from another manufacturer. I have also connected my PC directly to the DSL modem and have not had an issue. So, it is this box that is defective and not the DSL link. I should have done my research before buying this box, but I went for the Cisco name. A Google search brings up several references to this issue from other frustrated buyers like me. The recommendation seems to be to get a WNDR3700 instead. Perhaps I will do that. Google also seems to indicate that it is not worth trying to call customer support. Another frustrating issue is that there seems to no debugging option on the box in order to troubleshoot this issue.

The WRT400N does NOT have built-in USB port and UPnP AV media server as stated in the description on the Amazon.com site. If you purchase this router thinking that you can connect an external drive and share your media on your home network think again. I did not even unpack it and immediately requested a refund. I shipped it back today and hope everything goes smoothly as this is my first return from Amazon.

<Amazon description>
Entertainment-Ready

Simultaneous dual-band Wireless-N technology means smoother HD video streaming and faster gaming. A built-in USB port and UPnP AV media server let you share files over your network, as well as stream music, video, and photos to DLNA-compatible devices like the Xbox 360 and PS3. The Linksys WRT400N is an excellent choice for enjoying wireless entertainment at home.
<Amazon description>