Customer Reviews

Cisco-Linksys WRT54G2 Wireless-G Broadband Router

5 star:		(510)
4 star:		(202)
3 star:		(65)
2 star:		(85)
1 star:		(198)

 

 

This was very easy to set up. It took about 5 minutes total to set up the router and have a wireless connection to my desktop. I have an excellent reception to my desktop that sits about 30 feet away in another room. Also, I have my desktop and laptop (both running vista), xbox 360, and ps3 connected to it wirelessly. the xbox 360 NAT is open and the ps3 NAT is type 2. I'm not sure what that stuff means technically, but in normal person terms it means that I can connect to others with no problems. The back of the router has 4 10/100 ethernet connections on it as well if you want a wired connection.

The design of this router is really excellent. The antennas are built into the router and the dimensions of it are really small and thin! This gives you more flexibility of where the router can be placed.

Streaming recorded TV, music, and pictures from my desktop to xbox (using media center) work well for both being connected wireless with no reduction in picture quality.

With the release of the new Xbox 360 dashboard I am able to stream HD video from Netflix wirelessly through my 360 with this router. The wait time for video to start is short and the picture quality of HD shows like Heroes and 30 Rock is great.

*Update* I have had the 20" 2.66ghz iMac since May 08 and connecting it to my linksys was as simple as selecting the network and typing in my password. The router has been up and running several months now with no resets or connection issues. This is a very stable router that requires little to no maintenance. Now my connections to this router are a laptop with Vista every now and then, Mac with OS X 10.5, ps3, 360, and 2 iPhones. There are no problems when 2 or more devices are using the connection. I am connected to a 6mbps cable connection.

Recently I got the new unibody MacBook and an eyeTV hybrid 2009 model. I use it to record TV (mainly the HD shows sent via QAM from comcast) on my iMac. I want to stream a HD show like The Office from my iMac to my macbook that is connected my my 46" samsung (lnt-4665), but I have found that "g" is not fast enough to stream a show recorded in HD. It is fast enough to stream a show recorded in SD, so I need an "N" router if I want to stream wirelessly.

I have to say that I have come to like the WRT54G2 a lot.

Works very well with my PC, my fiancé's Mac, a Playstation3, a wired multiuse printer/fax/copier and the standard cable modem RCN provided.

Configuration was quick and easy and I had no problems in that regard.

My only complain with this product is the fact that the DHCP server has problems after a while. If you leave a PC/device on for too much time, it will "lose" it's IP address and there is no way around the issue other than rebooting / power cycling router and affected devices. It doesn't happen too often so it's not a major issue, but I would have appreciated the linksys forums to be more supportive of my post on this issue - as they really have not been.

So 5 stars for product design, features and ease of use
- 1 star for DHCP server flaw
- 1 star for poor product support
= 3 stars

I had an original WRT54G that I bricked screwing around with the firmware. I needed another router right away, so I picked the WRT54G2 up at my local BB for $50. I was going to spend a lot more for an "N" router, but figured it wasn't worth it for my modest DSL/home network. I had the WRT54G2 up and running within 10 minutes. No problems. No drama. I was concerned about the internal antenna, but I still get a full signal even in my basement. It seems to work very well, and looks much better in my office than the original WRT54G.

I am still just stunned. Here I was, all prepared for a painful afternoon of geekese and error messages and unexplained no-connectivity, like the last time I had to do this...ordering out for pizza and a late night and probably some booze to ease the pain...and twenty minutes later, I'm on my laptop. (Fifteen minutes of that was fighting with the laptop.) You insert a CD, it walks you through four easy steps, generates the needed keys, and you're done. So now I have to stay sober and cook dinner, but it's a small price to pay. The wifi signal is strong, the router design is sleek and unobtrusive (a minimum of horrible sleep-disturbing blinking green lights, my personal pet peeve), the price was absolutely right. We'll see how I feel a month from now, but at the moment I'm on a non-techie high....

This is great! I'm not too "computer savvy," and this was just the right wireless router to get me started with my own home network. I'm sure there are many more wireless routers that can perform better than this one, but they're so much more expensive, and I guarantee this will suit your needs perfectly!

All I had to do was put the CD in my computer, then some text instructions and an animation showed me exactly what to do. There are about 4 steps, (not including naming your network and such.) This is a well-priced, general wireless router, and is just amazing! I used this to connect to my game systems also - (A Wii and Nintendo DS) And they connected perfectly! No worries at all. And, I get a perfect "3-bar" range everywhere in my house! The router is on the middle floor of my house, and I can get perfect connections in the basement, upstairs, wherever!

I highly recommend this router to any first time users of a wireless network, and anyone else looking for a reliable wireless network. Many other routers are 2x more expensive than this router, and don't do that much different. I hope this is the router for you!

-Sleek design -> No external antenna
-VERY simple set-up, even to a first time user
-Great range, no "dead spots"

Enjoy! ^_^

So far it's working quite well after 2 weeks.

I previously bought a Belkin F5D7230-4, but soon exchanged it for this one (see my review for it). This router is noticably faster loading uncached web pages, and I see less performance overhead in the Networking pane of Windows Task Manager. I suspect it's because of a newer, faster chipset.

So I definitely recommend this router but won't give it 5 stars unless it lasts at least 2 years.

One tip for those who know little or nothing about wi-fi: This router doesn't have auto-channel, so pay attention to which wireless channel you're using. There are 11 channels (1-11), but by default all Linksys use channel 6. If you live in a congested wireless environment, like my apartment complex where I can detect up to 10 signals simultaneously, then you'll want to use a software tool to detect all available wireless signals. The Dell Wireless Utility does a great job for me. If your environment is anything like mine you'll see most people use the default channel with a few using channels 1 and 11. I use channel 2 since there's only one other weak signal on channel 1 and I want to stay as far away from 6 as possible. Otherwise I get interference and performance loss.

A good friend of my just set up his pc in a new apartment. He wanted to wirelessly network his pc with that of his roomate and an Xbox 360. As a long time owner of a Linksys WRT54g router that I've never had a problem with, I reccommended this one to him. Since I was doing the setup, I wanted to work with something I was familiar with. We were not dissappointed. To setup the router to his roomates pc in the living and to configure a Linksys WUSB54GC Compact Wireless-G USB Adapter to his pc and setup the 128 bit WEP encryption took all of 30 mins. Everything connected on the 1st attempt. Connection range to router about 80 ft away, thru 2 walls was at max strength at a constant 54Mbs . If I ever need to get another router, this is the one that it will be. Linksys makes a great product.

OK.

So I was initially looking at the Wireless-N version of this router, to potentially replace my old WRT54GS (Linksys Wireless G Router with SpeedBooster). That router had problems, admittedly so. It worked, but not as well as I'd liked given my setup. Since all of my devices are either G or B wireless, I figured I would just settle for the G router and save money (this one is almost half the cost of the N router).

For the record I've got a laptop (wireless), media server (wireless), PS3 (wireless), PSP (wireless), DS (wireless), EEE PC (wireless), PS2 (hardwire), 360 (hardwire), printer (hardwire), and DirecTV HR20 (hardwire). Yeah, I know. What's important: the media server is in the master bedroom's closet, far from the router, which is in the living room. With my old router, signal strength got weak through walls, extremely weak. Local network activity was painful, streaming movies from the media center was painful as it would frequently lock up and stutter; thumbnails would not load.

Enter this router. First thing to note: the CD is NOT required. If you're new to wireless connections you may want to just follow the directions and CD, but if you're comfortable with navigating the router web interface, just bypass the CD and set it up like you normally would; it'll work. Setup was quite painless and recognition was fast, I managed to replace my old wireless network in a matter of minutes. There is also a feature that allows for a WiFi Protected Setup with a one-button press, but apparently the receivers require that feature to be built in as well - and none of mine did. Therefore I just ignored it. For those who are setting up for the first time and bought receivers with the feature included, they might find it useful when doing the setup.

I immediately noticed an improvement in the local networking speed. The aforementioned media server is now screaming fast over the network; thumbnails load just as fast as if I'm at the machine, file transfers are nowhere near as slow and streaming content plays with minimal lag. Internet connectivity was also slightly improved on devices that were not close to the router.

There are a couple of issues, not necessarily the router's fault, but more an issue with the way Linksys designs them. First, getting internet connectivity took way too long and was not as easy as it should have been. I had to powercycle my modem to get it to pull the IP information - even though the details should have easily been accessible from the previous router having gotten them. This might be a Time Warner issue rather than a Linksys issue - maybe it sees a different MAC and freaks, but I doubt it. Once I got the IP information, the router still would not give internet connectivity for a minute. I'm using Vista Premium so I can tell when it's "Local", "Internet" or both and it struggled to get both up.

Second, and a minor nitpick at best, the power cord is easily half the size of the WRT54GS. For the life of me I can't understand this. It makes it hard for me to locate the router in a good place, because I like to have the router on the UPS, and by shortening the cord I have to have the router in the middle of the floor. Minor issue, but still a problem for me.

Otherwise, I highly recommend this. It seems they fixed the majority of the problems the previous devices had. I noted that the negative reviews came from people who had support problems; I never call the Bombay support line, so I have nothing bad to say.

I bought this router based on the many positive reviews. Unfortunately Linksys has changed the hardware but kept the model number. All those positive reviews are about the "WRT54G2 v1.0" and "WRT54G2 v1.3". What arrived for me was the newer "WRT54G2 v1.5" which has been cheapened to the point it can't be supported by dd-wrt. It didn't say anything about the change on Amazon but most of the glowing reviews don't apply to the new version.

My complaints:
1. DHCP doesn't support static IP addresses.
2. My BlackBerry doesn't work with the DHCP and so can't connect.
3. dd-wrt doesn't support the new hardware (and they say they can't support it).

I think Amazon should be listing this as a new product. Everything but the recent reviews don't apply to what they are selling now.

After reading good reviews in amazon, I bought a WRT54G2 at Circuit City. Although the package doesn't say it supports a Mac and the Circuit City man told me routers are always tricky, implying this might not work fine with a Mac, it works flawlessly with my Dell desktop running Windows Xp and Macbook Air.
The installation was easy, finished in 10 minutes. Macbook Air connected to the Internet at first attempt.
So really there was no problem at all.
Macbook Air supports 802.11n and I could have bought a diffrent router that supports it. But my internet connection is 1.5MB Verizon DSL and I thought 802.11g and 11n do not make any difference in my case.
The range is strong enough to cover my one bed room apartment.
In short, I'm very satisfied with this product.