Customer Reviews

Cisco-Linksys WRTSL54GS Wireless-G Media Storage Link Router with Speedbooster

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

As soon as I received my Linksys WRTSL54GS, I flashed it with the OpenWRT firmware... and my device works great. It's been running for 3 wks now since I've bought it, with no problems. I did not attempt to use Linksys' OEM firmware, which other reviewers have noted is not very good.

I am irked that it is much more expensive than the Linksys WRT54GL, but the extra RAM, flash memory (useful for OpenWRT), and USB port were worth it for me. You're not going to break any speed records with the device's 266 MHz processor, but the ability to access disks over a network without the need of another full-blown computer is extremely convenient.

It has only one antenna, but most real-world tests show that two antennas are not necessarily better, The antenna is unfortunately non-removable, unlike the WRT54GL, so you cannot easily replace it with another.

All in all a great, more versatile WRT54GL alternative.

I use this router with four computers, two air port expresses and a USB drive. By upgrading to the latest firmware and re-formatting the drive to NTFS I was able to get the USB harddrive working correctly. The documentation does leave something to be desired, but with some searching the Linksys knowledge base I was able to get things worked out.

I must generally agree with others who do not recommend this product. I have been using it for about 2 months and have had a great deal of trouble.

If you understand the concepts of Shared Drives, and how to configure them, you will have no trouble mapping the drives connected to the USB port. I have 3 250 GIG drives and one 2 GB thumb drive connected to the router via a USB hub and mapped. I do not know if this is a supported configuration but it works fine.

The problem has been that the clock on the router will not set. This means that any files written to the drives have a date of January 1, 1970. I have just been sent a beta copy of new firmware from Linksys (my 3rd revision in 2 months). v2.00.6 (Mar 29, 2006) this seems to correct the problem.

Other aspects of the router are working fine. Signal strength is very good with no hang-ups (this was the first firmware upgrade).

Overall, this product has, by no means, been worth the effort.

It is sad what has happened to Linksys. This used to be a great little company with great products and support. Since being purchased by Cisco it has all been down hill.

This router can be re-flashed with a custom Linux firmware (such as openwrt or dd-wrt) to become a custom Linux device. With the addition in this model of a USB 2.0 port, the possibilities for such a device are greatly expanded. It could easily become a wireless music player, print server, camera server, peripheral sharing device, etc. It also makes a nice firewall/router. This model has increased CPU speed and main memory over the original WRT54G device. The radio in this device, like the other WRT54 routers, is very stong, delivering good coverage for both 802.11b and 802.11g.

This product met my expectations completely. Within a few minutes of arrival, it was up and running ( OpenWRT ) w/ WPA2-Personal, OpenVPN, and PPPoE. I am currently not utilizing USB on this device, but may in the future - it's nice to have the option.

My only complaint is that it is a little over overpriced compared to earlier models with similar specs.

Overall, great product.

All issue written by others below me have been resolved on the latest firmware update.

I love the fact it has a built-in USB port that also supports a USB hub attachment. It also appears to have USB print support but I am not sure as I have not been able to test that.

I think it works flawlessly (however I did get dropped once after I totally erased and reclaimed a usb thumb drive) and has excellent range. For me I have been 45ft away with two walls floors in between and I still had excellent strength.

The UPNP Media Server and the FTP Access will be a delight once I get a need for them.

There are some things I don't like about the unit. The antenna is not removeable and you can not upgrade to the high dbi antenna. The number of port forwardings and port triggerings are limited.

Other than those few shortcoming, I have been total satisfied with the router. I must admit however, I have been waiting on this type of device from anyone. I just so happens Linksys was the first to make. So, anyone could have produced it and I would be giving them all the praise.

I bought 2 units and I installed one of them away from the house in the garage and I use it as on "offsite backup device" with an 8 GB flash USB disk connected to it. I upgraded the firmware to Thibor v 17c, increased the power to 100% and it works like a charm.

Got two units for modetare load each, udated to open WRT (original firmware fails when emule and bittorrent run together on couple of computers but its expected), with new firmware holds the load, does proper firewalling and NAT.. Useful that is has 32Mbts of ram. also stable wireless transmit-receive :)/ Good buy for the $/

I had the same problem as one of the other reviewers. The WRTSL54GS could not connect to an NTP server and get a current time, so all of my files on the USB drive would come up with a date of 1969.
If you update the firmware to HYPERWRT 15a (or better), you can then use the RUN COMMAND option in the Administration menu to send a "date -s" command to the device. You can send the time/date by using the following format:
date -s MMDDHHMMYYYY
example: date -s 052310482006 (May 23 2006 10:48am)
This will set the clock, and all your files will be created with the right date/time. This will need to be done every time it loses power, as there is no battery backup on the clock. Since it isn't synchronizing with an NTP, the clock will drift eventually.
The right answer is for a firmware solution to fix the NTP synchronization.

Linksys Wireless-G Media Storage Link Router with SpeedBooster WRTSL54GS

Excellent product recominedo 100 % from Caracas - Venezuela.

Excelente producto lo recominedo 100% desde Caracas-Venezuela.