Customer Reviews

LINKSYS WRT54G Wireless G-Router

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Works well as promised. Easy setup for intermediate users and above.
Timed the upgrade with upgrade to vista and have found it works well. I Did not flash the firmware no need for my application. Oh minor inconveince older 2.4ghz phone interupts signal.

I purchased a Linksys Wireless-G Broadband Router WRT54G from the seller. It looks and works like new. But since the product was out of warranty Linksys wouldn't give any tech support. (that's certainly not the sellers fault, but it is something to consider when you buy anything 'pre-owned'.)I was able to figure out my question, and the unit works great. I'm very pleased.

I have no complaints. It was an easy setup. The initial setup utility was out of date, but I went online to get the updated one and it worked immediately.

Bottom Line: The "WRT54G" is a highly flexible unit at an affordable price.

As Personal Area Networks (PAN) proliferate throughout American homes and small businesses fueled by the explosion of DSL, cable modem, and other high speed Internet access mediums, the need for seamless sharing of that access is acute. In order to share an internet connection however, the date stream from the DSL or Cable modem needs to be routed to the computers on the PAN. In my case, I used my primary workstation as a router by inserting a second Network Interface Card (NIC). This allowed the PC to talk to both my PAN and the DSL modem routing the DSL signal to my PAN via a wireless connection to my WAP54G. But this solution was problematic since anytime I took my workstation off-line, high-speed Internet access was curtailed until I brought it back on-line.

My solution: the "Linksys (Cisco) Wireless-G WRT54G." The "WRT54G" is actually three network interfaces in one convenient blue and black box; it is a Router, a 4-Port full duplex 10/100 Ethernet switch, and a 54Mbps Wireless-G Access Point; all functions I need. Why you might ask? I need the router function to interface with my DSL modem and act as a stand-alone interface for routing high speed Internet to my PAN. I need the 4-port switch to connect my primary workstation and afford it Internet access. And finally, I need the wireless segment of my network to connect to the wired portion of my network, and to afford the wireless clients on the network high speed Internet access. This last bit of wizardry is accomplished by setting up my existing WAP54G as a wireless repeater of the "WRT54G", a function that allows the former to repeat the signal of the latter, thereby affording my entire network not only high speed Internet access, but access the wired portion of the network where my files sever live.

The wireless portion of the "WRT54G" operates at a frequency of 2.4 GHz, and supports the following wireless protocols: 802.11b and 802.11g. The "Wireless-G WRT54G" can transmit and receive networking traffic in a range of 1 - 54Mbps.

Problematic Installation

Cisco provides lackluster installation procedures for the "WRT54G," assuming (wrongly) that everyone's needs will be the same. For the more advanced installation procedures I needed (these included how to flash the firmware, setup WEP, and configure the WAP54G as a repeater for the WRT54G), I had to make a visit to the Linksys Knowledge Base. Once there I was able to find what I needed.

There is no software to install, although the "WRT54G" did ship with Norton Internet Security, I did not load it. I first plugged the "WRT54G" into my DSL modem. In order to configure the "WRT54G" however, you will have to plug the unit into a computer (in my case I used my primary workstation) via a NIC configured with a 192.168.1.x IP address. Once this was accomplished and the unit was powered on, I type the IP address of the router (192.168.1.1) into Internet Explorer, which in turn gained me access to the units configuration screen; note a password will have to be typed in.

Once inside the configuration utility, I made note of the unit's MAC address (needed to set up wireless repeating), changed some of the defaults; e.g. I have a static IP address, the default for the "WRT54G" is dynamic or PPOE, changed the Service Set Identifier SSID etc. I also changed the router's IP address to match that of my internal network IP Addressing scheme, and I changed to access password. Note: changes to the configuration have to be saved one screen at a time. If you move to another screen without saving any changes made will be lost. Once this was accomplished I was able to surf the net on my workstation.

Now it was time to configure the WAP54G to repeat the signal from the "WRT54G." I reset the WAP54G to factory settings, and then connected it to one of the open 10/100 ports of the "WRT54G" and using Internet Explorer, gained access to the units configuration page. I then flashed the firmware twice in order to bring it up to 2.07.

Once this was accomplished, I configured the WAP54G for wireless repeating, which entails transcribing the MAC address of the "WRT54G" into the WAP54G. I also changed the IP address to match that of my internal network since resetting to factory defaults changes the IP address to 192.168.1.245. Once all of the configuration changes were made I attempted to ping WAP54G from my workstation with the unit still connected to the "WRT54G:" mission accomplished. I then disconnected the WAP54G took it back to its original location and tried the ping again: no good. I reset the WAP54G again and configured it for repeating, and then tried the ping again: no good, nor could I ping the "WRT54G" from the wired portion of my network. This told me that the two units were not communicating with one another.

I was at a loss, and after two hours of trouble-shooting, including some very frustrating minutes with tech support in India (they were no help), I was about to give up and ship the "WRT54G" back to Buy.com, when I hit on another idea: I could use the WAP54G was another wireless card on the network and hopefully accomplish the same thing I had hoped to accomplish by repeating the signal from the "WRT54G." In order to accomplish this I need to take a site survey from the WAP54G. This survey yielded a MAC address from the "WRT54G" that was one digit off from the number printed on the bottom of the unit, and that reported by the firmware of the "WRT54G." I plugged this new MAC address into the repeater field, and (deep sigh) it worked; I could now ping the WAP54G (wirelessly), through the "WRT54G" and gain access to the wired portion of my network, and I could ping the "WRT54G" through the wired portion of my network, and gain access to the Internet from all of my servers.

First Impressions

Now that everything is configured, I am impressed! The WAP54G now repeats the signal from the "WRT54G." And now, because I am using two WAP's in my house instead of one, my signal strength is much higher in all areas of the house. Access to the Internet and downloading are also much faster through a 100Mbps pipe, instead of the 10Mbps pipe I hade before.

As I alluded to above under real-world conditions, the "WRT54G's" wireless performance exceeds my expectations. So far I have been able to connect to the WAP from anywhere in the house; upstairs or down, most often at a full 54Mbps. My laptop has consistently connected at a rate 54Mbps, and it is in the downstairs master bedroom. This comes in handy when I am perched in front of the television in the downstairs living room, but I am still able to surf the web and download files to and from my server and workstation on the second floor! And the signal strength drops off only marginally on the backyard patio; I can still connect at a full 54Mbps, although at times throughput drops to 48 and 36Mbps.

The "WRT54G" is capable of automatically downgrading its data transfer rate as the signal from the connected wireless clients becomes weaker, thus maintaining connection. When at the extreme range of the clients the "WRT54G" can downgrade as far as 1Mbps, which is barley within acceptable limits for surfing the web and working with documents.

Conclusion

The "Linksys (Cisco) Wireless-G WRT54G" is a phenomenal product. Since I ironed out my earlier problems, I have yet to touch it; it just works and works well, but of course time will tell; I have read some reviews of the unit that were less then favorable. Of course, my particular situation is rare, but if you are looking for the unique functionality and flexibility the "WRT54G" has to offer, I say take the plunge.

The "WRT54G" represents the successful melding of several worlds; it can meet your need for current 802.11b standards, but still has the flexibility to expand beyond to 54Mbps; it can act as a 10/100 full-duplex switch, and it can route a high speed Internet connection so that all the computers on your internal network can share it. And it does so at an affordable price. Can you say no-brainer? I knew you could.

Linksys' WRT54G series routers have been an excellent buy from the first revision. My strongest recommendation, if you're looking at one of these, is to download DD-WRT ( [...] ). With dd-wrt firmware these things are incredibly reliable and includes a software feature set I don't even see on the cisco vpn appliance in the same shop as this router. Most notably, repeater-bridge mode is a pretty excellent way to grow your wireless coverage seamlessly, even allowing for separate wireless subnets on different SSIDs simultaneously. Happy Surfing!

I owned two of these one replacing the other, both needed to be rebooted every couple of weeks and both of the conked out after less than a year. I now have a D-Link wireless N router that has been problem free for more than 18 month now.

i brought a linksys router from amazon model wrt54g in sept07 , it cost me 46$ , i would like to tell u all to buy a buy a brand new one instead of buying a used one. My router didnt work at all an there was an inherent problem with it. I tried customer care and everything else , finally i had to return the product to amazon. A new one compatible with vista comes for 70$ and it is much better than buying this, and it will save u a lot of headache , also the new one is available at any tech sore like radioshack , etc