My mother-in-law wanted a wireless router -- well, actually my wife wanted a wireless router so she could use her laptop to take advantage of her mother's Internet connection when we're visiting her. At any rate, I was called on to get a wireless router and set it up. I wanted to get a
Belkin Wireless G router because that's what I have at home and it works very well. Also, it doesn't cost much and I'm a cheap bastard. The local Wal-Mart, sadly, was out of the Belkin model I wanted, so I got the next best (or cheapest) thing -- the Linksys WRT54G. It cost about $5 more than the Belkin, but it sure looks snazzy with two antennas instead of the Belkin's one and, besides, Linksys is a division of Cisco. Who knows more about networking that Cisco, yeah?
Setting up the router was, honestly, a bit difficult. The first thing you're supposed to do is run the setup disc which steps you through the entire process (that software is for Windows 98SE through XP, so I'm not sure what you're supposed to do if you've got something running Vista, a Mac, a Linux machine, etc.) The only problem there is that I had more than a little trouble installing the setup disc. First of all, the "autorun" kept kicking in while the disc was installing and asking me if I wanted to run setup. That was an annoyance more than anything, really, as I could shut down that obnoxious dialog box easily enough while the installation completed.
What was more than an annoyance is the fact that the setup software kept getting hung up when it attempted to connect to the Internet and download new revisions. I had to restart the program three times before it could finally download what it needed. Seeing how my mother-in-law's cable Internet is rock solid, I'm really not sure what the trouble was.
Once the program was stepping me through the installation process, however, everything was a breeze. All I had to do was connect the ethernet cable from the modem to the router then run an ethernet cable from the router to the desktop computer (up to four computers can be hardwired to the router, by the way). The next step was to set up the security, and that was a snap. I chose the "legacy" security setup because it covers a wider range of wireless devices and my mother-in-law wasn't certain that her laptop is new enough to take advantage of newer wireless protocols. Unfortunately, I was unable to set the router up to be accessed by an easy-to-remember password -- one has to keep up with a 16-digit passkey to access the router from a wireless device. Whether one can actually use a password rather than a bothersome 16-digit passkey to access the router when it's configured for "newer" protocols is something I just don't know.
Installation took about 30 minutes, and most of that involved trying to get the blasted installation disc to work properly. Once that was done, I simply got my wife's laptop to find the network (which I named after my rat terrier to annoy my mother-in-law, by the way), typed in the passkey and I was up and running. My mother-in-law lives in a duplex, so range is not an issue in her small home. I was able to connect to the router anywhere in the place and the router is located at the far back corner of the duplex. She's got about 1,000-square-feet of heated space and a garage, so it's impossible to tell whether the range on the Linksys is great or not. No computer in that place will be more than 75 feet from the router, and the thing seems to transmit well enough through the walls in the place.
What is bothersome about the router, however, is that the signal strength seems to vary at random. Most of the time, the signal strength is, at worst, (four bars out of five) anywhere in the duplex. But, that can unexpectedly drop to as few as "two bars" for no apparent reason. Regardless, the router does seem to typically deliver the 54 Mbps as advertised, meaning my wife and I can both have our laptops running and downloading all kinds of junk from the Internet without any problems at all. Still, that variable signal strength worries me.
All in all, this unit is a great deal for the money. Still, I prefer the smaller (and cheaper) Belkin as the signal strength is more consistent and the setup software is more reliable. Still, I have no substantial complaints about the performance of the LinkSys -- it works just fine.
ZDTronic.com
