Home router brand - good / bad

burdette

Several weeks ago I bought the ubiquitous Linksys WRT54G wireless router.

We've had nothing but problems with this thing - randomly dropping the internet connection in general, dropping wireless.

I uninstalled and reinstalled the router and its software several times. Each 'solved' the problems for a day or two, then same old same old.

I checked on line and found a LOT of people with the same issue. Linksys tech support walked me through changes to the settings. Seemed to help for a week or so. And yes, I do have the latest firmware. But we're back to having to unplug the router power and plug it back in to make it work. I haven't actually pushed "reset" because the tech person said that would reset all the changed settings that were supposedly going to fix the problems.

Anyway, I talked to the store and I'm taking this thing back tonight. I've been reading over reviews for other brands, mostly D-Link and Netgear. I don't feel comforted. Just when I start to get the warm fuzzies about a brand, I find horrible reviews.

Is it just the nature of the beast that ANY brand is going to have certain problems part of the time for certain people?

I'm looking for recommendations so I can try to have a few warm fuzzies when I walk in there tonight and have to make a decision.

Did I just get a Linksys lemon? Should I try another 54G? Do you have strong opinions on D-Link or Netgear (not sure what else Office Depot carries). And, yes, I have to remain in the $40-$60 price range.

Right now, overall, I'm leaning towards D-link. EVERY brand seems to have some software issues. But after reading reviews at Amazon and Newegg, Netgear seems to have some hardware reliability problems.

Thanks for any opinions. As I said, I'm going in tonight, so this thread only has life until around 6:30pm CST today.

Thanks.

BaggedLancer

I've had the 54g forever and ever now....never an issue. Sounds like you got a lemon.

burdette

BaggedLancer wrote: »

I've had the 54g forever and ever now....never an issue. Sounds like you got a lemon.

Did you ever have to make any of the setting changes that are listed on the Linksys tech support forums (and quite a few other general computer forums)?? Have you done a firmware upgrade?

polkatese

I have the 54GS for almost couple of years now. Uptime has been excellent. zero issues (knock on wood), better than my older SMC Barricade which requires reset almost every other month.

Ricardo

I have the 54G also. I had a few times when the connection is lost and I've had to unplug the power supply, but I'd say it's been 3 or 4 times in the last year. Other than that, we have had 4 remote laptops connected at the same time and the thing works great.

BaggedLancer

burdette wrote: »

Did you ever have to make any of the setting changes that are listed on the Linksys tech support forums (and quite a few other general computer forums)?? Have you done a firmware upgrade?

Nope and Nope. Works perfect on my 4 XP computers and 1 Vista computer. Never dropped internet, never slow. Only settings I changed was the security stuff. Never did a firmware upgrade.

bobman1235

Yeah sounds like you got a lemon. All brands do have their problems, and I expect you're going to get a lot of conflicting opinions on this very board.

I've had one from almost every brand, and from personal experience :
- had 3 Linksys routers, 2 of which worked forever and still work, one of which was a lemon like yours.
- 1 netgear, never worked. Any friends who have had Netgears have hated them, so this is the worst as far as my experience goes.
- 1 Belkin, worked for like 9 months and then completely stopped doing wireless no matter what I did.
- 1 D-Link that worked for years and really gave me no problems.

So from my PERSONAL experience I'd say D-Link or give another Linksys a try.

Gaara

Which version did you get? If I recall correctly ver5 is very poor quality. We had one for about a year and it died recently, just stopped working and the light kept blinking. We got a ver7 and it works much better then the old one did.

edbert

I have a 54G as well with no real issues. It has been sitting behind a dresser running for about 4.5 years strong. I rarely have problems with the router, my DSL modem causes more problems than the 54G does. I would try another one if it were me.

Jstas

Um, I had the connection problems too on my Ver. 1 router (yeah, it's old) and Linksys said to update the firmware for it. I did and viola! No more problems! Works like a champ and is as secure as anything on the market for home users if you implement WPA security.

cmy330go

5 year old 54G still pluggin' along. I've done a number of firmware updates through the years, and am often tweaking due to changes in my network. I've never had a serious issue. I really only recall having to reset it a few times. It runs 24/7. Honestly if this one were to die today, I'd go buy another one.

Shizelbs

I'm using the 54g with my new computer and I've never had a faster connection before in my life.

BaggedLancer

Jstas wrote: »

Um, I had the connection problems too on my Ver. 1 router (yeah, it's old) and Linksys said to update the firmware for it. I did and viola! No more problems! Works like a champ and is as secure as anything on the market for home users if you implement WPA security.

Version 1 here as well, never shuts off.

Systems

burdette wrote: »

Several weeks ago I bought the ubiquitous Linksys WRT54G wireless router.

We've had nothing but problems with this thing - randomly dropping the internet connection in general, dropping wireless.

I uninstalled and reinstalled the router and its software several times. Each 'solved' the problems for a day or two, then same old same old.

I checked on line and found a LOT of people with the same issue. Linksys tech support walked me through changes to the settings. Seemed to help for a week or so. And yes, I do have the latest firmware. But we're back to having to unplug the router power and plug it back in to make it work. I haven't actually pushed "reset" because the tech person said that would reset all the changed settings that were supposedly going to fix the problems.

Anyway, I talked to the store and I'm taking this thing back tonight. I've been reading over reviews for other brands, mostly D-Link and Netgear. I don't feel comforted. Just when I start to get the warm fuzzies about a brand, I find horrible reviews.

Is it just the nature of the beast that ANY brand is going to have certain problems part of the time for certain people?

I'm looking for recommendations so I can try to have a few warm fuzzies when I walk in there tonight and have to make a decision.

Did I just get a Linksys lemon? Should I try another 54G? Do you have strong opinions on D-Link or Netgear (not sure what else Office Depot carries). And, yes, I have to remain in the $40-$60 price range.

Right now, overall, I'm leaning towards D-link. EVERY brand seems to have some software issues. But after reading reviews at Amazon and Newegg, Netgear seems to have some hardware reliability problems.

Thanks for any opinions. As I said, I'm going in tonight, so this thread only has life until around 6:30pm CST today.

Thanks.

Try and find a Belkin Pre-n on ebay, I have two of these with zero problems and their coverage signal is great!!

WilliamM2

I've had the 54G for years, never a problem. We also use them at work with excellent results.
Nothing but problems with the D-Link and Netgear we have tried, especially Netgear. If I were you, I would just trade it for another.

Oh, I have upgraded the firmware on mine a couple of times.

Refefer

I have a 54G which has had serious problems, but that's undoubtedly due to the heavy amounts of traffic I put it through (6 computers on the network, with two LAMP development servers and one NAS sharing all variety of files, not to mention the sending and receiving of raw video files). Daily resets are common place for me, sometimes even bi-daily.

One suggestion I have is that you check out your cable modem: if the modem's connection to the cable network is weak, as in a splitter is going bad or there's a lot of signal noise, that could be throwing it off.

What type of problems are you having? Are you losing connection to your router, or can you just not access the internet? If it's the latter, the cable modem could very well be the culprit

Polk addict

Seems like you just have a defective thing...

Linksys is a very respectable brand...

Jstas

WilliamM2 wrote: »

Nothing but problems with the D-Link and Netgear we have tried, especially Netgear. If I were you, I would just trade it for another.

I don't like D-link either but Netgear, if you are going with wired networks, has a pretty good track record with me. The small 100BaseT switches worked awesome as emergency backups on traveling events and bailed my butt out of a bind on a few occasions. I have no experience with their wireless stuff though. Most of my wireless stuff is either Linksys or Cisco Aironet stuff. The Cisco stuff is expensive but you can usually find it used and it's, IMO, the best stuff out there. Hard to get drivers for it though. My Aironet 350 card from Cisco is excellent and pulls in even the weakest signals that other cards don't even see. It's awesome for war driving!

petrym

I have an Airnet AWR014G 802.11g 54Mbps generic "Joe Bag o' Doughnuts" router that works just fine and rarely needs a restart. I'll put in a Linksys when I have to replace it.

wizzy

Stopped having problems with mine after installing HyperWRT

Try wikipedia's entry on the router, might want to look into other firmwares if your version is old enough:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WRT54G#Third-party_firmware_projects

Aqs612scag

I have Hawking Technology for almost a year now with no problems.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833164103

SKsolutions

I have had quite a few of them, and a couple of bad ones. Never install the software. Ever. Plug it in, and let Windows handle your connection. Wait till you connect, then secure it with a passphrase by using the GUI. If you need a step by step, to connect and secure without using the disk, I'll send you a link. D-link, and Netgear aren't any better in my experience. Return the Linksys, and grab a fresh one.

brettw22

There is a version of the 54g with Linux on it that's supposed to be more stable than most of them. The model is 54GL and is loaded with open source linux that I've read was released because so many customers were loading the original 54g with that config and running much more stable.

I'd say you have a bad one, because i've used a few and haven't had any problems..........

Jstas

Every 54G came with a distribution of Linux. It's on a CD that comes in the bag with the other software package and drivers CD. The only difference between the G and the GL is that Linksys already loaded the distro of Linux on to the router for you. However, the standard control software has a Linux back end to begin with. The Linux distro is really only for uber-nerds that know how to set up a Linux box properly.

ledhed

I have a WRT at home and its pretty good, have to reset every once in awhile though (I think its the modem's fault anyway. I have a Buffalo Airstation here in my apartment and it works great!

My friends bought a Netgear and it sucks... Badly.

petrym

petrym wrote: »

I'll put in a Linksys when I have to replace it.

Apologies to quote myself, but I needed a new router so I got a 8-port Linksys RV082 to handle the 7 computers in the house (1 each Windows Small Business Server 2003, 4 each Windows clients [3 desktops, 1 laptop], 2 each Fedora 7 Linux work computers [1 desktop, 1 laptop]) The router runs an embedded Linux OS and I have no more network connectivity problems at all.

F1nut

Porter-Cable.....beetches.

petrym

Warning -- derail: Hey F1Nut - good qualifying for Australia, eh!

F1nut

Indeed, things are looking up.

Is midnight what you have for the broadcast of the race?

ben62670

I don't like linksys. I own a computer repair company, and Link stinks die more than others. The problem is the give good IP's, subnets, and DNS, but they lose their internet connectivity. I do realize there are more Link stinks out there than any other, but I have run mostly Netgear with no issues. If you do go link stink keep it cool the nat chips run hot, and die. Whenever a customer calls I run through the basic cmd/ipconfig /all, and they have all the right numbers "I ask do you have a link stink?" almost %100 of the time the answer is yes. Instead of charging them a service call, and coming over I send them out to buy another router, and the problem is solved. The Ironic thing is when they were bought out by Cisco they got worse. While Cisco is a great although over priced equipment it doesn't make it to the home routers.

fatchowmein

ben62670 wrote: »

If you do go link stink keep it cool the nat chips run hot, and die.

+1. I have the 54G and it overheats about once a quarter. A reboot fixes it.

I've had other routers and they all will either work right out of the box or drop connectivity repeatedly. If you get one that won't stay up, stop pulling your hair out and get it exchanged right away. I know, rather difficult if you ordered online.

I will probably switch to Netgear once a gigabit wireless comes out. I like their NIC's and I like the Netgear wireless router I setup for my mother-in-law.