Wireless Internet In Your Own Home (Linksys Compact Wireless-G Broadband Router WRT54GC)

Member Name: johnnyho

Product:	Linksys Compact Wireless-G Broadband Router WRT54GC
Date:	20/01/06 (1015 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Wireless router, good range, good security

Disadvantages: Not for USB modems

I purchased this router a couple of years ago now when we first got broadband in our home. As our ISP provided us with an ethernet capable modem already, we needed this router mainly for all the computers in the house to be able to access the internet without depending on one computer being switched on all the time. Now, I don't know an amazing lot about computers and all this techie stuff, so i'm going to try and keep this review as simple as possible.

In the box came the router itself, a power adaptor, CD for drivers and a cat5e ethernet cable. It was simply a case of connecting the ethernet cable which came with the modem to the router, connecting the other ethernet cable to a computer and switching it on! After this setup was relatively easy, just a case of following some simple instructions.

To set it up, you need to type in an i.p. address into your web browser, and a box will appear. Then the username and password must be entered. Once this is done you can change all sorts of settings, a lot more settings than I can understand! I did however setup a password and security on the wireless network using WPA as I heard that this has stronger encryption than the WEP standard. To be honest, I don't really know what all this means, but it sure was very easy to understand and follow. Once this is done, all sorts of things can also b changed, such as the built in firewall, the wireless network's name, access restrcitions etc.

Once all setup with the desktop connected by ethernet, it was time to try the woreless connection. My laptop already had a built in wireless networking card, so didn't need and extra hardware. I clicked on the Windows XP network connections, and searched for wireless networks. The network that I had just setup appeared. I then clicked on connect, and was prompted for the password. After a few seconds, I was connected, and was able to use the web on both my laptop and desktop!

Other things can also be done with this router, sharing of an internet connection is just one of them. Others such as networking and sharing files and printers can also be done, but somehow I can't seem to configure my firewall to allow me to do this! iTunes music sharing seems to work fine though!

I have not really had problems as such, but on a few occasions i've had to reset the router or turn it off and on again. For some reason it does seem to hang sometimes and this must be done or there seems to be no internet connection. The speed is quite good however - the wireless networking on this router runs at 11 mbps if on the b standard or 54 mbps on the g standard. It does however seem much slower than this when exchanging files etc with my desktop computer on my laptop, but I suppose there must be some speed decrease in a wireless standard.

Overall, an excellent router which was relatively cheap and gets the job done. I'm sure there is so much more you can do with it, but I just don't know! But very easy to setup and easy to use. Highly recommended.

Summary: Gets the job done

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