I'm on my second router after the first one was replaced through RMA. Router seems to work fine for about a week and then I have problems writing to my attached USB drive. Reads work OK but are incredibly slow. Then the router requires a reboot and the problems go away for about a week. Cisco-Linksys E2100L Advanced Wireless-N Router
I've given this router a 5-star rating based upon the ease of setup and very good wireless coverage. I purchased this router to replace a flaky Belkin router. I did the setup completely from my laptop over the wireless network. No glitches, no problems. I had to refresh a few of my connected wireless devices to update their network connections, but most devices adjusted without any intervention. The coverage is great throughout my house with no noticeable dead spots. Just got this up and running today, so haven't had a chance to directly connect a hard drive for access through the network...tomorrow. Will follow up with any situations that may affect my initial rating...so far no negatives...good product!
Update: Now rating this router with 2-stars. This router didn't work out, downloads were very slow and connection from other wireless components was problematic...replaced with a Buffalo router which is performing flawlessly now.
This wireless router drops connections randomly without any reason. First, let me say that this has nothing to do with Linux. Second, I don't know what extra Linux configuration this LinkSys router provides. The documentation that comes with the CD (and on their Web site) doesn't mention anything about it. I tried to SSH into the router and was not able to. I used this router with Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X, and Linux machines and all of them experienced the dropped connection problem. All. Once the connection dropped, not one of the machines I mentioned was able to re-connect. One must reboot the router in order to re-connect.
The USB shared storage doesn't work properly since it hangs randomly when one tries to access a share. The network is never busy when this happens. Be careful if you're moving files, as the network glitch might cause you to lose data.
There is only one thing I like about this wireless router. It does allow you to assign fixed IP addresses to any computer via its DHCP feature. This, however, is not enough for me to keep on using it. It was returned. LinkSys routers used to be so solid, I hope this is not the sign of things to come now that Cisco had taken over.
I love this box, but lawyers obviously got involved. First: TURN OFF THER FIREWALL. If not your web browsing experience will be problematic. READ THE MANUAL about storage. Turn of PnP is you are not gaming. The USB Frice is 2.0. If you expect lightening read-writes, you are not going to get it any faster than any USB attached drive. It will be limited in speed either way. N-band is not the problem, the problem is the firewall. Also use proxy arp. Turn on proxy arp, save the config, restart your internet acess and restart the router.
ONE LAST IMPORTANT ITEM: CHeck the Frequency being used. N-band will overlap with home wireless phones. This screw both the phones and you connection. Change the wireless to manual, pick 20Mhz-40Mhz width and then choose the highes frequency in the scroll-down lsit. Reboot and Viola!
Why does Cisco do this? Lawyers. Do these things and your will live well.
Martin
beckmanmartin@hotmail.com
Their software, Cisco Connect said that it saw the router, but it wouldn't connect to the internet. The software pretty much is useless after that.
Called their support, but couldn't get it fixed after the usual multiple plug out - plug in routine, and a few manual changes.
I have an old Linksys router that worked just fine, but couldn't get this new one to work. Returned it to the store.
EDIT FOR ALL THOSE WHO DON'T KNOW WHAT THE LINUX VARIANT IS:
Linksys happened to use the Linux embedded operating system in its early router and wireless router firmware. Because of Linux licensing, the source code had to be released to the public (I think the Free Software Foundation actually sued).
Independent opernsource developers took the original source code and added many features unavailable in the Linksys version, such as wireless bridging, sometimes called WDS (very useful for expanding a single network across large large homes, including adding wirelessly-bridged wired ports in garages or work sheds), QoS, monitoring, and so forth. These variants include "Tomato", "DD-WRT", and "OpenWRT."
A year later, Linksys moved on to a new hardware design with limited memory which squashed any hope of using the new feature rich firmwares. Consumers complained and/or bought other routers. Linksys responded by releasing an "L" variant of its router. The L stood for Linux, as in, it would run the old Linux firmware. (I would have opted for "O" for opensource).
WHY THE "L" IN THIS MODEL'S NAME IS MISLEADING:
I couldn't find any of the previous boxy Linksys routers when I visited my local computer store. They were all taken off the shelf.
I bought this model thinking it was the closest thing to my old router. The "L" designation used to mark Linksys products that supported the original Broadcom-focused opensource Linux firmware and its variants. Not any more. Or at least it's not that simple. The opensource community seems to be playing catchup moving to the E2100's Athenos chipset (if they catch up at all). I have no clue what "L" means in this model actually. A search through the Linksys user manual for "Linux" comes up empty. But the box does taught ambiguous performance advantages possibly when used with a Linux operating system.
DD-WRT shows no signs of a pending E2100L firmware release. Nor does Tomato. Check your favorite firmware compatibility list very carefully. I'm probably going to return this puppy in favor of a stale WRT54GL. - Wireless Router - Wireless - Best Router - 80211n'
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