Users Product Reviews: |
Product Review Summary: Wired router = great. Wireless = unstable So I am now on my second WRT-320n. Amazon is great with quick replacements. First off as a wired router, this works well. I am able to achieve my full 50/10 mbps internet connection with this. The issues occur if you try to do any heavy lifting using wireless. I have 2 laptops and an IPhone on 802.11g. I have one desktop computer hardwired with Gigabit Ethernet. I have an XBOX 360 hardwired with 100mbps Ethernet.
On any of the laptops, if I try to copy a lot of data from over the network, eventually the wireless shuts down. All Wifi devices on the lan drop connection. They can be less than 1ft from the router, and they still drop connection. When this happened, the first 320n I had would also freeze up and the wired PC would not be able to access the internet or ping the router. The only way to resolve the issue was to power cycle it. The second 320n allows the wired PC to continue to access the internet, but not the wireless. I've done a site survey with a program called inSSIDer, and ensured that I am not overlapping any other neighboring access points. Furthermore, when disabling the 320n's wireless completely, and connecting my older Linksys WRT-54g, the wireless was 100% stable. The Linksys WRT-54g has been a great router and access point for me for a number of years, but it's slower processor cannot handle the full bandwidth of a 50/10 internet connection. Because of how pleased I was with the WRT-54g, I figured the 320N would be just as solid. Unfortunately it's not.
So after some research and posting on Linksys's support forums, I was told to change the MTU to 1300, RTS and Fragmentation thresholds to 2304, and Beacon interval to 75. This appears to work much better with these settings. However setting the MTU to 1300 will increase the overhead of data transmission. Having to step the settings down usually indicates some kind of problem with with the hardware or design. Network experts would agree, and I can verify that sending any packet larger than 1272 bytes will fragment causing overhead.
So while these setting changes are working, they are not optimal and performance is lost. There should be no reason to adjust the MTU size in any router, unless you are going for larger "jumbo" frames.
I would NOT recommend this router. It's Wireless N and can route about 145mbps from WAN to LAN for under $100 for a reason. Linksys has not released any firmware updates since July 2009. This problem still exists and they continue to do nothing about it. This router also runs hot. My first unit ran hotter than my second. I often wonder if heavy wifi transfers caused the chipset to overheat, possibly causing poor solder connections to fail. Or draw excess power and poor capacitors were unable to carry the proper load.
I've tried Linksys latest 1.0.03 firmware build. Full factory resets. Running with factory defaults. Nothing works. I've tried the third party DD-WRT firmware. Great firmware with loads more functionality, but it is only stable when lowering the MTU to 1300, JUST like the Linksys factory firmware. This leads me to believe there is a chipset issue with this model.
Product Review Summary: defective item, NO connection to VPN bought the item based on reviews. this was my second Linksys product. set it up, wireless connection was fine - connecting pc and two laptops. the problem start surfacing when trying to connect to vpn of workplace. No connection - errors threw out - error N 721, 609. when connection directly from modem to pc - there is no problem to VPN. called linksys for support - useless support people they have. They have trying to fix the issue for a week - every time saying that I have to call again so that a senior technician will help me. so on and so on. All ports were open. even managers sing the same song. once a day in the evenings I was on the phone with linksys support people at least 70 minutes so I got fed up and returned the item after 8 days. Will never buy again - not because of the product - because of clueless ignorant tech support they have.
Product Review Summary: Finally a Linksys home N router that works well After mediocre experience with the N600, I assumed Linksys/Cisco had solved its problems and naively bought the N610. After experience with a dozen or so home routers, this was the worst disaster I had experienced - difficult to set-up, inconsistent, VERY unreliable, limited range; candidly, Linksys engineers should be ashamed to sell this piece of junk (being a long time Linksys user, I am hopeful they finally solved their many N610 problems in their current version of the model).
All this leads up to how happy I am with the N320N - it worked out of the box, assembled easily, gives substantially more range, and has been very reliable. I do not look forward to updating the N320N operating software (Linksys apparently refuses to have end users participate in process/product development).[[ASIN:B001SEL326 Linksys by Cisco WRT320N Dual-Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router].
Product Review Summary: Excellent range I replaced 2 Linksys WRT54G's with this WRT320N. The one thing that immediately struck me was how great the range was compared to the old WRT54G's I was replacing. The range is so good in fact that I no longer need to place 2 wireless routers in my home. Just one WRT320N covers my whole house, and it does an excellent job of it. Where I used to have 50% signal, I now have 100% signal. Internet thruput appears no different that what I got with my old units, which is good news ([...]). I can't comment on reliability yet, since I've only had this unit for a short time. Setup went without any hitch, firmware installed is 1.0.03 build 10. Overall, very pleased with this purchase. I thought I'd be stuck buying WRT54G's for the rest of my life, but it appears that Linksys has put together something even better!
Product Review Summary: Just not worth it I'm a long-time LinkSys user. (I think they had cranks back when I got my first. :-) However, this router is making me jump ship. After a lot of agonizing disconnects that made little sense, I contacted their live chat. I had established that it wasn't my modem dropping me from the net (ISP verfied this) but the problem was that the router was resetting when there was too much data fed to it. (The log entries were being cleared and all objects on the LAN ceased being able to communicate.) I was more convincing the techs what was wrong than asking them. I DID follow their directions, but I spoke to two of them and the second told me I had a setting wrong... but it was the one the first tech told me to try.
Anyways, they gave me a case number and had me get an RMA for a swap (they send me new, I return old). All that failed (their RMA department's fault, not mine). If I wanted to, I could send them my broken one and wait for a new one, but I need this for work. I can't simply shut down over a $50 router. I also would be unlikely to jump ship from LinkSys over just one product, but it's predecessor had similar reliability problems. I'm going to try another manufacturer.
Sorry, LinkSys, after all these years, ya lost me.
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