Networking Reviews

I use this KVM to swap between a PC and a Notebook. Previously I was using an unpowered switch, but I would lose cotrol of the mouse each time I switched (unless I put the notebook in stand by). This product was exactly what I needed.

This is easier to install than the equivalent PCI card, but is more expensive as there is no mail in rebate. We got the card working in about 5 minutes.
The computer was a 500 MHz AMD K6-2 system with WIN 98 SE.
I always get the full 11 Mbytes/sec speed over a distance of about 80 feet, one computer being upstairs, and the other being in a den on the ground floor. I am able to print files, make backups (on an ORB drive) or copy to a CDRW drive on the other machine no problem. Some might want to consider the slightly dearer 22 MByte/sec cards, but on older machines like mine the network is as fast as the computer hard drives.
The software included provides a pop-up utility to monitor/select network speed; channel in use; 0, 64 or 128 encryption; select peer to peer or Wireless Access Point network - easy to install and use.
The card wireless network does not interfere with our digital wireless phone, nor any other devices.
The USR 1120 does offer encryption on peer-to-peer networks, a clear advantage over the older adapters.
In contrast to the USR PCI wireless card (USR 2415), we could not network in a Sony PCG-R505DCP laptop - so this card may not work with all non-USR hardware conforming to the IEEE802.11b standard.
These wireless networks are now so inexepnsive I could not imagine anyone going through the hassle of running wires through their homes.

Compared to other this one was fairly straight forward to set up and get going. The ISDN set-up instructions could be clearer, however, after a short time it worked

I bought a Linksys router in October 2003, and still have not gotten it to work wirelessly. The box did not include the installation CD, and I was told by Linksys that I could BUY one if I wanted. I have emailed, faxed, wrote, and of course called, with no help. I have asked for an RMA, and was told "I think that has something to do with returning the product". Linksys tech support is terrible. Buy at your own risk.

This unit accomodates both hard wired networks (up to 4 devices) and wireless networks (use the Linksys cards - others may not be compatible) and serves as a router and access point. Setting it up was incredibly simple (I updated the firmware right away) and the default settings worked perfectly with my cable (Road Runner) ISP. I did implement MAC cloning on advice from the Linksys website (a great source for info on configuring this for various DSL/cable ISPs) later just in case. This was easy with the web-based configuration software.

You do have to know how your ISP works. I'm assuming I could not disable DHCP because Road Runner uses it. Since I couldn't give my machines static IP addresses, I sometimes have to change the port forwarding configurations depending on which IP address the router assigns each machine (we turn off the machines at night). You also need to reconfigure some of your internet software to work behind a firewall if they haven't been set that way all ready. And in some cases, I had to disable my personal firewalls (we use Sygate, AtGuard or Zone Alarm) for internet software to work (particularly FTP clients).

The wireless range (we have 3 hard wired computers and a couple of wireless laptops) is not spectacular (50' radius) but adequate for our purposes. Would have appreciated some input from the manufacturer about effective placement of the unit for optimal wireless performance.

If you're willing to do a little tweaking now and then and don't need extensive wireless range, this is a great all-purpose device.

I am not sure what all the others had problems with but my Linksys worked great out of the box. Setting it up I had an issue that was easily fixed by calling tech support,(only 5 min wait and worth it, the technician was very good). My laptop which will be connecting wirelessly was not connecting no matter what I tried. It turns out that you can't run wireless cards and ethernet cards (mine was built in} at the same time because the machine will always default to the ethernet card. Which is exactly what was happening. We removed the driver for the ethernet card and it began to work great right away. Everything else about the setup was fairly simple and went very smooth the directions were easy to understand. I especially liked the quick installation sheet which is what I used to setup with.

I highly recommend this product and would buy it again if I had to do it all over. The distance of the wireless machine is really dependent on terrain. But for my two story house it was great. The only weak spot being downstairs in the opposite direction of the linksys base as far as I could go. However it still worked and was quite able to handle downloads even at the weakest point. You just can't go wrong till they come out with a new beakthrough in technology. But even then the prices will be to high in the beginning. For instance the new 802.11a is several hundred dollars more expensive then this machine. And for what you get I just don't need it.

This is a winner. The newest version of the product is BEF11S4 VER 2. Many of the reviews done in this section were about the
BEF11S4 its the same model number but lacking the ver.2 after the BEF11S4.

The newest version has fixed most of the bugs of the previous version. Good Luck!!! A very satisfied consumer

I thought this would be a good firewall / router for my DSL connection after reading a positive PC Magazine review, but it is *extremely* buggy. Often reboots for no obvious reason. I downloaded the latest firmware, and that made the issues even worse!! Tried to revert to a previous, more stable version, but tech support never sent me the file. What a joke. The Cisco brand will suffer from this, especially among the small business crowd. Who wants this hassle? I'd rather pay more for a stable and secure product!

I had setup a wireless Linksys router for a friend in his Win XP and ME machines, and it went without a glitch, using the automatic install CD. This one is not the same. The dedicated hard wire version, does not work with the CD. I set it aside, and then followed the instructions, that came as a quick start fold out guide, and it configured like a dream.
I like the idea that this unit comes with the built in hardware firewall. In addition, I highly recommend the free version of Zone Alarm. PC Magazines editors choice. Simply get the free version at ZoneAlarm.com. I loaded the included Norton Internet Security, and it ate up a good bit of system resources, which overall slows the machine down. I'm using Verizon DSL, and they have a web site, that measures connect speed. The Norton IS slowed me down to a consistent 600. When I removed it, by using uninstall, and loaded the Zone Alarm firewall, I got a consistent 750.
I tried everything. Verizon was getting 864 at my box outside. I had another machine that was getting 750 consistently. Both machines are exact mirrors of one another-all the same components. I even brought back a MSFT ethernet card, and replaced it with the same Linksys PCI Card as the other machine. Then I remvoved Norton. It sings. Get Zone Alarm.
This Linksys router does not slow your connection down at all. I hooked a phone line up, through a window, directly into the outside phone box, and ran it directly to the modem. It went from the modems ethernet port, to my PC. In plain words, I eliminated the router from the loop, and got the same exact performance results as when the router was hooked up.
When I put the Linksys PCI card in the other computers in my home network, when I booted them up, they automatically, found my internet connection. If it doesn't with yours, be sure and check-automatically detect proxy settings, in Internet Explorer.
I love the new set up. Networking the machines is great. Being able to share files, printers etc, and most importantly the super fast internet connection. No getting bumped off.
If you qualify for DSL, I highly recommend it. Once again, I am getting a consistent 750. My friend has cable, and although he occassionally gets 1 meg, their are times when he runs at 6 to 30. (That is not a typo). Consistency, and reliability, and first class service is what I am getting from Verizon. Don't beat them up, they will come out, and pamper your connection until it is right.
One other thing that is really important. DSL is super sensitive to noise in the lines. If you are having a problem, they send out a cable specialist, and shorten your line. Phone lines run toward the service, and oftentimes, are in mulitple loops, which run away from your service terminal as well. More noise, more distance, equals slower connect times. Also listen real hard for hum in your house line. Get on a phone with a volume button, and turn it all the way up. Get a dial tone, press 5 for example. It should be DEAD quiet. If it is not, improve your internal phone lines. Don't run them along power lines etc. Start with one connection, then reattach one at a time, until you find the one that hums, then fix it. It will ruin your performance.
I guess I am rambling. This Linksys router, is a winner. Their PCI cards are tops as well. Since all of the Tech professionals I know strongly recommended me to not go wireless, due to the ease of intrusion, into your internet connection, and more importantly your private computer-information, I went with this version. Glad I did. It works great. Highly recommended.

The review I wrote here was for a different Linksys product (Linksys BEFVP41 EtherFast Cable/DSL VPN Router with 4-Port 10/100 Switch), and has been reposted there. I do NOT have experience with the BEFSX41 so please disregard this review. (message edited to remove review comments)

This product works for a couple months and you "think" its the best thing since sliced bread... HOWEVER as the months go on, it starts having problems... such as rebooting itself at random times disconnecting you from the internet, and not allowing you to view certain web sites. Technical support is very slow and couldn't resolve my problem. After several WEEKS they issued an RMA and sent me a refurbished model with the same problems. So I wouldn't recommend this product, or any D-Link product if you want something that's going to last and work for more than a year.

I read alot of the reviews here, and half of them say they plug it in, forget about it, and love it. The other half say they have difficulties with it in one form or another. I know, though, for a fact, that trying to fix problems you MAY have is a pain in the ass. D-Link's tech support has solutions to offer you, but as I and half the internet community can attest, they very often don't work.

There is also the fact that OLDER versions of their firmware are more stable than newer versions. One of the things I've seen very rarely on their own webpage, and constantly from other users on the internet, is that -downgrading- your firmware is the solution to many problems.

My reccomendation, if you must buy this router, it so download Trendware's firmware - You can make the DL 614+ accept the foreign firmware(Google it, if you must ask), and Trendware's actually WORKS. The 614+'s firmware is worthless, and even their tech support don't know how to make it work.

Worse yet, their tech support don't seem to know what they don't know.

I've been running the D-Link AirPlus DI-614+ with a D-Link DWL-650+ wirless card for about 6 months.

The good:
Easy install (READ the instructions FIRST!)
Good connection quality and decent speed.
Worked great for sharing my cable modem for Internet access, file sharing across computers, printer sharing.
The utility that comes with the DWL-650+ card allows you to setup separate profiles for different wireless networks, a great convenience if you want to switch easily between home, work and Starbucks!

The bad:
The DWL 650+ PCMCIA failed after a few weeks.
Tech support was really bad, blamed everything but the card. After about a dozen e-mails & phone calls I finally got a tech to admit the card wasn't working since the indicator wouldn't even light up.
Replacement card required securing with my credit card and signing / faxing a 'cross shipment agreement' so they could ship immediately while my old card was being returned. Well they got my old card in a couple days but didn't ship the replacement for several weeks!
After finally getting the defective card resolved (2 months!!) everything worked again fun until ..
It wouldn't support my company's VPN connection through the wireless. (Wired connection does work though!) They're documentation says it supports PPTP VPN Pass through but after several more calls to their tech support, a bunch of configuration changes, the last tech finally said I 'had to understand that VPN requires too many packets for a wireless connection'. So why do my coworker's Linksys systems work fine then?!

Bottom Line:
It's fine for setting up a home network and sharing a broadband internet connection. But be wary if you need to do anything more sophisitcated, especially if you ususally need support. Me? I'm buying a Linksys and selling the DLink stuff!

Before I installed this network card, I used USB to connect to my cable modem and everything was working perfectly fine. Then I installed this card hoping to use ethernet to connect to my modem, then something went wrong. Something was really wrong with this card because it was working properly and I had full cable connection. But the problem was that I cannot retrieve website information when I opened either IE or Netscape. It took me 3 days with many phone calls to Linksys, my pc manufacture, and my cable ISP, and finally we found out a problem with my system file that is used to establish connection with DNS. I don't whether the problem was caused by the card or something else but the problem did occur after the installation. But overall, the card is working fine so far. So it's good to buy it if you can get a rebate or discount with it.

Linksys is a leader in networking for good reason. I first got this card because of my new cable internet connection. Even if you are a novice computer user with no experience in computer hardware you can install this card youself! The directions are very good with step by step instructions that are easy to read for anyone. Once you have it installed the driver instructions are also easy to read and offer them for Any operating system you can think of. If you are running windows xp (or thinking of upgrading) you don't even need to install the drivers yourself because they are built into windowsxp and it will install itself making instulation that much easier! They also have a nice webpage that further explains troubleshooting if you get into a problem for some reason! Don't go pay some store 50-100 bucks to install a network card you can do it yourself in 20 mintues for nothing and Linksys makes it possible at a very good price!

Also, after having the card installed for over a year it has never gave me any problems whatsoever! I wish i could say that about some other hardware that i have purchased!

Installation was very simple and took less than 10 minutes, but most of that time involved removing and assembling the PC case. Windows ME automatically detected and installed the LNE100TX without any problems. Furthermore, I've tested this item under Linux (Fedora Core and Mandrake) and it performs just as smoothly as it does under Windows. Because my cable modem was previously connected to my PC via the USB port, I noticed a slight increase in the speed and quality of my broadband connection after I connected the modem to this card. If your computer does not have a NIC, this would be an ideal choice for the average desktop PC.

First of all, let me warn users of Windows 98 that, in spite of product claims, this product may not work well with Windows 98. I bought this, intending to use it to plug my existing Windows 98 machine into an existing wireless network (with the Netgear WR814 router). Some five aggravating hours later, I learned (via Usenet) that many Windows 98 users had much trouble getting this (and other USB) network adapters to work.

Luckily, the timing was good for me to try an upgrade of this older (P3-500) machine to Windows XP Home Edition. Installation onto the same machine with the Windows XP OS took about 15 minutes. I now have a good solid working connection across the house from the router (40 feet away and through two walls).

Given that I was willing and able to upgrade my older machine's OS, I'm very happy with the MA111's performance. I can't be sure about its compatibility with other versions of Windows, or with other OSs, and would strongly suggest that you check out online reviews (such as on Amazon.com),or just ask around, regardless of what the product package might tell you.

Setup took less than 5 minutes on WinXP Professional. I installed the drivers from the CD, plugged the MA111 into a USB port on my IBM ThinkPad laptop and it immediately got detected. I opened the icon from the system tray and saw that it was aware of my Linksys DSL router within range. I selected the encryption/WEP type and entered the passphrase to match those set for the Linksys router -- it's connected and I was on the Web!

The signal strength wasn't very strong (40-45%) at 1 floor down & 2 rooms away (kitchen) from the router (den). Nonetheless, I was able to stay online without problems. I bought this form factor instead of PCMCIA card so that I can use it both on a laptop and desktop.

After reading several reviews on this site I purchased this adapter at Circuit City. I went directly to the Netgear website and downloaded the 2.0 driver, installed it, and plugged it in with no problems whatsoever. It has worked flawlessly, although I would like to see more of a range, but that could be the router or a million other factors involved. I am very satisfied.

There's not much to say about this product. I just plugged it in and instantly forgot about it! I was a bit skeptical because most USB hubs tend to be a bit pricier, but the D-Link hub works great and it can't get any easier to set it up. I love the compact design as well. This one is definately a no-brainer.

My computer came with two USB ports, which became a hassle since I have four USB devices. It became a pain to constantly unplug and plug in cables. The D-Link DSB USB 4 port hub has been a great buy. I can now run my web cam, visor cradle, printer, and digital camera without having to mesh with the cables. Piece of cake to install and I have not had any problems with the product.

1: Remove (tiny, transparent) device from box. 2: Connect /w good quality (supplied) USB cable to PC. 3: Connect up to 4 USB devices to hub. 4: Get to work. It is really that simple. It has 5 green status LEDs (1 for each USB port and 1 for power on). It also has a transformer for external power, which is only needed if your USB device draws a lot of power (like a USB digital camera). This is a great peripheral at a great price.

I bought this product to use with an Orinoco Gold 802.11b laptop card and with a new 802.11g bridge to connect them to my LAN. From the beginning (with the firmware out of the box) through 5 different firmware revisions (including the latest 4.1.11 released on 6/24/2004), this unit has experienced major problems operating in mixed-mode (with both B and G clients). The G client operates reasonably well at about 75% link quality at 15 feet, but the B client suffers from poor transfer rates and faltering link quality. Constantly, the B node drops to a 1Mbps link even though it is about 30 feet away and the SNR is over 30. Typically, the link stays at 6Mbps with an occasional jump to 11Mbps (I've tried every frequency). The B client card is known to be good as it works with 5 other brands of routers and perfectly with Netgear's own MR814v2. The problem is even exacerbated when transferring large amounts of data between the two wireless nodes (B to G, or G to B).

I attempted to contact Netgear support about this issue. After their initial reply (roughly a week and a half after the first request was sent) that since they had never encountered anything like my situation in the lab, my B client card must be defective, I explained to them that I had tested many things including disabling 802.11g and 108Mbps mode on the WGT624v2 as well as moving both units around. I also told them that the Netgear MR814v2 does not experience any of these problems. Three weeks later, I have yet to receive any response to my repeated emails requesting a solution. I would have to say that Netgear offers EXTREMELY poor after-purchase support (not my first experience with this).

Since then, the router has begun randomly dropping the link completely on the 802.11b node for 3-5 seconds at a time about 10-15 times in a row.

In terms of design, the WGT624 is lacking in several areas. The 108Mbps mode has a fatal flaw as well: when in 108Mbps "turbo" mode, the only channel the router will operate on is the frequently crowded and noisy Channel 6. The port forwarding mechanism is very simplistic and leaves much to be desired. Mappings can not be made from an external port to a different numbered port internally (i.e. comes in as 8888, goes to internal server as 80). When assigning descriptive names to the mappings, no spaces may be used, nor may any "+"'s, "-"'s, or "."'s.

This product is a major disappointment since Netgear generally makes reasonably good products. If you need any type of support for the product, good luck because you will not get it from Netgear. Unless you live in a fairly rural area with very little interference, few people with wireless devices, and are planning on using only Netgear's 108Mbps client cards, I would highly recommend staying away from this poor product.

I own the MR814v2 802.11b router. That is a very stable product, so I figured since I had a WG311 wireless card in my desktop I'd buy another Netgear router for 802.11g. Many of the reviews here were favorable, so I bought on the basis of that.

This product is simply not stable, at least for me. It has to be rebooted constantly. For sure it cannot hold a wireless connection more than 24 hours. I upgraded to the latest firmware, which at the time of writing is 4.1.11. No help whatsoever. I checked on-line, and sure enough many many people have reported similar problems with it (broadbandreports.com). I tried disabling the 108Mb features, but that also didn't help.

So in the end, I'm just returning it after a frustrating weekend.

I bought this router along with the WG511T card and have had nothing but good luck. I've set up wireless networks before, so I can't comment on beginners setting this up, but things were simple and well documented for me.

The range of this thing is great. I had it sitting on the floor of the office in the front of my house and I was still getting 96mbps out by my back fence. I have a decent size yard so I was very surprised at the speed at that range.

I've had no issue with interference from phones or other electrical equipment. The firewall side of it is a little weak, but for everything else you get I can't complain.

This thing works great in B/G mode as well. A friend came over with his B card and both of us were connected in my kitchen at full speed (him at 11 mbps and me at 54mbps). That's with 128 WEP turned on as well. Another review stated severe performance issues with WEP enabled...I haven't had any issues.

Overall, this router lived up to its promise. Would highly recommend.