Cisco-Linksys WRT300N Wireless-N Broadband Router Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The WRT300N works flawlessly "out of the box" in wired configuration. It does not work at all "out of the box" in wireless mode.
Now, having made that harsh statement as if it would apply to every user in every case, some qualification is certainly in order.
I unpacked the router and took extreme care to follow the setup instructions PRECISELY.
I was connected to the internet the second I finished running the configuration utility from the installation CD - but the catch is that the setup utility has to be run with an ethernet cable connected.
Once I removed the cable and tried to connect to the internet in wireless mode - the end of the line had arrived. There was no connection. Period.
I could connect to the router via its built in config (HTTP) utility and I could ping the default gateway (in the router) but I could not get past that point.
After a couple of hours of fruitless trial and error, I gave up and called Linksys tech support. You know what that means - you get to talk to a person who knows next to nothing about computers or routers. But, they do have their scripts to follow and if you are patient with them and endure the mindless, mostly just plain useless instructions they give you and don't offend them, they will eventually let you talk to a Tier Two person who actually does know something about routers.
To end a very long story with a quick summation, after reaching the aforementioned Tier Two person, I learned that there are arcane, obscure settings buried deep within the router's config menus that you will never find without help (and even if you did find them by accident, there is no chance you would know what to do with them). After changing 5 of those settings, the wireless functionality magically worked and I was connected.
The router is fast. My cable provider only grants me 8 megabit service and the router handles that with ease - wireless or wired.
This would be a 4 or 5 star appliance if it arrived on your desktop with working settings. I doubt that anyone who is not a Linksys or Cisco Systems engineer will actually be able to get it to work in wireless mode without a call to Linksys tech support - unless those units manufactured more recently than mine (April 2006) are shipped with valid settings.
Normal users can stop reading here, but for those who are interested in the technical details, here is a summary of the settings I had to modify in order to get the thing to work:
Router web admin page - Applications & Gaming - QOS - Enable "WMM" and Enable "No Acknowledgement" (the factory default settings are "Not Enabled")
Router Admin Page - Wireless - Advanced Wireless Settings - "Fragmentation Threshold" was changed to 2304. "RTS Threshold" was also changed to 2304. The "Beacon Interval" was reduced to 50 from its factory default value of 100.
Here are a couple of sincere questions for you. Even if you are a "Power User" would it have occurred to you to check your Beacon, RTS and WMM settings, among others, when you realized that you did not have wireless connectivity? If you say "yes," would you really have known WHAT settings to replace the defaults with?
Other than that, it's a really nice router.
**Update 5/21/06**
After using the router for a few days now, I have some follow-up comments to make. Several times a day my laptop will "lose" its IP assignment from the router. Right-clicking the wireless connection in the systray and electing to "repair" the connection restores the IP address, but that is a real bother and it should not be necessary. This never happened with the wireless router I replaced with the WRT300N. I suspect Linksys will be releasing a series of firmware updates for this model until they finally get all the "quirks" (let's not call them bugs) worked out.

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The Wireless-N Broadband Router is really three devices in one box. First, theres the WirelessAccess Point, which lets you connect to the network without wires. Theres also a built-in 4-portfull-duplex 10/100 Switch to connect your wired-Ethernet devices together. Finally, the Routerfunction ties it all together and lets your whole network share a high-speed cable or DSL Internetconnection.With Wireless-N, the farther away you are, the more speed advantage you get. It works great withstandard Wireless-G and -B equipment, but when both ends of the wireless link are Wireless-N,the router can increase the throughput even more by using twice as much radio band, yieldingspeeds up to 12 times as fast as standard Wireless-G. But unlike other speed-enhancedtechnologies, Wireless-N can dynamically enable this double-speed mode for Wireless-N devices,while still connecting to other wireless devices at their respective fastest speeds.

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