Review by C. Petit:

This wireless router, besides supporting Linux firmware, is a tested and true wireless router with 802.11 b and g support. It supports WPA, WPA2 and the older WEP encryption schemes. In addition, it has a built-in firewall, MAC address filtering, and supports access policies (such as “don’t allow FTP connections to this computer on Sundays”).

When I installed this wireless router, setup was very straightforward (I did not use the Setup Wizard because it didn’t work for me). I changed the IP address range (because the DSL modem uses the 192.168.1 address space), set the administrator password, chose a name for the Wireless network, enabled WPA2 encryption and picked a passphrase.

After that, I connected my laptop to the router right away, and received an excellent signal and throughput of 100 KB/sec (for comparison, my DSL connection maintains a throughput of 300 KB/sec when I connect straight to the DSL modem).

I’ve been using the router for several months now, and have not had any dropped connections (my older Netgear router dropped connections fairly frequently and did not support the newer WPA encryption scheme) and have consistent throughput. The router has been running constantly for these past few months.

For the real tech-heads, this router has customized Linux firmware available from third parties. I haven’t tried this firmware, since the base Linksys firmware more than meets my needs.

Finally, good security practices are to: Change the administrator password, disable Universal Plug and Play, disable Remote administrative access, use a unique name for the access point, and if the network is only for a small number of personal devices (i.e. a laptop you own), enable MAC address filtering. A MAC address uniquely identifies a network card, so this only allows certain computers to access the network.

Review by C. Hansen:

I’ve bought close to a dozen of the earlier versions of these routers (WRT54G v2-v4) over the past few years as well as recommended them to my friends, and the ability to update and upgrade the flash memory with modified open source software is the reason why these routers deserve a wonderful reputation.

The modified software versions, such as HyperWRT and OpenWRT, Sveasoft, etc. have over the years provided capabilities that Linksys themselves didn’t put in the box on their own, such as having routers that link up over the wireless connection, or routers that can work well in P2P applications with hundreds of active connections. Some of these features made it back into Linksys’s official codebase over the years, helping to make this a Truly Great Product.

Linksys has chosen to eviscerate the memory of the latest version (v5) of the WRT54G to make it cheaper. This latest version doesn’t have Linux inside and as others have reported isn’t nearly as stable as earlier versions, nor is it in any condition to have the open source community help Linksys fix the problems. If you want The Little Blue Box That Could, you now have to buy the WRT54GL.

Review by John Mccool:

This was very easy to set up. It took about 5 minutes total to set up the router and have a wireless connection to my desktop. I have an excellent reception to my desktop that sits about 30 feet away in another room. Also, I have my desktop and laptop (both running vista), xbox 360, and ps3 connected to it wirelessly. the xbox 360 NAT is open and the ps3 NAT is type 2. I’m not sure what that stuff means technically, but in normal person terms it means that I can connect to others with no problems. The back of the router has 4 10/100 ethernet connections on it as well if you want a wired connection.

The design of this router is really excellent. The antennas are built into the router and the dimensions of it are really small and thin! This gives you more flexibility of where the router can be placed.

Streaming recorded TV, music, and pictures from my desktop to xbox (using media center) work well for both being connected wireless with no reduction in picture quality.

With the release of the new Xbox 360 dashboard I am able to stream HD video from Netflix wirelessly through my 360 with this router. The wait time for video to start is short and the picture quality of HD shows like Heroes and 30 Rock is great.

*Update* I have had the 20″ 2.66ghz iMac since May 08 and connecting it to my linksys was as simple as selecting the network and typing in my password. The router has been up and running several months now with no resets or connection issues. This is a very stable router that requires little to no maintenance. Now my connections to this router are a laptop with Vista every now and then, Mac with OS X 10.5, ps3, 360, and 2 iPhones. There are no problems when 2 or more devices are using the connection. I am connected to a 6mbps cable connection.

Recently I got the new unibody MacBook and an eyeTV hybrid 2009 model. I use it to record TV (mainly the HD shows sent via QAM from comcast) on my iMac. I want to stream a HD show like The Office from my iMac to my macbook that is connected my my 46″ samsung (lnt-4665), but I have found that “g” is not fast enough to stream a show recorded in HD. It is fast enough to stream a show recorded in SD, so I need an “N” router if I want to stream wirelessly.

Review by Filippo Scognamiglio Pasini:

I have to say that I have come to like the WRT54G2 a lot.

Works very well with my PC, my fiancé’s Mac, a Playstation3, a wired multiuse printer/fax/copier and the standard cable modem RCN provided.

Configuration was quick and easy and I had no problems in that regard.

My only complain with this product is the fact that the DHCP server has problems after a while. If you leave a PC/device on for too much time, it will “lose” it’s IP address and there is no way around the issue other than rebooting / power cycling router and affected devices. It doesn’t happen too often so it’s not a major issue, but I would have appreciated the linksys forums to be more supportive of my post on this issue – as they really have not been.

So 5 stars for product design, features and ease of use

- 1 star for DHCP server flaw

- 1 star for poor product support

= 3 stars

Review by Neil Gandhi:

Im sitting on this thing right now. Man oh man…im getting a “very good” signal where my connection used to be dropping…

I used to have a few problems with WiFi. The first problem was obviously the range…as I said a few moments ago, the DIR-655 fixed that…I mean, even though it claims 6x range, but I was going to be happy with just a 25% improvement…I seriously think that this router increased my range 50-75%!

I used to always be frustrated with the lack of settings in many routers. Some would have QoS (Quality of Service…something that can prioritize important internet activity like Voice Over IP…internet phone) but it didnt really work. Some would be lacking in semi-advanced routing features…others would barely have any non-novice features at all…This one has plenty of options for the advanced user to have a lot of fun screwing with settings. The most beautiful thing about it though, is that there is a wizard in the interface so that even the most novice of users can set up a great network with strong security. It also has context sensitive online help…what that is, is when you are trying to adjust settings and you dont know what something means, there is a little help button right there that you can click to get an explanation right then and there! Its kinda like the Yin-Yang of routers…

I want to mention that I have been looking at draft-N routers for a few weeks now and have been reading the reviews. The reason that I am writing this review is that it was so hard for me to find a good review on this router. Cnet doesnt even have an official review (as of 2/13/07) but it does have very positive user comments. From my homework though, (user reviews, and more importantly official reviews from Cnet, engadget, etc) every Draft-N wireless router has some kind of problem. Some dont work well in environments with more than a couple neighboring networks, some dont have good throughput, and some dont have better range. Again, I didn’t want to buy this one because I couldn’t find any solid review on it. After going through a couple of different Draft-N routers, Let me help you out. This is the one.

BTW…im not running an “N” wireless adapter…this thing even increases the range of “B” and “G” signals. GREAT JOB D-LINK!

Review by Robert Salita:

Very satisfied. Smaller than expected. Fast enough to play HD-DVDs wirelessly to my notebook (Dell Inspiron E1505, 802.11BGN, 945GM, Core Duo (2) 2GHz, Vista Premium, Arcsoft Digital Theater, D-Link DNS-323 NAS). Great speed and coverage. 120 to 240 volts. Also handles HDTV perfectly via HDHomeRun device.

Don’t forget to upgrade firmware.

Update 11-Nov-2007: This router may be my biggest gadget surprise this year. It continues to perform better than expected, completely solving all past wireless issues and handling all tasks such as streaming HD-DVD.

Review by Picky Consumer:

Upgrading finally from my B router. Probably the last one in the neighborhood to do so.

There are three versions of the TEW-432BRP (the outer casings look slightly different). They’re roughly labelled A, B, and C. I wound up with the C one. Its the best G router i’ve ever seen, for a few reasons:

1. “Easy CD” actually worked and led me through a wizard that had me running in under 5 minutes. It was even intelligent enough to figure out that my cable company’s router needed a reset.

2. When you go into the firmware, there are some interesting and unusual settings you can tweak. It has the usual things like ‘dont broadcast ssid’ and all the rest of it. But it also had unusual settings that I’d never seen before, like the ability to set the output of its signal at “full power” or “half power” or “quarter” or “eigth” or “minimum”. Seemed like an interesting option; I usually sit 10 feet from it, maybe I can reduce the microwaves bombarding my brain? I tried it on the various levels and did throughput tests. Interestingly, it was at “quarter power” that I had the fastest throughput. I dont know why, but I can live with that. I was glad to have that option to reduce the output signal’s power level in the router, though.

3. Excellent transmission spread, strong signal, and fast. I know the bottleneck is supposed to be the dsl/cable conneciton itself, but I would swear my browsing is faster and snappier now. And my connection speed to my local network drive improved five-fold (which was why I got a g router in the first place).

Its a great deal under twenty-five on sale.

Review by Vishwa Ramachandran:

The router works fine, but I wish they had specifically told us that the CD that comes along with contains “only” the installation manual and no s/w. Since I had already installed these kinds of wireless router before, I had no problems, but I am pretty sure that a newbie would struggle with it. They must say that one has to open a web browser and point it to the address http://192.168.1.1 and use “admin” as the default user name and passwd to get into the system admin tool s/w.

Review by A. Dent:

I ordered the WRT54G2 ‘refurbished’ (not from this vendor) because I wanted a replacement for my 801.11b Linksys and the refurbished could be had for a significantly lower price and the product was Linksys certified and came with a 90-day warranty. To my surprise – I expected some glitches – I had close to zero problem installing and operating it. Here is my experience.

- I followed the advice to first run the installation off the provided CD.

- Even though all of my computers are wireless, I followed the advice and connected one of my computer to the router via Ethernet to perform the initial installation.

- After disconnecting the old 801.11b router I used the exact same name for the new network. This allowed for all devices to connect immediately, as soon as the setup completed.

- I made sure that the DHCP server was on.

- The end of setup. All devices, including the wireless printer and the VOIP box connected without a problem.

To my surprise, LELA is not on the CD. It took me longer to find, download and install LELA (Linksys EasyLink Advisor) than to complete the initial setup. I strongly recommend that you do install LELA because, besides the nice graphic of your home network it allows you to restore broken connections without having to turn off the router.

As far as performance is concerned, I believe that I notice a slight but not significant improvement over my old 801.11b router. We have about one dozen connected devices: desktops, laptops, a PS3, a PSP, VOIP, printer and, with all on, everything worked just fine. With the router in the basement, I had ’3-bars’ on a computer 15-20 feet from the router. Surprisingly, I had 3 bars on the first and on the second floor as well and I had the same 3 bars outside, about 90 feet from the router, by the pool. The old router gave me 4 bars in the basement but only 3 bars in the rest of the house and only 1 or 2 bars with intermittent disconnections outside the house.

With LELA running, I was able to quickly fix the the few disconnections that occurred over a several-days period without having to power off the router. This was better than my old 801.11b that had me power off the cable modem and the router whenever the connection to the Internet stopped working. Disconnections do occur after computers are set to ‘sleep’ but recovery is usually quick when the computer wakes up. I never had issues with non-computer devices such as printer, PS3 or the VOIP box.

Overall, I am very happy with my new router so far. It’s probably as good as any 801.11g device can get.

___________________________________________

DNS issues update:

With DHCP, strangely, after a few months of operation, the router began to ‘forget’ about passing DNS queries to the outside server. It KNOWS about the 3 DNS servers the ISP has but, out of the blue I get ‘resolving host’ errors and LELA claims that I’m no longer connected to the Internet. This while VoIP, connected to the same router works without a problem and so do the PS3 and my kids computers.

The initial ‘solution’ was to power off the router and then power it back on.

I have no idea why this was happening yet but, this is my quick solution: on the ‘Network and Sharing Center’ click on your connection ‘View status’ then ‘Properties’, highlight ‘Internet Protocol Version 4…’, ‘Properties’, ‘Advanced’, from the DNS tab click on ‘Add…’ and enter all the DNS servers that your router has listed under ‘Status’.

This eliminated all problems.

Review by Palantir:

Linksys and Amazon must be teaming up to pawn off this worthless Version 1 router, hence the NO RETURN POLICY. It disconnects constantly every day. No matter what firmware is loaded. And I have owned many routers over the past several years. Avoid it at all costs.