Cisco-Linksys EtherFast Cable/DSL Router with 4-Port 10/100 Switch by Linksys
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Our Price: $78.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $9.99 (click here) Category: CE See more digital camera details and other models |
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Digital camera reviews of Cisco-Linksys EtherFast Cable/DSL Router with 4-Port 10/100 Switch
Digital camera Review: A great choice for the home / small office user
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought two of these for two small business locations and I am very happy with them. If you are a newbie to networking or someone who is fairly astute you will also find these quite useful and easy.For the novice home user, this is "Plug and Play" applied to home networking. You simply hook the router to your DSL modem, plug in four computers, set your computers' network settings to automatically assign IP information and you are good to go! All four of your computers are on the internet.
One would usually expect something this easy to be rather simple and featureless. This isn't the case. You can connect via webbrowser to the device's management webpage and configure DHCP settings, allow or deny certain ports, deny or allow access by MAC address and many other more advanced features. (you might want to look at the product description the company puts out) For the price they ask, it surprises me how much you get for your money.
Also, when they say 4 ports, it IS 4 ports. Not 4 ports where you have to give up one of them to the uplink, and only get three computers.
One small drawback I noted with this is it lacks eyelets to mount the device to a wall and the design is such that I suppose it was only expected to remain on a desktop or floor.
Certainly you can find more advanced routing / networking features than this, but because you get so much functionality for the buck it's a good buy.
D
Digital camera Review: A great looking, well built router/switch!
Summary: 5 Stars
I must admit, I bought this router for looks as well as functionally. It's a very handsome piece of equipment. The lights on the front have proven very useful, plus makes for a nice light show! No other routers have as many lights as this baby has! I think I would have preferred a flat top so I could more easily stack other things on top of it, but I'm being anal.Setup for me was painless after upgrading to the latest firmware. The routers sold now already have the newest firmware, so others will probably not have to worry about this.
I've owned this router for almost a year now and it's worked pretty flawlessly. It seems every 4 months or so we have to reset the router and the DSL modem, but it could just be our ISP. The router is on 24/7 and is barely even warm.
My connection is static IP, so I haven't used the PPPoE/Dynamic IP function, but I've heard it works very well.
The only option I'd like to have on this, and all other routers is a way of assigning more than one computer to be the DMZ (no firewall), which makes life easier for online gaming. If not that, having the option of making all computers DMZ would be nice. Using a software solution for a firewall is better than locking all computers but one behind a hardware firewall.
You won't be disappointed with this one!
Digital camera Review: A great piece of hardware!
Summary: 4 Stars
I purchased this router for home use about 5 months ago and it hasnt had one problem. Infact I am a Network Administrator in the IT field, and at my work we were using a expensive Intel router. When the intel router went down I decided to bring my little cheapy Linksys router in and try it before we went out and spent 900 bucks on a new Intel router. I have 215 users connecting to it at one time and it hasnt had one glitch. I would highly recomend this router to any home user who wants to hook up more than on pc to the internet or a small company that wants a cheap solution to internet connection sharing and NAT security at the same time. I looked at other people's reviews and I havent had any ofthe problems they are discribing.Digital camera Review: A great product for anyone who wants to share access
Summary: 5 Stars
.I purchased this unit after considering a number of software/cpu combinations that were either too expensive or way too complicated. The Linksys router does it all for about $150.
Now we can have all six computers in our home sharing internet access. The only glitch (not Linksys's) was with the @home service. The network identification system seems to vary from region to region (I have a fixed IP from Comcast). I simply had to put in the ID and @home domains, then choose automatic IP and zoom, I was on. I had to call Linksys to get this information, they called me back the next day with answer.
Overall, it is the simple and ideal solution for sharing dsl or cable access. In fact, for some reason, access is faster through the router. Go figure.
Digital camera Review: A great purchase
Summary: 5 Stars
I picked up this unit to allow my wife and I to both play "EverQuest" at the same time over our one DSL connection. We'd previously been using a cheap Ethernet hub (much cheaper: about a quarter of the price) and SpoonProxy software. And it worked. Mostly. For many things. When one of the computers wasn't doing something too processor-intensive. And the other computer could never do RealAudio, Java, most Flash or programs like Instant Messenger or "Diablo II"'s Battle.net service.But I'd been told that, despite not being able to play any online gaming services on one of the computers with my Ethernet hub, the LinkSys router would solve all that. So I put down the money, opened it up, and within an hour -- most of which was spent undoing the previous overly complicated set-up -- both machines were online.
Like many of the reviewers here, I noticed a performance improvement, but I was more pleased by something that few people seem to be focussing on here: We also got firewall protection by using this. My wife's computer had previously been invaded by an outside computer, somewhere in Eastern Europe. Nothing sinister had happened to it, but the fact that a personal computer with an always-on DSL connection had been broken into was fairly frightening. Now we're safe, secure (or much more secure, anyway) and we're both able to play "EverQuest" at the same time.
I'm thrilled we picked this up, and recommend it for anyone sharing a DSL line with multiple computers. It was easy to set up and worth every penny.