Cisco-Linksys WET54G Wireless-G Ethernet Bridge by Linksys
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Digital camera reviews of Cisco-Linksys WET54G Wireless-G Ethernet Bridge
Digital camera Review: Bad experience, might have been a fluke.
Summary: 2 Stars
We're Linksys lovers...if Linksys makes it we have it. We bought some of these to give our IP phones some freedom. My guys carry actual phone system IP phones on the road so we can have a full on office wherever they are. These didn't work good, the little Linksys black box without external antenna works great. Go for that one.Digital camera Review: Bad technology
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought this bridge to connect to my Linksys Wireless-G Router (WRT54G). No matter what configuration settings I used, the two would not communicate unless they were connected via the Ethernet cable. All I wanted to do was connect my Ethernet enabled printer to the wireless network from the next room over. Maybe you need two bridges and have one physically plugged into the router and the other plugged into the network on the other side (in this case my printer). But then you have to fork over more than [the price](for two bridges) to do so. Linksys documents that the bridge will communicate with a wireless access point. Isn't the wireless router just a router that contains the wireless access point built in? The WET54G should communicate with the WRT54G wirelessly, and they do not.Digital camera Review: Can't Connect
Summary: 1 Stars
I have a WET11G that works wonderfully, but I needed to upgrade to get support for WPA2 security. Unfortunately the Linksys WET54G could only make momentary connections to my Linksys WAG160N wireless access point, making it completely useless. I returned it. Many people seem to have the same problem.Digital camera Review: Completely Disappointed
Summary: 2 Stars
Review of the LinkSys WET54G bridge point, and WRT54GS router
Completely Disappointed
("two Stars", both for the support, and none for the products)
These LinkSys wireless device both failed utterly. The WET54G was replaced, and the replacement failed identically.
Who will repay me for my lost time, and productivity? Noone.
I have used LinkSys wired devices for years, and have found them reliable. This is why I purchased the LinkSys WRT54GS wireless router and WET54G bridge point despite their higher price, and negative reviews.
I must start by saying that LinkSys gets full points for the fine women and men in India whom they employ as their technical support staff. While I have mixed feelings for the socioeconomic ramifications of the North American jobs being outsourced to India, I must say that the general level of courtesy and expertise was higher than I have ever experienced before. Kudos to India for training such superior technicians who can work so much more cheaply than North Americans. In all, I spoke with eight LinkSys support technicians, and seven of these were from India. The Senior Support technician I spoke to in the end was in California, and he was also most excellent in his demeanor and knowledge.
That said, the devices don't work.
At first, I thought the router (WRT54GS) was working, and that I was experiencing signal drop out on the Bridge point side (WET54G). There was some initial contact, but it faded quickly to nothing. I suspected that the doors between the two points were affecting the radio signal, or that the local airport was interfering. Bringing both devices into the same room didn't help, though, and the airport shuts down at night - removing that as a source of interference. The senior support person I spoke to suggested that my wireless phones (also operating in the 2.4 GHz frequency range) could be interfering with the LinkSys products, but it made no difference when I disconnected them.
The Bridge point (WET54G) repeatedly power cycled itself - establishing a link for a few seconds, up to a few minutes, and then mysteriously shutting itself off, and losing the link. This happened every few minutes forever, and eventually it failed to find the wireless connection at all. It just sat there turning itself on again, and off again. After speaking to several technicians in India, I was advised to have the Bridge point replaced. The replacement failed identically.
No amount of tweaking, configuring, upgrading, or resetting makes it work for more than a few minutes. The failure is unrelated to distance between the nodes, time of day, version of the firmware, temperature of the product, OS of the host machine, or any other feature I may discern. It simply does not work. In fact, the two of them failed identically.
I had thought that at least the router (WRT54GS) was working, but I was wrong.
The router functions (or it's supposed to) as a 4-port wired router with a wireless connection. I was attributing the failure of the wireless connection to the Bridge point (WET54G). It took me a while to suspect that the wired connections to the router were perhaps failing sometimes as well. When I did notice that the configuration web page on the router was sometimes inaccessible through the wired ethernet port, I upgraded the firmware (on the advice of the local senior technician). This didn't seem to help, and in fact I then found that there was a complete failure of the wired machines to ping the router.
Unfortunately, when I re-reinstalled the firmware (guessing that the first reinstall had perhaps failed partially), the wired connection to the host failed in mid-upgrade, leaving the firmware corrupted, and unfixable. (There was no firmware to tell the machine how to upgrade the firmware - a sad state.)
The unit started lame, and died completely. Dead, dead, dead.
LinkSys has offered to replace the units, and to replace the bridge with the more recent version (WET54GV2), but I have declined the offer. At best, the units were sometimes working - transmitting with a 50% packet failure rate, which is unusable for me (and most people, I suspect). I now realize that I will fare much better with a trench, and a buried cable to my garage. Ironically, I had initially opted for the wireless equipment on the notion that it would be quicker and easier than digging a thirty foot trench. That was three painful weeks ago. I am now looking gleefully at the trench as the cheaper, quicker, easier, and more reliable option.
After having been a happy and loyal LinkSys customer for years, I am sad to say that I am utterly disappointed with my most recent experiences.
What a major drag. I am very frustrated. If you need speed, and reliability in your network solution, I strongly advise you to seek another solution than LinkSys Wireless devices
Digital camera Review: Connection Very Slow
Summary: 1 Stars
I replaced two WET11 bridges with two WET54Gs. One is connected directly to a PC running Win2000; the other is connected to a network hub which in turn is connected to two PCs, one running Win2000 and other Red Hat Linux. On all PCs, the connection (both LAN and WAN) is extremely slow. I used to get close to 7 Mbps (LAN) and 1.2~1.5 Mbps (WAN through Comcast), but they're both under 500 Kbps now! I set up the bridges using the included CD-ROM, pretty much identically to the old WET11s. If this is the best the product can do, I must say I am highly disappointed.