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: Excellent product, lousy documentation
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this for my desktop. In my home I run WPA2. Documentation is so poor (and wrong), I almost return this bridge. Called Linksys support, the didn't have any clue. Then I found an email from Linksys support and it is now working like a champ. Linksys should add this in the documentation. My WET54G is running ver. 3.2. Here is the documentation. I modified couple of places to make it clear. Good luck.
You are trying to setup your network bridge. Please try the following steps in setting it up.
1. Connect the cable supplied with the bridge from the Network Bridge to a computer.
2. With the device on, hold down the reset button for 30 seconds. Then turn it off for 10 seconds.
3. Assign a static IP on your computer.
a. Click on Start > run > type "ncpa.cpl"
b. Right click on the Local Area Connection and select Properties.
c. Select Internet Protocol TCP/IP and click Properties.
d. Click on Use the following IP Address and assign the following values:
IP Address: 192.168.1.5
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1. 226
DNS: leave these blank
e. Click OK and Close.
4. Open the Internet Explorer and on the address bar, type in 192.168.1.226
5. Leave the username blank and type admin on the password field. You can also try typing admin on both username and password.
6. On the setup screen make sure to have the following settings:
a. Configuration Type: Static IP
b. IP Address: must be on the same range as your router's IP Address.
Example:
(i). If the Router's IP is 192.168.1.1 then, IP Address here would be 192.168.1.226.
(ii). If the Router's IP is 192.168.0.1 then IP Address here would be 192.168.0.226.
' As you can see, first three sets of decimals are similar to the router's IP Address.
c. Subnet Mask: the subnet mask that your router uses. For most routers, it is 255.255.255.0 (leave the Gateway to 0.0.0.0)
d. SSID. This the Wireless Network name of your router. It can be checked on your router, or you can also check this on your working wireless computers as it will be displayed under the available wireless networks.
e. Network Type: Infrastructure.
f. Security: this should match to the wireless security or wireless encryption of your router.
7. When the settings are all set, hit apply.
8. Set the computer back to obtain an IP address automatically and the Network Bridge should be working now.
a. Click on Start > run > type "ncpa.cpl"
b. Right click on the Local Area Connection and select Properties.
c. Select Internet Protocol TCP/IP and click Properties.
d. Click on Obtain an IP Address Automatically and Obtain DNS Automatically.
e. Click OK and Close.
Turn the WET54G off and on again. After 10 seconds, the computer hardwired to the WET54G should be online. If you connect this to your Playstation, the Playstation should be online, too.
Digital camera Review: Extremely reliable!
Summary: 5 Stars
I've got 2 of these on my home network, and they are able to connect to the wireless lan where other's have failed. I use the WPA-PSK mode, and it works perfectly. Connection is always up.
Note: I tried a related product to this one -- the WETG54S5 (bridge + switch). Don't bother. Under encrypted mode, it's nearly useless.
Digital camera Review: Fair, you really need to play with it
Summary: 3 Stars
Simply put this works but you have to play with it. I found that it was terrible at holding signal when there was anything in between the bridge and the source. Sure it will connect but drop outs were frequent. Now that there is a mostly clear LOS to the source I'm not having nearly the same amount of issues.
For regular browsing this unit is great. You shouldn't have any major issues. For gaming I think there may be better alternatives. This will work but make sure you have clear LOS or you'll be having some serious packet loss issues and disconnects.
Digital camera Review: Finally got it working, but ,,,,
Summary: 2 Stars
I really needed a wireless "G" Bridge to boost a signal where hard-wiring was not an option. I couldn't wait for Linksys to come out with a "g" signal booster. If you can wire or wait, do so. If you can't, here are some things I did to make this buggy thing work. You need to be pretty tech savvy to get the job done.I was hooking up the bridge to a wireless Linksys G access point ("wap").
To setup the bridge, I attached it to my Linksys G router. I initially got a System Error/IP Conflict message that made my network unusable. Tech support was not much help. I ended up attaching it to my network via a low-tech hub (I removed the hub later). The error went away and I could start programming.
I set the WAP, bridge, and router to the same SSID. Tech support gave inconsistent advice on this.
I put the WAP and router on different wireless channels. Tech support gave inconsistent advice on this as well.
On the WAP and every other wireless device OTHER THAN the router, I filtered out the MAC address of the bridge. This way, the bridge would only pick up the wireless signal from the router. If you have multiple access points on your network and need for the bridge to pick up the signal from an access point closer than the router, you would apply filter to the router too -- basically every wireless transmitter EXCEPT the one you want the bridge to pick up.
Once the setup was complete, I connected the bridge and the WAP (filtered, of course) to each other using the ethernet cable. I moved the bridge and its attached WAP to their final destinations and plugged them into their AC power. At this point, I abandoned the hub I used for setup. Please note, the bridge needed to be fairly close to the unfiltered transmitting device in order for it to work consistently. The attached WAP can go anywhere its cable will reach.
At this point, every thing "pinged," but not consistently. My last move was to play around with the channels of the unfiltered transmitting device until I found one that worked best.
One last pointer, this configuration required endless unplugging/repowering of the WAP and bridge. If things aren't working, be sure to try repowering before throwing in the towel
I nearly lot my mind doing this project. If my blood, sweat, and tears over this helps you then perhaps it wasn't a complete waste.
Digital camera Review: Frustrating firmware, but now working
Summary: 4 Stars
I received hardware version 3.1, but unfortunately it had a two-year-old firmware version installed in it which would not support WPA2. When I went to the Linksys support site to download newer firmware, I was amazed to see there had been nine versions released since the the version my WET54G shipped with...why does Linksys continue to ship products with such obsolete firmware installed? Since this was hardware version 3.1, the unit was obviously not stale stock.
Even the latest firmware has bugs, though none were fatal. In infrastructure mode, the channel number cannot be changed from the default channel six, for example. The solution was to set up in ad hoc mode, change the channel, then reconfigure to infrastructure mode. There are other glitches, too, suggesting to me Linksys is just plain sloppy.
But, once up and running, the WET54G seems to do exactly what it's supposed to do, though somewhat slowly. I'm using it to stream video from a network camera and found I had to reduce the frame rate due to limited bandwidth.
The WET54G is somewhat unique in that it's a bridge that doesn't need drivers installed and can thus be used with "dumb" ethernet peripherals such as net cams and printers. If that feature is not important to you, I think I would consider a different model.