Linksys (WRT110) Wireless Router

So my 7 year old SMC wireless b router finally died of an extremely old age, and I was forced to go on one more hunt for a good replacement router. I tried the exercise a couple of times before, not because I needed to, but because I wanted to get the faster speed of the wireless g standard. Every time I ended up in a serious frustration with routers that will constantly be dropping the signal, not to mention the incessant switching of the speed, which drove me insane.

I took the demise of my SMC as a sign that it is time to get in with the times and thought I'd try this pretty sleek looking model from Linksys. I already had two poor experiences with the brand before, but thought new generation, hopefully new results.

I got the router on sale for $59 based on the glowing recommendation of the Best Buy sales guy. I should know better by now, I know! Though the router is advertised as "enhanced g" with MIMO, it also has some form of the N standard, which is not advertised, but is available as a selection in the set up menu.

No matter what claims a company makes, in my experience setting up a wireless router is never easy, and something always goes wrong to the point that makes me want to smash it in the wall. At first the WRT110 seemed to break this tradition, appearing to work fine with just the simple set up wizard that came on the installation CD.

I use regularly an older iPaq PDA, which only works with the b standard and WEP encryption, so I selected the WEP protocol instead of WPA.

Everything worked fine for exactly one night. The signal was acceptable, though definitely not stronger than my old router, despite the "enhanced" designation on the box. My computers (two XP machines and one Vista) seemed to stay connected relatively steady at 54mb and I had no trouble networking them together (something my old router couldn't do, I am guessing because of some Vista idiocy).

The second day in the problems started appearing. First the router simply froze. I restarted it, it worked for about 15 minutes and then froze again. I reset it to its factory defaults, searched on the Linksys website, upgraded the firmware to the latest and greatest, redid the entire set up, and then it appeared to work fine again. For exactly another 2 hours. After that it got worse and worse, it would work occasionally, but constantly losing the connection, and finally started to freeze every time I turned on any of the computers.

I pulled out my old SMC hoping that maybe after a brief rest it will work again, which it did for about 10 minutes and then quit, making totally lose it and really smash it in the wall. I then remembered that the SMC actually had a lifetime warranty, but oops!

I wrapped up the Linksys and took it back to Best Buy. When I asked the sales guy to recommend something else he took me right back to another Linksys, which I absolutely refused. Three times is enough.

I bought an "enhanced G" router by Dynex, which is a Best Buy brand, after an exceedingly positive experience with an LCD by that brand. It's not listed on Epions so I can't review it yet, but I just wanted to say, that I've had absolutely no problems with it, the set up was as easy as the box promised, the connection is super stable, and it was $30 cheaper than the Linksys. The only problem I have is that it appears to work rather poorly with the wireless b standard. My PDA connects fine, but it seems to take longer to connect to the Internet once connection with the router is established.