Cisco-Linksys BEFW11S4 Wireless-B Cable/DSL Router
by Linksys
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List Price: Buy Used: from $16.45 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Cisco-Linksys BEFW11S4 Wireless-B Cable/DSL Router
Customer Review: The Linksys BEFW11S4 routinely exceeds my expectations!
Summary: 5 Stars
Even after owning and using the Linksys BEFW11S4 Wireless Access Point for over three months, I am still amazed at what an amazing piece of hardware it is. It is a four port fast Ethernet switch, a wireless access point, a router, a firewall, a DHCP server, and much more. What is most amazing is that it does many of these complex tasks right out of the box with minimal configuration, all from a box the size of an average book.Despite being an electrical engineer by trade and a chronic gadget geek, I am not a big fan of electronic toys that fail to meet expectations or require enormous amounts of time to learn how to operate or install. This happens so often, however, I have grown to rarely expect things to work the way I intended them to. Nevertheless, I have been thoroughly surprised how well this router works and how remarkably simple it was to setup and maintain. Of all the electronics I deal with on a daily basis, both at work and at home, this is among the most amazing. In terms of value, I can not think of anything else I use on a regular basis that comes close....
I use the Linksys router with a Motorola SURFboard cable modem and Cablevision's Optimum Online service in New York without any problems. The setup was a breeze. I have a Tek Phaser 740 color laser printer plugged into the hub and use Orinoco Gold PCMCIA Wireless Ethernet cards in my IBM Thinkpads running Windows 2000. WEP encryption, DHCP, and IP masquerading all work as expected. A testament of the hub's ease-of-use, a friend of mine brought over his IBM Thinkpad running Linux and within ten minutes we had him configured and up-and-running with WEP on my LAN. Most of the time spent was just figuring out how to load the Linux drivers on his PC. No additional configuration of the hub was necessary.
The Linksys BEFW11S4 really is a remarkable device, exceeding all of my expectations. I wish more primitive devices like my DVD player or answering machine were this easy to use.
Customer Review: Be sure to get version 2 and consider a print server!
Summary: 5 Stars
Excellent product. Wireless will change your computing experience as much as DSL did compared to dial up. Had the wired BSFR41 for two years and loved it but can't believe I didn't switch to this product sooner. The mobility is incredible. Have a home office on the lower (basement) level. Two wired and two wireless PC's connected to it. Consistently get "green" (highest level) reception on wireless laptop from two floors up above the router. Flawless VPN connections to corporate office as well. Added benefit of instant connections between my computers by using router to set up a LAN. Check the front of the box to be sure you are buying the newest version. I've seen both the original unit and the new version 2.5 on the same shelf at major stores. Difference is probably just upgraded firmware but why not be sure. I like to tinker so I've installed and uninstalled this unit several times, moving it around the house and trying a variety of computer configurations. Always works great. Decided to take the next step and go to a unit with a built in print server. Can't find the Linksys one locally so purchased Siemens which has the added advantage of three ports over Linksys's one port model. Simple set up and works great! Wireless surfing, printing and VPN connections from anywhere in the house! I'm sure the Linksys would be the same but haven't had a chance to try it. Did find Siemens tech support (called just to see how good they were) to be very quick (consistently under 5 minutes) while wait times at Linksys were always 10 minutes and more. Fortunately neither product required tech support for immediate installation - just to fix things I messed up as I goofed around experimenting with different configurations, settings and computers. If you use a printer (doesn't everyone?) you really should consider a unit that has a built in print server so every computer can share the printer.Customer Review: Great Product- must have for techies
Summary: 5 Stars
My wife and I both work in the computer/networking area so we were really excited about installing a wireless network in our house. We just recently had a cable modem installed and decided it would be nice if more than one computer could have high-speed internet access. Overall the products are excellent. The only glitch during the install was when we left the configuration set to "Ad Hoc". We had one of the PC's connected via Cat 5 cable to the BEFW11S4 router and things didn't seem to be working. After getting in touch with Linksys support - this took about 3 hours before they called us back- we set the the parameter to "infrastructure". Apparently this setting is used in a mixed (wired and wireless network) environment.We have one laptop using a wireless PC card and another one using the wireless USB card. The USB card seemed to have a better range and was getting stronger signal strength at remote locations around our house. I suspect this is because the USB is tethered to the computer by a cable and therefore can be orientated toward the BEFW11S4 WAP more easily. The speed of sending files between computers is impressive. Multiple users accessing the internet via the cable modem also seems to work well (when the cable modem is working) - our cable company has been having "network problems" in our area.
Overall we're real happy with the products. The documentation was generally OK but, Linksys needs to put out an overview document describing how all the parts could typically work together. Their technical support system seems to be "under seige" based on the response time we received and the harried sound of the technicians replies to my questions.
The best part is that we don't have to run cables all over our house when we move the computers!
Customer Review: A real answer to a real problem
Summary: 5 Stars
I am not sure what all the others had problems with but my Linksys worked great out of the box. Setting it up I had an issue that was easily fixed by calling tech support,(only 5 min wait and worth it, the technician was very good). My laptop which will be connecting wirelessly was not connecting no matter what I tried. It turns out that you can't run wireless cards and ethernet cards (mine was built in} at the same time because the machine will always default to the ethernet card. Which is exactly what was happening. We removed the driver for the ethernet card and it began to work great right away. Everything else about the setup was fairly simple and went very smooth the directions were easy to understand. I especially liked the quick installation sheet which is what I used to setup with.I highly recommend this product and would buy it again if I had to do it all over. The distance of the wireless machine is really dependent on terrain. But for my two story house it was great. The only weak spot being downstairs in the opposite direction of the linksys base as far as I could go. However it still worked and was quite able to handle downloads even at the weakest point. You just can't go wrong till they come out with a new beakthrough in technology. But even then the prices will be to high in the beginning. For instance the new 802.11a is several hundred dollars more expensive then this machine. And for what you get I just don't need it.
This is a winner. The newest version of the product is BEF11S4 VER 2. Many of the reviews done in this section were about the
BEF11S4 its the same model number but lacking the ver.2 after the BEF11S4.
The newest version has fixed most of the bugs of the previous version. Good Luck!!! A very satisfied consumer
Customer Review: EZ setup with Win 98, Great Reception, Great product
Summary: 5 Stars
OK. I have to admit I was a little nervous about this product given the mixed reviews in this forum. HOWEVER, this product is great! Setup with my existing cable modem took 5 minutes. I quickly linked up my comcast.net connection to the router which connected my Win 98 desktop and Win 98 laptop (via linksys WPC11 Wireless network PCMCIA card)to the net. The included quickstart card gave me everything that I needed to know.Linksys has great web support (drivers, firmware updates, FAQs) on their website at www.linksys.com
I had a much more difficult time getting my laptop and desktop to communicate as a network, but I never set up a network before. I simply played around with it till I could file share. Easily done if you have any experience with networks; I did it as a novice.
The router is configured as a DHCP server which hands out IP addresses to all of the computers on the network. Only the router is seen from the outside net which adds a bit of security to your own LAN "intranet". For true safety you likely need some good firewall software. Configuring the router to accept 128 bit wireless encryption was a snap.
As I mentioned I also bought the WPC11 PCMCIA card to connect my laptop. Setup was easy, and reception from the wireless router covers my house. I could even carry my laptop outside on my front lawn and surf the net. Very cool. Some people have said the netgear card is better, but I had no problems. It is important to play around with the location of the router. When i first set it up it was on a shelf on my prorch which structurally used to be an outside wall. Reception was barely 5 feet. When i moved the router two feet inside my home reception easily went 50 feet in all directions.
Overall 5 star product