Cisco-Linksys WRT610N Simultaneous Dual-N Band Wireless Router
by Linksys
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List Price: Our Price: $113.88 You Save: $86.11 (43%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $39.99 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Cisco-Linksys WRT610N Simultaneous Dual-N Band Wireless Router
Customer Review: Best router I've ever owned
Summary: 5 Stars
"After several hours of tedious research, I finally decided to take the plunge and buy this router (although I bought it from another store, I frequently shop Amazon and am a Prime member, so I wanted to share my thoughts with the community). All the reviews I read ranged from horrible to fantastic, and the horrible reviews kept sticking in my mind. After getting this setup and working in my apartment, I can say I'm glad I bought and won't look back.
Currently I have two laptops, two desktop PCs, a wireless printer, a networked storage drive, a PS3 and an Xbox 360. With the exception of my Toshiba laptop, everything connected easily and flawlessly, even using the highest encryption. My Xbox 360 is using the Wireless-N adapter, and for the first time, I'm able to stream Netflix movies in HD with no hiccups, transitions back to SD, or 5 minute waits to just start the movie. Windows Media Center also flies as well.
On my Toshiba laptop, I had to remove all firewalls before the device would connect to the network, but once I did, it worked flawlessly (don't care about firewalls anyway and had been meaning to remove it once the free trial expired anyway).
The great thing about this device is the dual band radios. Right now my 360 is the only device using the higher end 5 Ghz band, and all my other devices can stay on the 2.4 Ghz band and not slow down my online gaming or media streaming.
If you're at all confident in setting up a wireless network and need the features that this device offers, I highly recommend it. It also has the gigabit ethernet ports, and I'm strongly considering upgrading my two desktop PCs to take advantage of this feature."
Customer Review: Version 2 now shipping from Amazon and router now lives up to the hype.
Summary: 5 Stars
I was a bit nervous after reading the problems people have had with this router. I realized a second version had come out and seemed to be more of what Linksys originally intended. I am glad i took the risk because it was easy to set up. Has much better range and speed over my previous D-link G router and my PS3, Dell laptop, iPhone and home built Desktop all connected without issue. The only problem i had was putting in a 26 character code for the WEP security into my HP 8500 wireless Printer. It would only accept 25 characters. After downloading the latest firmware for the printer Voila! I can now put in 26 characters into the printer to log onto the secured network. I might have been able to use WPA (requires less characters)instead of WEP but i used WEP because i have heard the router provides better range for some reason with the WEP security and that legacy G equipment tend to deal better with the WEP then the WPA.
I also installed the Linksys dual band PCI card into my desktop and it also worked without a problem. I use Comcast and have their "BLAST" service. Even though the download speed isnt where the N routers make the largest improvements in speed increases. Over Network is where this things really Kicks "G"'s butt. I still got about a 40% increase in internet speed tests over my D-link G router. I think some of it may be attributed to the range. I am getting 2x the signal strength with this router over my D-link G router.
You may find a router thats marginally faster over the network. But nothing is sexier then this router on the market. So if you have to put this router where it will be seen. You may notice it being admired by your guests.
Customer Review: Great router, worth the price!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
All in all this is a pretty good router. Setup was a little tricky, but I managed it. I would consider myself intermediate/advanced tech level but not an expert. I also upgraded the network cards to Dynex Gigabit PCI Desktop Adapter. I have the following hooked up to it:
1. HP Pavillion a6230n running Vista (wired connection)
2. Dell Dimension 4600 running XP (wired connection)
3. Gateway Performance 1400 running XP (wired connection)
4. Wii console (5GHz wireless connection)
I also bought an HP SIMPLESAVE backup unit to attach to the usb storage port, but have not figured out how to get it up and running yet. The router itself has boosted my internet speed very significantly. No more buffering when watching videos on line. Also my previous router, a very old Asante NetFriendly router 100mbs speed, would not allow playing games over the network (not sure why). This too was fixed by the new Linksys router.
The Netware Magic Basic software that comes with it is great too, but you will want to upgrade to the Pro version ($39.95), which I did. I was confused until I realized it came with the Basic version and not the Pro version.
One problem I did have: my HP LaserJet 4240n would not work with the router. The printer can be connected directly to a router via ethernet cat5/6 cable. But I found out the printer does not support the higher encryption protocols sported by the router. I got it working though, by hooking the printer to one of the computers via parallel cable/LPT1 port and making it a shared printer (works just fine now, as long as that computer is on).
Customer Review: Best advanced wireless router
Summary: 5 Stars
Very good router, out of the box. I've upgraded the unit to use DD-WRT, a third party firmware available from the [...] site.
I docked a point off of "ease of setup" because the usual router troubleshooting steps had to be employed to get it working out-of-the-box. In short, you have to take down all of your network devices, power up the router, then your modem, then the rest of your network devices, just to get everything working. Standard, albeit annoying, procedure for fixing network connectivity issues.
A point was docked for "reliability" because with both antennas (it's a dual-band router) enabled and set to find their own channels, the unit was unstable and wouldn't make it past 24-hrs up-time. Manually setting the channel for the antennas to use seems to resolve this instability. It's possible for it to be resolved in a future firmware update, but I have a current up-time of over 12-days and 14-GBytes downloaded (1-GByte uploaded).
The "performance" of this router has been top-notch. I easily hit 1.5-Mbps download speeds on Steam and other services that can support the transfer. You mileage will depend on your own ISP's speed restrictions. I used to have to use a switch to take the load off of my old router, else it would slow down or crash; the switch is shelved with this unit. Gigabit transfer between hardwired devices is much faster and -- more importantly -- stable.
Very good signal strength and range. I'm hard-pressed to find a spot that doesn't have "excellent" signal strength.
Customer Review: Thoroughly delighted... 2nd winning Linksys router in my home!
Summary: 5 Stars
Despite some of the highly critical and negative comments I've seen on this product, my experience has been overwhelmingly and categorically good on multiple accounts: (a) 2 phone calls to support were handled cordially, professionally, and knowledgeably by the technician, and my problems were resolved in a timely and orderly fashion.
I now have 4 machines working seamlessly: (a) ASUS G50Vt-A2 gaming laptop running VISTA SP2, (b) ASUS custom build desktop running Windows 2000 SP4 (hardwired - built in 1999 - P2B-LS motherboard), (c) ASUS custom built desktop running Windows XP SP3 (hardwired - built in 2002 - P4T-E motherboard), (d) IBM ThinkPad 770 running Windows 2000 SP4 (yes, it was manufactured in 1997 by IBM. and I'm still using it with a 25 gig hard drive) and a Belkin Wireless N PCMCIA card.
Without hesitation: PUT ON THE LATEST BIOS/Flash UPDATE! It's simple, fast, and trivial taking less than 3-4 minutes. The latest one (7/28/09) fixes many issues, adds new function, and improves the robustness of the device performance.
My last router - a Linksys wireless B router - operated faithfully and without any issues for 9 years. It's still fully functional and will be put back into service shortly.
Thank you, Linksys/CISCO for a quality product. Keep up the good work. Please bring the support jobs back on U.S. soil: employ U.S. residents first and foremost. I will never buy another DLINK product ever again: 2 in a row, both returned and defective from the box.