LinkSys was recommended to me by my companies network guys, and now I see why. Also, I have had no interference at all with my 2.4 ghz cordless phones. i was told that could be a potential problem.

NEGATIVES:
The WPC111 PC Card was dead on arrival - requiring a trip back to the retailer. The positioning of the router is critical because the range is only a 20 - 50% of the 100 feet advertised. I had to run a lot of cable to place the unit in a position where it would provide coverage for most of my house. (under the sofa in the living room) I found the workable range is between 20 and 50 feet depending on the walls or floors between you PC and the router. This range seems pretty typical of most user reviews.

The wireless setup is not a substitute for a wired network because the data through-put is very slow compared to a 100Meg network . . . slower than 11 mbits specs would suggest. It takes 24 minutes to transfer 600 mbytes of data from a file server compared to 1 min 40 seconds using a wired PC.

CONCLUSION:
As an extension to a wired network I am happy with value after adjusting my expectations downward regarding the range and bandwidth being only one-half of advertised. This is not a good alternative to wiring your home or 2,3,4,5 PC's, mostly because of the range problems you are likely to encounter.

The settings pages are still difficult to understand, even after revisions, and I have 20 years of consumer computer experience. If you have a Macintosh, spend a little extra, and get the Apple Airport base, the software is a million times better than the cobbled together Linksys stuff.

LINKSYS SUPPORT is [bad], and Linksys Mac support is non-existent. I tried it via the Windoze PC end, and it wasn't much better. I suspect the people that give this a good rating are used to dealing with clunky software. Expect multiple hard resets, and don't expect to get the WEP 128 encryption to work easily unless you already know how to set it up.

Also the range: I barely get 60 feet indoors, even with the cool-looking dual antennas, on the same floor of a NYC apartment. I have checked, and there are no competing 802.11b gadgets in the vicinity.

Setting up the BEFW11S4 using my desktop computer, which was linked by an Ethernet cable, was easy. What took me a loooooong time was getting the Wireless connection to work with my laptop's Cisco Series 350 PCMCIA Wireless LAN Adapter card. At the end of the day, I would have been time and money ahead just to pay [the extra money] and get Linksys' LAN Adapter card, but I didn't want to juggle two cards and two wireless profiles.

It took me some time to realize that Cisco's "Aironet Client Utility" or "ACU"---a separate program under Start/Programs---, and not my Windows 2000 operating system, controls the important wireless parameters for the card. Once I found that out, I was able to set the channel, infrastructure and other parameters to make a wireless connection. However, I couldn't get WEP encryption to work at all until I upgraded the firmware, driver and ACU for the Cisco card past my apparently outmoded (6 point something) firmware version.

Cisco now bundles firmware, drivers, and ACU upgrades together in packages for downloading from its Website. But you have to be very careful to select the right bundle. Each numerical series of Cisco LAN adapters has many products with names that look and sound alike, and some joker listed two bundles (not applicable to my card) as for "Windows 2000" while, further down on a long list, listing another (applicable to my product) as "350-Windows-98-2K-Me-Bundle-2.exe." My aging eyes missed the buried reference to "2K," so I downloaded two wrong packages before finally getting the right one. Once over these hurdles, all proceeded smoothly, except that neither Linksys nor Cisco told me to set the ACU for shared encryption keys. I found that out by trial and error.

Cisco has good instructions on its Website for downloading and installing the updated firmware, drivers, and ACUs. Its newer ACUs allow nonadministrative users to set up separate profiles for such things as home networks, and there is a setting which is supposed to sense which network ("enterprise" or home) is transmitting and switch automatically to it. I haven't tried this yet, but a colleague tells me it works well. What this means is that you can leave the Cisco card in its slot as you move the laptop between home and office, and the software will switch automatically between your home and office networks as you move from one to the other.

I still couldn't get WEP encryption to work on the Cisco card at 128 bits. This is not surprising, as Linsys' documentation implies that its 128-bit protocol is proprietary. I did, however, get WEP working at 64 bits (called 40 by Cisco). I could cut and paste the encryption keys directly from Linksys' Web-based access point manager into Cisco's ACU, as long as I remembered not to "apply" or "OK" either one until both were set the same.

Linksys' "passphrase" utility was useful for generating the four "64-bit" encryption keys. I noticed that just changing two or three characters in a 31-character passphrase completely changed all four keys, suggesting a robust random-number generator.

Once fully set up, the wireless access point worked well. After some fiddling, it gave me 40% to 50% signal strength through my house's aluminum siding and out to the edge of my back yard.

You have to play with the two little antennas, however, to get the best signal strength. I found the best strength resulted from having one antenna in a nearly horizontal position and the other slightly off vertical. (Be sure to set your parameters for both access card and LAN adapter to "diversity," which uses both the antennas.)

People who gripe about signal strength should remember that they are dealing with high radio frequencies. The network uses 2.5GHz, a frequency much higher (and therefore much more susceptible to reflection and interference) than the ones used by FM radio stations. Just as your body moving around the room, as well as many other things, can interfere with FM radio signals, it can interfere with a home network wireless signal. For example, it makes a difference whether you sit between your LAN adapter card and the access point, and whether your LAN adapter card's antenna points toward the access point. Short of repealing the laws of physics, adding a monster antenna to the access point, or increasing its power (probably to more than the FCC allows without licensing) there's probably not much anyone can do about this.

I give Linksys high marks for a good physical product, but mediocre marks for its documentation of wireless. I doubt I'm the only one who wanted to adapt an office network card for home use; and there's no reason to have to juggle two different LAN adapter cards. I would hope that Linksys would give a few hints in its documentation about how to get its base station to work with others' wireless cards, particularly Cisco's, which seem to dominate the industry. But maybe I'm just dreaming. The woeful industry custom seems to be: if you use someone else's products, you're on your own. Maybe that's why tech stocks are at an all time low.

Buy something else.

All went in quickly and easily - I did not need to call the help desk for assistance but it was nice to know that I could have. The PDF version of the manual was easy to use to understand how to turn on encryption and limit the # of open ports.

I am now using this all over the house and in the yard with excellent reception and very fast speed. One DSL connection, 3 PC's always on line, mobility, speed, flexibility.

An outstanding, easy to use, product with great performance!