In sum, all three products came with easy to follow instructions, and set up quick and easy. I believe my internet speed has been increased as well! Highly recommended.

Based on my admittedly small sample, plus other reviews here and elsewhere, I think wireless technology (802.11b) is mature and most prior problems people have complained of here are resolved now. This applies to these Linksys products and I suspect to those by other vendors too.

I recommend doing as little as possible during setup and let the devices attempt to figure out basic issues.

The Router worked out of the box with no setup, nor need to load drivers or such. Configuration of the router via a web-based interface is easy for basic operations. I was able to change the wireless network identifier and enable encryption with no trouble.

The Card was a bit more of a hassle on a NT 4.0 Laptop, which according to the Linksys doc is because 4.0 is not plug-and-play. After installing the Linksys config software, the Card works, though it does ask after each boot up to upgrade the Card's firmware, then crashes NT when I tell Yes. Giving it a No prevents that problem.

Wireless speed and connectivity are excellent to very good, in fact I've not seen speed drop below the 11mb max anywhere in the house.

Regarding complaints about doc, yes the Linksys doc doesn't cover how Networking works and the Help info is often skimpy, but, neither does a car owner's manual explain how to overhaul an internal combustion engine. Both tell you what the switches do; if you want more you must consult other sources.

So, I suggest ignoring any negative review here older than 6 months - the issue is likely fixed in current models. Wireless works well and if you're considering it, go for it.

Summary: I love this stuff.

Then the next day it stopped working... called customer service... they got it to work... the next day it stopped working again... and called cutomer service again... after about a week of this nonsense I was told my unit had a problem they referred to as the 'cache of death'... they said to return it... so I did... and this new unit still has problems.

When the product works, it's outstanding. But it's as reliable as a Fiat.

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.

WPC11 ver 3 - wireless PCMCIA card (PC card) for laptop
BEFW11S4 v2 - wireless router/access point (AP)

Other hardware:

Gateway 800Mhz desktop PC, with two NIC cards
120Mhz Cyrix (old Pentium clone chip) desktop PC, with one NIC
Toshiba 233Mhz laptop (borrowed for this test), no NIC

Existing network:

I have a roadrunner ISP. To share that ISP, I bought a hub, and physically ran cat 5 between the computers. I then downloaded/used a free "proxy server" software program called AnalogX. This worked ok for sharing the internet, but the client computer couldn't access AOL IM and other handy stuff, due to proxy server limitations I think. I'm really not an expert - I kind of fumbled my way through and got that setup working.

How it worked before:

Roadrunner is set up for DHCP. This means that theoretically every day you could have a new IP address (mine is always the same), and that you must have your computer/NIC which is connected to roadrunner set up to accept a DHCP address. So one of my NICs in the Gateway was set up for DHCP, while the other was a static (non-changing) IP address. The old PC also had a static IP. This is important for future steps.

How I physically installed the router:

I turned everything off and unplugged it. Then I unplugged all my cat 5 connections to my old hub. I plugged the cat 5 coming out of my cable modem into the router. I then ran another cat 5 line from my router's #1 port to the NIC card in the Gateway which was set up for DHCP. I then connected the cat 5 which goes to my old PC to the #2 port of the router. At this point, I plugged everything in and booted up.

Software installation:

I put the CD in, and the wizard to add computers to the router came up. I clicked next a few times, always taking the default, and then I was finished. I could immediately connect to the internet. I then repeated this at my old desktop PC, with only one change. After adding it to the router, I couldn't connect to the internet. I went into the Internet Explorer TOOLS/INTERNET OPTIONS choice, selected the connections TAB, clicked the LAN connections button and UNchecked the "Automatically Detect Settings" checkbox. I also had to set my IP addressing to DHCP on the old PC, by right clicking on "Network Neighborhood", selecting "properties", clicking the entry in the list titled TCP/IP, clicking the "properties" button, and selecting "Obtain an IP address Automatically", then clicking OK a couple times. This requires a reboot. When it came back up, I was on the internet here too.

So, I'd say about 45 minutes to get two "wired" PCs on the internet with the router.

WIRELESS PORTION:

I opened the box and read the directions for the PCMCIA (PC) card. they said basically to reboot and put the PC card in the slot. I did, and it was detected immediately. The laptop had been configured to connect to a Novell wired lan, so I was prompted for my OS CD a few times. After that, the install went fine and I rebooted one last time. When the laptop rebooted, I still had to go UNcheck that "Automatically Detect Settings" box to get on the internet. I did not see any mention of that in the documentation. So good for you if you read this deeply into my review.

PERFORMANCE:

SPEED and RANGE - excellent:
Outstanding. Whether on the laptop or desktops, throughput is great. My house is a two story stucco and Brick exterior house. Inside, I went about 30' laterally and 20' down with no discernable loss in download speed. I next went out the back of my house, off my deck and to the back of my patio. At this point, I'm about 60' laterally and 25' down from the router. The connection is still fast and clear. I next went around my house to the front, and across the street to my (generous) neighbor who had loaned me the laptop for this test, and proceeded to surf while on his front porch, approximately 125' from the router, and 25' below. There is also one interior and one exterior wall between the laptop and router. The connection is clearly much slower at this range, but I never lose my connection or time out. It's just slower downloading. I went into his house, and couldn't get a connection. But it would have had to penetrate his stone front house and a couple interior walls to get to me. Overall, the range is very good for my purposes (surfing downstairs/outside).

SIGNAL INTERFERENCE - minimal:
I have a newborn baby, and we were lucky enough to get a 2.4Ghz video baby monitor. I was really concerned that these devices would drastically interfere with each other. I've heard stories, and they made sense to me, that other 2.4Ghz devices could completely disrupt your wireless connections. So I turned on the monitor and positioned the laptop so that the baby monitor transmitter was between the router and laptop. I couldn't detect ANY difference or interference during this test. The laptop internet connection worked identically to how it was with the monitor off. When I turned on the monitor receiver, there was some slight interference - the picture was still clear, but there was an occasional very narrow horizontal band and an associated "tick" sound about once/second. It wouldn't prevent the monitor's use, but it would be irritating if you had the volume up much at all. Since I returned my friend's laptop right after my testing (I was at his house anyway), I just went into the setup program and disabled wireless. This immediately eliminated the interference. I was afraid the disabling would just block throughput but not stop the actual broadcast of a signal. But apparently it stops altogether, which is good for me.

Overall, I can't say enough about how easy it was to install, and how well it all worked. I am a fairly computer-savvy person, but I'm no network expert by any means.

SUPPORT:

Since buying my router, I have not needed support. Before the purchase, I emailed Linksys support to ask them if the baby monitor would be a problem. They emailed me a generic "here's what can goof up your wireless connections" document in return. I wasn't impressed with that. But the next night, a Linksys support technician calls me at home to discuss my email and the document. We end up talking for about 20 minutes, and they've never sold me anything. I was impressed with that, and that's the biggest reason I chose Linksys. In addition, I called the tech support line and asked them about 2.4Ghz phones and monitors. My call was in the middle of the day, and was answered by a technician in about 15 minutes, which I thought was fine.

Overall, it's a great product that's almost "STUPID PROOF" easy to set up, and works well. I highly recommend both the NIC and router.

I plan on returning my unit and see if I have better luck with the Linksys WAP54A which runs at exclusive 5 GHZ bandwith.

Overall, I will say that the product does work as expected, once you update the firmware to the latest version.

Wrong. This is an extremely unreliable product backed by a company whose technical support is so bad it borders on the scandalous (see the warnings about their support policies on the Better Business Bureau's website).

This router is so unreliable that moving it can cause a failure. I had to unplug it to move it to another location in my house. When I rebooted the diagnostic light came on and stayed on, indicating an unrepairable fault. I had to ship it back to Linksys at my expenser to get a replacement.

This morning I tried to put one of my machines into the DMZ so that I could enable video conferencing through the firewall. Trying to do that hung the firewall, to the point where I had to do a hard reset on the router (loosing all configuration information). Now the wireless feature is not working and cannot be restored.

I am faced with a five hour wait in line on their technical "support" line - yes it really does take that long on hold to get through to a person. No doubt I'll have to pay again for the privilege of sending them back their own faulty hardware.

In my opinion, Linsys are selling a product so flawed that it should be withdrawn immediately. Chnaging a simple setting should not irrepairably damage a product. And their support service is abysmal.

Do NOT buy this product and do NOT trust Linksys to give you adequate service when - not if - it fails in service.