The major reasons I chose this model was because it was the cheapest one at the store.

Bottom line: Linksys made a great router, but they made a poor Wireless access point.

For the not-so-computer-savvy users that want instant connection right out of the box with no configuration tinkering, the BEFW11S4 delivers. By default, the Wireless signal is already transmitting, and DHCP is enabled to allow dynamic IP assignment to all computers. Just read the Quick Install card to setup your computer's wireless adapater to gain access to the wireless connection. Very easy. In the unlikely event that your wireless connection goes down, this device comes with 4 ethernet ports so that you can just plug in your computer with a regular ethernet cable (assuming that your computer has an ethernet card). The wireless connection and ethernet can be used simultaneously.

However, after 6 months of happily surfing the internet wirelessly anywhere in my house, the wireless signal suddenly died on me last week. I tried EVERYTHING to fix it - hitting the reset button, unplugging the devices for 10 seconds, and flashing it with the latest firmware (version 1.39 at the time of writing this). i HIGHLY recommend you upgrade the firmware on the wireless router if you decide to get it.

Tech support was helpful (didn't have to wait very long on the phone to speak to a Tech rep), and they would take me through the troubleshooting procedure just to make sure I didn't overlook anything I might have missed.

But my story still has a happy ending. Linksys is going to replace my wireless router. I mail them the bad one, and they'll mail me back a new one.

Seriously, if you want reliablity, don't be afraid to spend a little more money. Do the homework, and find a dependable one like Orinoco.

PC cards are working fine but USB ethernet adaptor is careless...

Lastly, my performance has been fantastic, but you might want to hold off and wait to see some reviews for the new 802.11 wireless version, as it can flow 54MB compared to this system's 11MB. But in my case, everything already runs like lightning, so I have no intention of upgrading for quite some time. Highly recommended, especially if you have ATT Broadband (no muss, no fuss).

This system worked well initially, then spontaneously stoppped. After many frustrating attempts at customer support, I was finally able to reboot and get it working again. A simple hardware reboot isn't adequate - it needs to be physically disconnected from the power source for several minutes. We get to do this several times each week. I'm still waiting for an explanation from Linksys. Additionally, I'm convinced that the reset button is there for appearance only - it has yet to do anything for my system!

In short, I plugged it in, walked through the quickstart card, and it was working with my cable modem in about five minutes. Installing a couple of USB access points to my other computers took a little longer, but not because the router didn't work. The range is pretty good, but I did have to put it on a high shelf in the downstairs to get a strong signal upstairs.

I'm not using print or file sharing yet, so I can't speak to that, but for wireless broadband sharing, this thing is the bees knees. Much, much easier to set up than was let on by the other reviews.

I'm using a P4 with Windows XP, if that helps you make a decision. The connected computers are P3s using Win98SE.

The wired router installation was a piece of cake (I use a wired port for the PC that's co-located with my router and cable modem). This partially because the Linksys install routine and browser based setup instructions worked well, but partially because my cable provider is NOT fussy about NIC MAC addresses and the router recognized the providers mail domains (which in my cased included one that's abbreviated, and some that differ from the address domain name due to a recent acquisition; these are both areas that Linksys is helpful enough to prepare you to overcome, and your mileage may vary depending on your cable provider).

The USB wireless adapter under Windows XP was considerably more challenging. My install was hampered by a local hardware issue (a device conflict between a USB 2.0 port on a separate PCI card and the motherboard USB ports. I had blue screens upon restart when using the PCI port; these continued until I tried one of the motherboard's USB ports, and then the install proceeded as normal.

This is where my main gripe with Linksys develops: the will tell you before purchase that their products work with Windows XP -- and they do....but you'd better be prepared to tweak and geek without their help. When I called about my blue screens, I spent 51 frustrating minutes with a tech support guy and his boss. THe boss became part of the picture when the L1 guy suggested that perhaps I didn't know enough about computers to be trying this (and it was obvious that my experience around computers predated his launch from Mom) install. During the 49th minute, we uncovered an error indicator suggesting this was a hardware issue, which led me to try the alternate USB port. But Linksys was adamant that they were not there to help me fix my broken OS.

Finally, the wireless portion of the network has yet to succeed in establishing a WEP encrypted connection. A separate call to Linkys yieled another tech support guy ill-prepared to help troubleshoot the problem. Their bottom line: Sometime the WEP activation will work under XP, and sometimes it won't. If it won't, stand by for their XP update to these devices "maybe coming in June".

That said, my computers on two separate floors are enjoyning high signal strength and shared internet connection. I'm not overly concerned about the balky WEP setup since I live in a low vehicle traffic area (shouldn't be many war riders around), and I have file sharing turned off.

But Linksys really needs to get their user guides and tech support scripts updated to accomodate the growing population of Windows XP users....

I picked up the BEFW11S4 and, within an hour, was up and running on both my wired desktops and my laptop with wireless card. So far, so good. Setting up the network was exremely easy using the router's built-in web interface. It also allows for 128-bit WEP encryption to protect your wireless communications from snoopers. All in all, I feel about as secure with this as I did with my IPTables setup in Linux, if not a bit more.

Recently, however, my laptop has been dropped off the wireless network for no apparent reason. I'm not 100% certain that it's the router doing it -- I haven't taken the time to trace down the problem since it has happened only three times and at very irregular intervals -- but that small bit of suspicion led me to knock off a star.

All in all, though, if you're looking for a way to roam about your small office or your home without dragging a cable behind you, this is an excellent way to get started in the world of 802.11b. It's fast, easy, secure and, best of all, affordable.

I understand some people complain about the range of the product, but realistically, unless you have an enourmous house then you are going to be satisfied. I personally have an apartment, so the range is more than sufficient. I, my roommate, and my geeky friends that come over with their wireless equipped laptops never have any bandwidth problems whatsoever.

Unless you use the LAN frequently (local area network...not the internet), then you probably won't see a degradation of performance over traditional wired networks -- you'll be limited by your cable or DSL connection instead. There are still ethernet ports for those people that want wireless and wired from the same router.

This has a PPPoE client built-in, so if you have to "dial-up" to access your DSL (i.e. verizon, earthlink, etc.), then you can configure the router to do it for you -- and reconnect automatically if you are booted. It's MUCH better than the WinPoet software that your ISP will have you install and crash your computer and have you booted off frequently.

No problems 3d gaming online.

Note: people, please setup WEP encryption to access the network. It's really easy and that way people (neighbors, drive-by hackers) can't consume your bandwidth and steal/change your files.

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

The downsides - eh, could have used (a) a dialup modem option for broadband downtimes, (b) print server, (c) firewall.. oh well, what the heck.. it still rocks at what it does..