I have only four stars here, but that is because of the manuals I had to read in order to get the right answer. All in all a great product.

I ended up returing my 2nd Linksys. Though it worked a bit better it still kept crashing when doing port forwarding!

I got an SMC Barricade instead - works flawlessly and it even has a print server!! I can heartily recommend the SMC, this is what the Linksys should have been. Clearly it was shipped too early.

Got mine three weeks ago. Like many others I have used the wired BEFSR41 for just over a year with no problems on both DSL and Cable. I use wireless 802.11b at work and wanted to add the flexibility at home. I bought the Linksys because of previous good experience with their wired product and because this router has one more RJ45 port than most competitors. I have 4 PCs I run wired and 1 laptop I want to run wireless. Also I know people who have successfully run the BEFSR41 and WAP11 combination using VPN. I thought this product would be an out of the box two-in-one.

At first I got dropped connections every 30 seconds and flashing lights. No luck at all with VPN. Linksys tech support sent me the 1.375Beta Firmware flash which fixed the intermittent drops and weirdness, but VPN is still no go. Highly recommend anyone experiencing generic problems to try this.

Everything works now except for getting an IP address from my VPN. I get through and authenticate but it times out after that. Regular non VPN service is fine. Linksys tech support is aware of the VPN issue and I gather it is a major focus.

I have not tested range yet, but in my experience that is much more dependent on location of access point, walls and obstructions, and yes the NIC card. I am using a CISCO 340 PCMCIA card which I have found has shorter range than the 350. Wired PCs are running Acer and DLink PCI 100Mbit cards over CAT5e.

I bought 5 of the very first Linksys BEFSR41s in early 2000. 2 of them died within a month (heat issues). I have used 20 since then with absolutely no problems as have many others so this may be a similar early adopter issue.

The first had the problems described - in fact the router would crash within a few seconds of wireless activity. Very frustrating as especially at first I thought it was something I was doing wrong. ALso the web server seemed very flaky - kepts going unresponsive which made playing with the setup a nightmare.

I returned it and got a replacement. This one works pretty much flawlessly. I am doing PPPoE in Mindspring (Baltimore), the wireless and CAT5 works great and setup was straight forward...

I am happy now and probably won't be returning my second one, keeping an eye on it though!

Two lingering problems

1. the web server is still flaky, esp. when the router is busy. My advice is to avoid playing with the config two much.

2. My Lucent ORINOCO card works fine in windows but no longer in Linux! (It worked fine before in Linux with peer to peer). My pings go unretuned - but the lights flash on the router!!! If anybody has any ideas I'd appreciate hearing from them. I've tried both the Lucent driver and the GPL one.

So I thought. Well before that point, I have problem even getting my Lucent Orinoco Silver card to stay connected to this AP. When I first power up the unit, the AP would talk to the card for a brief period of time, sometimes 15 minutes, some times 30, but never longer than 45 minutes or so. I thoguht it may be interference, so I tried a Lucent Orinoco RG-1000 AP AND a D-Link AP, both of which connects multiple devices over multiple days. In addition, I tried to use this AP for *only* hard-wired connections (turning off all wireless devices at home), and over time (30 min or so) the hard-wired computer would lose its IP address over DHCP, and I couldn't get a new one. Because of this, it tells me that it's *not* a compatibility problem between Lucent Silver card and the Linksys AP. Moreover, if I power off the unit for 5 minute and power it back on again, it would work for another 30 minutes or so. It's clearly broken.

So now I've standardized on Lucent Orinoco wireless gears: 3 silver cards (2 for laptops, 1 for a iPAQ 3650), 2 RG-1000 APs, and life is wonderful. My advice - don't buy this unit until Linksys fixes it.

The on-line help files provided are very poor (some of the wireless card's online help say "Insert detailed description of this tab here."!!!!).

I am curious as to how well other wireless cards will hook up to this device.

Linksys kept pointing at Win2k TCP/IP stack which generate the lock up on the router and they weren't helpful at all. SOme of them don't even know how the products work.

I am actually getting the WAP11 and the DSL router with 4 port switch unit separately.

Not a happy person at all after 3 weeks of frustration.

I just can't believe the performance I'm getting across this wireless network, and my parents are ecstatic about the zero cables, no phone line tieups, and having their own shared access to the internet, printers, etc.

Great product solution. I definitely would recommend this product.

I could get the unit to run for wired connnections, but with lock-ups after it had sat idle. But forget about wireless. I tried with a WPC11 card in a Win2k laptop and a WUSB11 on a Win98SE PC. No go. I could get the NICs to link at various strengths, but any attempt to pass data would send the BEFW11S4 into fits. It would loop through its diagnostics, and finally stop all wireless communications. In fact, the WLAN light would go out, even though its interface page still said that wireless was enabled. I tried factory default settings and several custom configurations.

I was able to find both a WAP11 and a BEFSR41 on sale locally, and with Linksys rebates, they were only $40 more than the single BEFW11S4. I got the seperate units working perfectly within a hour.

If your thinking of buying this unit, forget it for now. Look for deals on the seperate units (after all, the BEFSR41 is already in its second generation, it says "v.2" on the box). If you already have the BEFW11S4 and are having problems, you could wait for a firmware upgrade--who knows when that might come out. But, obviously, many poeple are having the same trouble so Linksys "should" be aware. Let me say, Linksys may blame Compaq, but it's the BEFW11S4 that is buggy.

First off, if you're really expecting that "up to 100m" transmitting range, you are kidding yourself. My unit can send a clean signal up to about 25 feet, and the signal drops off quickly from there. Walls also quickly kill the connection, causing the signal to drop in half when entering a different room. Not surpisingly, I can't walk more than 5 feet outside my apartment without completely losing a connection on my laptop.

Here's a list of bugs that I found with the product so far:

Even with "keep alive" enabled, I keep losing my DSL login after 10 minutes of inactivity.

It takes about 30 seconds to reestablish a connection after it fails. Meanwhile, the web browser usually gives up and times out. Expect to get a bunch of "Host not found/DNS error" messages after walking away from the computer for awhile and coming back.

Some of the online help messages seem to be missing from the router itself. Getting a 404 error while surfing the web is one thing, getting one while configuring the router is another.

I've also seem odd pauses and lost connections after making a simple change to the configuration settings, like changing the router password.

The drivers for the Linksys wireless network card aren't much better. The setup utility occassionally crashes under Windows 2000 when trying to change wireless channel settings.

Tech support is usually friendly, but not very helpful. They'll have you try obvious things that you've probably already tried it you have read the manual, and then say that it is your computer's fault if it still doesn't work.

UPDATE: Linksys released updated firmware a month later, which fixed most of the router's stability problems. The wireless range is still medicore, however, and the the unit still occassionally crashes every few weeks.

I am a Network Engineer and have setup 802.11b wireless equipment before. This unit simply does not work as advertised. Of course, Linksys tech support blamed the problem on the Compaq card.

It also locks up for no apparent reason. I will be returning it. What a shame. If it did what is was supposed to do, it would a great product.

Since I got the laptop and desktop previously working on peer-to-peer mode, the obvious suspect was the Linksys access point. However, trying to isolate the problem I turned off the laptop and got the desktop working flawless with the access point for 24 hours. Then, turned off the desktop and the problem would be present after 20 minutes using the laptop. So, clearly there was the problem: one of the MANY configuration options of the Cisco card. After proper configurations, I already have more than one week of flawless operation of my totally wireless home network.

Needless the say I'm highly disappointed with this product more effort should have been put into quality of service before releasing this product on the market...