| Linksys Compact Wireless-G Broadband Router WRT54GC |
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Model: WRT54GC
Brand: Linksys
Manufacturer: Linksys
Average Rating: 
(submit your review here)
Total Reviews: 181
Operating system: Microsoft Windows 98SE/2000/ME/XP
Form factor: External
Hardware platform: PC
Data link protocol: Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g
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| Features: |
All-in-one Internet-sharing Router, 4-port Switch, and Wireless-G (802.11g) Access Point
Shares a single Internet connection and other resources with Ethernet wired and Wireless-G and B devices
Compact form factor fits in anywhere
High security: Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA/WPA2 Personal), wireless MAC address filtering, powerful SPI firewall
Compatible with Windows 98SE, Me, 2000, or XP |
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| Description: |
| The WRT54G Wireless-G Broadband Router puts you onboard for the newest wireless networking standard. Wireless-G is 54Mbps wireless networking that's almost five times as fast as the widely deployed Wireless-B (802.11b) products found in homes & businesses. They can interoperate with existing 802.11b equipment, making them more flexible thanother networks. The built-in 4-port full-duplex 10/100 connects 4 PCs directly and lets you daisy-chain out to more hubs and switches for as big a network as you need. To protect your data and privacy, the Wireless-G Broadband Router can encode all wireless transmissions using 128-bit WEP encryption. The powerful Stateful Packet Inspection firewall will defend against most Internet attacks. |
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| User Reviews (181 total): |
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just soso, November 10, 2006
By makzhou (East Lansing, MI USA)
signal is not prominent, but if your room is not large, it is OK. not good for p2p sharing.
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Wired/wireless combo works well, November 4, 2006
By H. Weisskopf
The Wireless-G router is the one I use at home. At the time I picked it up, it seemed like the perfect combination of a wired router and a wireless router for connecting to cable or DSL. Set up (including pulling out my old hub, router, and wireless) took less than 10 minutes and best of all everything worked for me the first time. Now I have 1 device to replace the clutter I had in the corner under my desk for years and years. If you can get the model with SRX400 speed and range expansion, that's the best one. The range boost is huge over the standard model.
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Excellent Compact Router, November 2, 2006
By R. Lunn (New Jersey, USA)
My mother recently got DSL in her house. However, she only received a DSL modem from her ISP. Single connection to DSL. I live over 300 miles away. I sometimes travel to her area to call on customers. I use her house as place to work out of while in town. This small router was perfect to set up a wireless connection in her house. I also need something compact to travel with if I want to set up a wireless connection in a hotel room or in a conference room that is only hard wired. Haven't tried this yet however. This was very easy to install. I am typing this downstairs at her house now on my wireless connection while the Linksys is upstairs in one of the bedrooms. Strong wireless signal. Works great. I am very please with its size, appearance, and performance. I am not using the optional antenna. I don't think I will ever need it.
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Good router for its purpose, October 30, 2006
By C. Park (South Dakota)
I have used this router for 1 month. And here are my thoughts. I had 3 computers connected to it. One is wired and the other two are wireless. Range for this router is limited, but it is expected. However, range can be increased if one uses an antenna.
I like this router. And it is affordable. Even though it is not the fastest router. I do not think it was its primary purpose. I think this router will be great for people who travel a lot.
Its has a great compact size for what it is supposed to do. And this router is full featured. DHCP static tables, port triggering, port forwarding. For example, i ran torrents on this thing without it freezing. some full size routers are not even capable of this. other routers i have used would at least require a reboot after a day or so of torrent usage but this thing putters along, not great, but pretty darn good.
so as a compact travel router with robust functions you cant go wrong. in my opinion it is better than the other compact linksys router has since that one does not have a switch for wired computers.
look if this is going to be your standalone home router. well i think you could do better. for the same price i also bought a no name mimo and its works just as well as the linksys but has much much better range.
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Easy to use and works very well, October 12, 2006
By Felisha (Brazil)
I bought one and found it very easy to install and use.
The covered range is not a problem for me because I have a small space, but consider buying the high gain antenna if you have a bigger space.
It works better than my friend's ones.
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Everything I wanted., September 7, 2006
By d:-)] (rural Florida, USA)
Though I am an IT pro, I have never worked with WiFi. I had 3 problems setting up: 1) I couldn't access the setup utility in the router with it connected to another router, as I'd intended; 2) After that, I couldn't reach the Internet; 3) After that, I couldn't connect from my WiFi laptop.
1) was solved with a call to Linksys tech support, and a change of plan. The first person did not hesitate to connect me with a more knowledgeable person, when the problem exceeded him. That's rare! I decided not to chain the routers, just replace the old one. Solved.
2) was solved by another call to tech support and a download of an automated setup tool, which is also available on the Web site. Easy as pie!
3) was my own "Doh!" factor. I was filtering wireless access by MAC address, and had entered the address for the laptop's Ethernet adapter instead of the wireless adapter. Well, it's the first PC I've ever owned with two LAN adapters, after all!
SUMMARY: I stumbled over my own feet more than I should, and Linksys was there to pick me up. Getting faster wireless data rate than I'd expected and I can even work outside the house!
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Lasts one week - BAD FIRMWARE, August 27, 2006
By pin2d2 (San Jos, Costa Rica)
I had a Belkink wireless and sell it to buy this one... bad choice... only four days I could use it. I've downloaded the latest firmware from Linksys webpage and didn't work.. the router freezes and is not working.
DO NOT UPGRADE THE FIRMWARE
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Disappointing, August 26, 2006
By Jake Harrington (Washington, DC)
I have had this unit for more than one year in two different locations and it has been more of a headache than it is worth. It will continuously drop its connections with every device ever connected to it (be it a laptop, PDA, or Tivo) and occassionally just stops working altogether (wired and wireless). The speed performance is also extremely disappointing - it is simply too slow for anything other than normal web surfing (which can become frustrating as the connection drops and reconnects at intervals ranging from one minute to an hour - undoubtedly disconnecting while making a small download or filling out a web form). Service calls to Linksys and firmware updates have been unsuccessful in solving the problem. While my problems with the router may be caused by the large number of other wireless networks in my apartment complex, it is, nonetheless, very frustrating - there are definitely more robust models on the market, and the small size of the unit doesn't make up for its poor performance.
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Failed me in Apartment and House, August 13, 2006
By ccrly (Atlanta, GA)
Very poor range and barely makes it through more than a single wall. Configuration pages are buggy as well.
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Surprised with the advanced config and abilities of tiny router, August 7, 2006
By Christopher Curry (Los Angeles, CA USA)
I am very impressed with the WRT54GC - its a very compact wireless router which sports four additional wired ports. The advanced abilities of the configuration panel are impressive - various wireless security modalities, filtering, timed access, etc. The strength of the internal antennae appears fine for one or two room access; however, with purchasing the HGA7S you can boost it for an entire normal sized home. I use it also with the Linksys Range Booster and love the coverage overall. My only complaint is one echoed here - the technical support is horrible and often moronic - this appears to be the only flaw in my entire Linksys experience.
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instrinsically flawed design and moronic tech support, July 19, 2006
By timbus_emankcin (Bloomington, IN USA)
The title of this review sounds like a cliche, but it is all true.
After had some bad experiences with dlink wireless (DI524) router, I decided to go with linksys, which turned out to be even a bigger mistake. At least the dlink router is still sort of working while the linksys died the day after I purchased it. Here are the highlights:
1. the shipped firmware is version 1.2.05, which limits the PPPoE (your DSL) username to 22 characters. With companies like SBC, this may not be enough to hold your username (mine is 24). So the only way to solve it is to upgrade the firmware to 1.2.08 which specifically targets this issue.
2. The upgrade of firmware is very fragil. I was upgrading the firmware and then all of the sudden the connection from my computer to the router dropped. Then the orange light started to blink and I realized the firmware upgrade failed.
3. According to the user's manual, a firmware upgrade failure can be recovered by using the tftp program and following the PDF instructions that "came together with your downloaded firmware"... but there was no tftp.exe, nor any instructions. I finally found their tftp.exe from linksys FTP site, and tried, but it didn't work at all.
4. Linksys tech support is the worst. Most tech are foreigners and with heavy accents. the line is very busy and I was put on hold for 45 minutes before getting served. After the lady who answered the phone made me repeat my name, address and phone number and router model three times (she kept getting the numbers wrong), she started me with a census 2006 survey: Do you use DSL or cable modem, how many computers do you have, do they use windows etc. so I told her I am not here waiting for 40 minutes to do a survey.
5. After telling her what happened, she kept asking about my modem. Asking about the IP of my DSL modem. I told her, the modem is not even in the picture. it was just my computer and the router, and I didn't even have the modem connected, but she insisted that the information would help her diagnose the problem. so obviously she had no clue what was going on. So I told her why didn't she ask me about the year and make of my car.
6. Finally she gave up and started me on the the problem. She told me to poke the reset hole for 30 seconds (their manual says 8 seconds, go figure) which didn't make any difference. Then she asked me to ping the router (the user's manual had a troubleshooting section which briefly told me how to setup a static IP on my computer in order to tftp the firmware to it, I followed it, but didn't work). So i told her, the router was not functioning because ping gets request timed out all the time, but she told me to do that for 30 seconds, saying it might work...
7. 20 minutes after my phone was answered (so i have been on the line for an hour), she finally said, based on the information you gave me and the diagnosis I asked you to do, I believe your router is broken and you should have it exchanged. Oh, great piece of information! Why didn't I figure it out?
8. so I took it back to the store for a refund. Does anyone make a decent working home-use 802.11g router anymore? I thought cisco would be a better choice but obviously i was wrong...
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Works great, but quality control missed something, July 2, 2006
By S. Ee (Los Angeles, CA United States)
The router works great for what it is, a compact travel router. I use it at hotels to set up a wireless network.
I did notice that a corner of the product was not snapped into place, and i haven't been able to snap it in myself. I wish quality Control would have caught it. This does not affect performance.
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Not overly impressed, June 30, 2006
By J. Noble
The unit does what it's supposed to and for a non tech person it was easy enough to set up but there was some problems getting the correct configuration initiqally which was very frustrating. I had a standard ADSL modem supplied by the provider and then decided to "upgrade". I never had connection problems with the ADSL modem, now I get disconnected continuously and have to reconnect or reboot my PC. I would not recommend this product, there are a lot of good networking products out there, this is not one of them.
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Good wireless router, but wished it had stronger signal strength, June 29, 2006
By wireless mavrick (Rye NY)
Relatively easy to setup, but I did need to contact Tech support in order to get the default password - poor documentation I think. I have installed many wireless routers and I almost always have to contact tech support for assistance.
Anyway this router works well in my home network, but the signal strength seems weak, maybe I overlooked something or maybe I just need to contact tech support for guidance.
Also this router comes packed with a lot of functionality almosgt as much as those commercial Cisco router
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Quite good, June 27, 2006
By unknown
Pro:
- enough range to cover a 1400 sq/ft townhouse on 3 floors (no antenna)
- easy setup
- tons of options including MAC spoofing and filtering
- supports AES and TKIP encryption
- extremely reliable
Cons:
- WEP is hex only (I don't care as I use WPA)
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Good for what it is ... small and portable, June 15, 2006
By SoftBear (New York, USA)
I'll be the first to admit that the Home-LAN here is not particularly normal in size or traffic, but this little gem just isn't up to the task.
I've been using one small, old system or another as a router (running Linux) for the past 8 or more years. It serves up DHCP, DNS, occasional files, SQL, and web pages for the Home-LAN, besides being firewall, NAT router, print server, centralized logging server, and more. My cable connection is capable of 10 Mb/s bursts and can sustain over 600 KB/s given a fast enough source (not many out there!)
Obviously, this unit wasn't designed to do all of that. So, I set it up pretty much as default, and left the rest on the Linux server. For two connections, it wasn't a problem. For three connections, throughput was seriously compromised, and beyond that the unit started to choke. It is simply not capable of handling my network load.
Hey, I got a deal, or I would have gotten something more appropriate. I'm really not complaining: it is what it is, and is perfectly capable of handling my wireless needs. I suspect it will be relegated to the notebook's bag Real Soon Now.
Bottom Line: Don't expect too much from this unit and you'll be pleased with the results.
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Easy to install. Cannot reboot remotely., June 12, 2006
By redhill (London, UK)
Like a lot of other reviewers, product is easy to install and speed is fast.
It's a charm, but only when you're not making config changes.
My gripe to share is that I'm using it with a cable modem (Comcast) and LinkSys routers (this is my second LinkSys) need to reboot if i) I reboot the cable modem; or ii) I modify the IP settings of the router.
I did NOT have to do this rebooting with my D-Link and Netgear routers.
This rebooting itself is not such a big deal. However, the pain adds up because the LinkSys management utility (the one when I go to 192.168.1.1) doesn't let me reboot the router from the screen. That means I have to physically plug/unplug the unit each time I make configuration changes. This is inconvenient since I installed the router in another part of the house, while I work in another room. The management utilities from D-Link and NetGear allows me to reboot the router, even thru wireless.
Thus the reason I don't give this 5 stars.
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Great Item, June 7, 2006
By preppylilprncess (Palm Beach, FL)
Works great. I have a mac and it hooked up perfectly. a little confusing to set up, but if you go to this website it'll do it for you automatically. Hint: $39.99 at circuit city right now...
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Efficiency Plus, June 3, 2006
By Arne W Flones (Ontario, CA)
I am running this as my main router connected upstream to SDSL and downstream to a high speed Net switch. I connect internal network connections to the high speed switch and connect the printer, DNS server, and e-mail server to the Linksys. This gives me great performance on the intranet and optimizes the slower Net switch in the WRT54GC for things not requiring high throughput.
I am a big fan of Linksys. My old Linksys WRT54G router (V1.0!! -- I'll miss all the blinking lights) cranked away 24/7 for years and would still be working if the PS hadn't died.
LinkSys has a winner here. I can see this as the definitive portable router for people who travel. I use this in my SOHO and it is cranking along without any glitches.
Setup is simple. It took me five minutes to get things up and running. Kudos to LinkSys for their well organized setup facility which has enough configuration parameters to satisfy just about anybody. All I had to do is set my static IP address, turn on MAC address filtering on the Wireless, and forward a few ports for my various servers. The new Web-based configuration also has a configuration backup features (great!) and some preconfigured port forwarding settings (which should help newbies a lot). The manual (regrettably a PDF file on the CD) is pretty good, explaining things in clear language. Altogether, it's a very nice little router.
Some minor quibbles:
First is that with five Cat6 network wires hanging out the back it is difficult to get this little guy to stand up vertically on its little stand. The wires make it flop up on its back corner. A wire tie around the wires and some creative wire bending and it now sits on its stand properly.
Second, there's no external antenna for the WiFi. I have stucco walls in my house and propogation requires something more than the little built-in antenna. I'm going to have to get an exterior antenna. Fortunately, the WRT54GC has a connector for this (another very nice feature). RadioLabs makes some very nice and inexpensive antennas which should fit the bill.
In summary, the WRT54GC is a tiny Wireless router which could serve either for either SOHO or travel. The configuration is simple and requires few, if any, changes on connected workstations. When compared to the prices of other "travel" routers, the WRT54GC ought to be a very competitive. It's plethora of features make it a slam dunk.
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Did you know that..., June 2, 2006
By nefrojas (Heredia, Costa Rica)
...if you pull out the antenna connector the built in antenna is disengaged. This makes the range of the router ridiculously short, like some people describe in their reviews. I wonder if this is the cause for those 1 star reviews. :-)
Did you know that you can get cheaper antennas from other sources like Radio Shack? Just make sure the connector matches and any 2.4 GHz antenna will outperform the built in "toyish" one.
Conclusions:
-DON'T pull out the connector door unless you are connecting the externall antenna.
-If you are having trouble reaching a second floor (like me) borrow an external antenna and play with it.
My two cents.
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