| Linksys WRT55AG Dual-Band Wireless A+G Access Point + Cable/DSL Router with 4-Port 10/100 Switch |
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Model: WRT55AG
Brand: Linksys
Manufacturer: Linksys
Average Rating: 
(submit your review here)
Total Reviews: 89
Form factor: External
Hardware platform: PC
Data link protocol: Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11a, IEEE 802.11g
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| Features: |
Dual-band, tri-standard Access Point communicates with Wireless-A (802.11a), Wireless-B (802.11b), and Wireless-G (draft 802.11g) wireless networks
Protect your wireless investment while preparing your infrastructure for the future
Built-in 4-port Switch jump-starts your wired network, while the Router functionality securely shares your high-speed Internet connection with wired and wireless computers
Advanced Security: Wireless data encryption (WEP), VPN pass-through, Internet access control and Wireless filters |
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| Description: |
| Linksys WRT55AG Dual-Band Wireless A+G Router - This router gives you the best of both networking worlds. You get two wireless access points built-in, supporting all three protocols - 802.11b, 802.11g, & 802.11a. You also get a built-in 4-port 10/100 Ethernet switch for a more traditional networking experience. Both giving you a variety of ways to connect your computers & share information. Last, but not least, the WRT55AG features router functionality - allowing all connected computers to share a broadband DSL or Cable Modem Internet connection! DMZ Capability VPN Pass-Through Support Internet Access Filter |
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| User Reviews (89 total): |
Page 1 2 3 4 5 of Total 5 Pages
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It works, sort of, November 26, 2007
By user (Sammamish, WA USA)
I bought this to add 802.11a to my wireless network, and I don't think I'll be keeping it for very long. I'm not very impressed.
I replaced my otherwise perfectly good Netgear router with this one, and other than the 802.11a support, found nothing to recommend this unit over the Netgear.
Installation is painful and took a lot of monkeying around. There is an obscure but obviously necessary step called "MAC Address Cloning" that seems to be an essential part of getting the thing to work. I have no idea what this does and the option didn't even exist on my Netgear router, but I couldn't get anywhere until I did it on the Linksys. I also found that I had to reset my cable modem several times during the installation process. I don't remember having to do this with the Netgear. Oh, and the default internet access policy after a reset is to deny all computers access to the internet 24/7. It took a lot of digging around to figure out why my computers could talk to each other but not to the internet.
The Linksys management UI is not as friendly as the Netgear. Neither the MAC address filtering nor the static IP setup pages support naming devices, so if you want to keep track of what you have set up, you will need to maintain a separate spreadsheet of device names vs MAC addresses. The Netgear UI supports naming devices.
Upon getting it running, I immediately noticed a massive slowdown in the speed of my network. Downloads are taking much longer than they did with the Netgear, and the Netflix instant viewing speed test has downgraded the quality of my network from "Best" to "Basic." Not happy with this.
I set the thing up yesterday and had a 100% signal strength when I went to bed. When I came down this morning, I was at 56%. My laptop is 20 feet from the router and did not move during the night. Still trying to figure this one out.
I think it's time to throw in the towel, run some wires through the wall to replace the 802.11a requirement, and go back to my Netgear router for normal 802.11b/g stuff. There just doesn't seem to be a well recommended solution for 802.11a support that I can find.
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GET THIS PRODUCT!!!!! DO NOT LISTEN TO THE IDIOTS COMPLAINING!, August 24, 2007
By user
I'm dead serious. Tis is a great product. i was stupid enough to listen to these morons that don't know how to set up a wireless router and go with a dlink di-784. Man was i dumb. that router caused nothing but lockups, and screwed up my cable modem,even after the firmware upgrades i did. I am happy i bought this product. Set up was a breeze and simple. follow it step by step as it says on the cd. although i didnt have to,but i did anyways, upgrade the firmware. as there is always something that is updated by anybody. and if your cable modem has a reset button, reset or powercycle the modem! thne everything will work! everything was set up in a matter of minutes and very easy to use!
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This thing is a hunk of garbage., August 14, 2007
By user (Hillsborough, NJ)
Completly unreliable. Drops the connection at least once a week and requires power cycling, until it gets to the point where it just doesn't work anymore. Wireless connections are hit or miss, and the wired connections also tend to drop out. I can't believe a company is allowed to sell a product this awful. Linksys should refund every customer that wasted their time and money with this junk.
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Great when it stays connected - too bad it rarely does that., August 5, 2007
By user
I am never buying another Linksys product again. The Linksys support forums are full of people complaining about their routers, seems like pretty much all of them, disconnecting for no reason and they offer no help.
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Good, but with a fatal flaw, July 23, 2007
By user (New Jersey)
I picked-up this router to replace my old Linksys wired router. It worked very well for both my wired computers and my wireless laptop. I got "excellent" or "very good" signal strength on the "G" network everywhere in my house. (I have no "A" devices, so I turned off that feature.)
The problem occurred when I tried to VPN into my office. This router does not support NAT-T, which is required for the Nortel VPN system my office uses. The only solutions are to have the IT dept reconfigure the office's VPN (ain't happening) or switch to another router, such as the WRT54G.
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It works., July 13, 2007
By user (San Jose)
I have version 2 of this router, and have not seen the problems others are describing. I can VPN just fine and wireless works as advertised. Only shortcoming is that there is no WPA2 support, but WPA-AES is almost as good;
aside from that, the router is just fine. The A and the G radios are controlled independently, and the transmit power is configurable. One surprising, but welcome feature, is that each band can have its own key.
I was hesitant to buy the router, based on all the negative reviews, but after my experience, all I can surmise is that those that had problems must be skipping a few steps. Over DSL connection, there was no difference in wired and wireless speeds.
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Majority of people below are technologically illiterate..., June 27, 2007
By user
The product works great and despite what others say it was super easy to setup; even for a first timer like me. The only draw back I had was that the 802.11a signal wasn't quite as strong as the 802.11b but given the wireless signal has to travel through 3 walls to the other end of my house it's still manages a strong connection. Great product.
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Great router, June 27, 2007
By user (Va, USA)
This is a great router for home wireless internet. It has both A and G wireless. It took some time for me to set up and i have to reset it once every blue moon but that takes 30 sec. and is no problem. it has good range and single strength although i can only get 4/5 when i am right next to it, but the transfer rate is excellent and i get 4/5 for about 120 ft. so i am very content. i would highly recommend this item to you.
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Linksys WRT55AG - - Can I rate less than 1 star ?, June 26, 2007
By user (Wichita, Kansas)
Product worked well for about a week and then suffered a major component failure and won't work even as a router!
My regret, was relying on the name brand of product instead of buying based on other people's product reviews. After failure, I read reviews and found out this product was HIGHLY UNRELIABLE with unacceptable MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures). In other words it is JUNK!!
I have bought a NET GEAR Wireless router and have been totally satisfied.
Netgear WGR614 54 Mbps 2.4 GHz Cable or DSL Wireless RouterNetgear WGR614 54 Mbps 2.4 GHz Cable or DSL Wireless Router
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Access Point, June 20, 2007
By user (Winter Park, CO)
The router and switch functions work ok but get bogged down and the unit needs to be reset. The bad part is that it is not an access point as advertised.
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Not up to the Linksys standard, June 6, 2007
By user
I'm sad to say that I've owned this router for about 3 months now and I'm very disappointed with it. After upgrading the firmware and trying to setup my entire network with static IPs I feel like I've done almost all I can do to work around the issues with this router. Normally I read reviews before I buy something but I used a WRT54G router before this. That router was great but I needed something running 802.11a since I own a Windows Media Extender(xbox360). The router will not hold a steady wireless connection for more than an hour or so. But what's worse is it's LAN routing. The router just seems to stop working on the LAN side however will hold it's WAN settings. Meaning the router will get an IP from my ISP but will not resolve local IPs so I cannot even see my router from the computer. It makes it impossible to do anything, so I end up having to reset the modem to factory default. This only happens when I make port changes though.
Also it aggrivates me to see that there are even a few positive reviews. Either the reviewers work for cisco or they are just a linksys fanboi. I actually love cisco/linksys products. But not this one. This thing is a piece of garbage and I hope everyone reads up on this before they buy it. BE WARNED!!!
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great, easy to install router, May 20, 2007
By user (Seattle, WA)
The installation was a sinch- the disc included takes you step by step through the set up. Strong, excellent signal. Can be picked up by all computers in the house. Needs to be "rebooted" (unplugged and plugged back in) about once every 2 weeks, but that is my only complaint. Highly recommend.
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Excellent product, great value, May 18, 2007
By user (California USA)
The Linksys WRT55AG router is a fabulous router for several reasons; it's ease of set-up and use, it's reliability, but mostly it's versatility. Not only does it serve as a wireless router, but it has four ports to connect to with the traditional RJ45 network cable, which means expandability. I'm very pleased with it, and would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to set up a home or small business network.
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nice!, May 7, 2007
By user
this product is very good, i get a good signal throughout my whole house. no problems.
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I can't believe Amazon sells this worthless piece of plastic, May 6, 2007
By user
Don't buy this router. It doesn't work. I think other people's reviews sum it up. Couldn't get past the startup, it never was able to establish a connection. I'm technologically literate.
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does not work with all cable modems, April 23, 2007
By user (Chicago, IL United States)
Boy, I wish I had read the reviews before buying this. But I thought, "hey, it's a Linksys, my other Linksys routers have all worked just fine, no problems." Right? Wrong.
When the first one wouldn't connect, tech support told me I had a bad one (and I had to fight to get it replaced with the shipping costs borne by Linksys, not me -- the only reason that worked is because I procured it through my employer's purchasing department).
The problem is that it does not accept DHCP address from my ISP's network. The router continually reboots (so connection will disappear and reestablish every 5 seconds or so, and never will the router have connection to internet -- rather defeats the purpose, don't you think?). (The router has no problem acting as DHCP server -- that is, giving out DHCP addresses to devices in the local network.)
When I had exactly the same problem with the second unit, I figured there was a systematic issue. After about an hour on the phone, I was finally (on my third request) forwarded to 2nd-line support, who determined (over the next 45 minutes of repeating exactly the same actions as in the first hour) that this router is not compatible with my cable modem (Toshiba PCX2500).
So with what modems, I asked, is it compatible? There is no such list.
So is a firmware fix in the works? (Note that the latest firmware 1.79 is from Sep 2006 -- despite the web site showing it as Jan 2007 [look at the file name after download]; and that previous fw 1.67 was supposed to fix DHCP problems.) He said "I'm sure they're working on it." If this problem has been around for more than six months and they don't have a scheduled update, I would not count on it ever coming.
And if they can't tell me what WILL work with it, there's no point waiting around.
I don't require 802.11a at this point in time, but you can be sure that I'm not going to replace this unit with another Linksys.
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Good router, April 11, 2007
By user
This router works as expected. The signal is strong both upstairs and downstairs.
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SAVE YOUR MONEY!!!!!!!!!!, April 9, 2007
By user
In over 10 years of networking computers I have never purchased anything but Linksys products. From wired routers and NICs to wireless units it has always been Linksys. I will never buy another Linksys product now. I purchased this router to replace another Linksys router that lasted about a year. This one is less than a year old and I have to reboot it about every 45 minutes to an hour. The network monitor shows that I am connected at 54 Mbps and my signal strength is excellent and yet I am unable to access the internet, email, or other computers on the network. Tech support's only suggestion was to upgrade the firmware and that seems to be what they tell everyone. Since that failed to fix the problem they have no other suggestions other than find my receipt to see if it was still under warranty. Don't they keep a list of serial numbers and when they were sent out? I assumed incorrectly that I purchased a quality product and therefore did not keep the receipt. I will not make that mistake again. All in all I wish I had read the customer reviews before I bought this POS. As a side note I had to reboot the router once before this message would go out. I wish there was an option to rate items at ZERO stars.
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If this was a college project, Linksys would get a D., February 24, 2007
By user
First, the good. The wireless A is easy to set up and works better (stronger signal) than B/G.
The bad. It really doesn't work as a router. It does not take static routing, is not forwarding ports and dumps about once per day requiring reboot. Updating to current firmware doesn't have a visible impact. Linksys customer support ranges from poor to nonexistent. The whole deal reminds me of a college project thrown together at the last minute before Spring break. If I had it to buy over again, I wouldn't.
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DO NOT BUY THIS IT IS A PICE OF JUNK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, February 6, 2007
By user
I bought this wireless router from anther web site 3 days. Ago and after one day of uses it crash and lock me out of my own system I spent the next day geting my system back and putting it back the way it was before I installed this wireless router. It also crach my internet. I had to unplug my modem from the wireless router to get my internet up a running. DO NOT BUY THIS ROUTR. It is not for people who just want to plug it in and go. I would give it no stars if I could. I even E-mailed the linksys company for help. they were no help they did not know how to fix the problem I was having with this wireless router.
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