| Linksys WRV200 Wireless-G VPN Router with RangeBooster |
 enlarge
|
Model: WRV200
Brand: Linksys
Manufacturer: Linksys
Average Rating: 
(submit your review here)
Total Reviews: 32
Operating system: Linux
Form factor: External
Hardware platform: PC
Data link protocol: Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g
|
|
|
| |
| Features: |
LAN Ports - 4
WAN Ports - N/A
RS-232 Port - N/A |
| |
| Description: |
| The Linksys Small Business Series is the affordable, reliable, high quality networking solution that helps you do business smarter. Secure and easy to install and maintain, it's built to grow with your business.Enable a wireless network in a reliable, intelligent and SNMP managed way for your Small business. The intuitive web based interface allows you to easily set up the features of the WRV200. SNMP gives you the ability to remotely manage and monitor the device.The VPN router gives your business multiple SSID and VLANs for traffic separation and enhanced QOS functionality for improved quality voice/video. With support for Wireless QoS (WMM) and wired QoS (port prioritization), consistent voice and video quality is maintained throughout your business.The 10 IPsec QuickVPN tunnels with a throughput at 30 Mbps gives your mobile workers a secure and easy-to-use way to stay connected. As an essential element of your business, this product provides security functions for authentification, encryption, and firewall. Additional security features include enabling/disabling SSID Broadcast, MAC-based filtering, and DOS prevention.The RangeBooster technology provides increased range and reliability utilizing MIMO. The RF output allows flexible control of the wireless access coverage. |
| |
| User Reviews (32 total): |
Page 1 2 of Total 2 Pages
|
Full of Features and Defects, August 12, 2008
By Cray Walken (Philadelphia, PA)
This product suffers from a wide and severe range of problems. Other reviews are correct - Linksys customer service will not be helpful. When I contact them they refused to even admit there were any defects with the product.
The problems I've encountered follow:
++++ The WRV200 will reset itself to the factory default at random times.
++++ The WRV200 DHCP clients table displays the remaining lease time where the host name should be. That's of course, if you're lucky enough for it to report ANY host names at all.
++++ The web interface will sometimes be a blank page after approximately 6 days of constant operation. The only way to fix this is to reboot the device.
++++ The VPN client has issues on Windows Vista.
++++ When operating the device on mixed mode (wireless g, b simultaneously) some wireless b devices (Palm LifeDrive) simply can not connect. You are forced to operate the WRV200 as G or B only.
++++ The firmware doesn't even do what the built-in documentation says. Deleting an entry from the DHCP clients table does nothing. The documentation says that it severs the connection.
I believe that all of these problems stem from the firmware. All of these issues can likely be resolved if the quality of the firmware increases.
|
Not even sure it deserves one star, July 9, 2008
By the limit (Eugene, OR)
I've owned several other linksys products and I've been pretty happy with them. So happy that I blindly ordered the WRV200 thinking that it had the features I need and it should just work as advertised ... I was wrong. I battled with it for a few days and boxed it until the new updated firmware came out. Unfortunately it's more of the same. If you want to save yourself some pain and frustration, look around for something else.
|
So far so good. Easy to use and conf., July 8, 2008
By Shengho Fu
Personally hv had this item for few months by now, and it pretty much matches my expectation so far. It's easy to conf., and surely easy to use. I don't need to dig into the user manual and study it for finding how to use it. That's why I'm giving out 5 starts on this one.
|
Continually needs reboot - not dependable at all, June 2, 2008
By Wayne A. Fiskum (California)
Talk about a pile of junk. I thought Linksys would be better after Cisco as well, my previous Linksys experience was poor so switch all of my equipment to a different brand which worked perfectly for 4 years until a recent failure. When it came time to update, that company is no longer making routers (bummer) so based on my VPN needs decided to go with the Linksys WRV200. What a mistake that was! The thing was horrible to set up and drops the connection many times throughout the day. All computers and the router itself needs to be re-booted to restore service. I am an IT professional and still these problems persist. Of course just make things more difficult, it may work fine for 1-2 days then just go down. DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT! Consider it as representative of Linksys, perhaps that will get their attention. BUY SOMETHING ELSE!
|
Useless product + atrocious cust. service makes this a definite NO!!!, April 24, 2008
By JJ Braunius
I am an IT technician and have worked with numerous routers over the years - this is the worst I've seen!
I had to recently install one of these routers on a client installation with 5 PCs and 5 VoIP phones connected via VPN to a central office. The bottom line is that this router has been nothing but trouble!
When more than one phone is connected (talking) the wireless connection intermittently starts shutting down. I've been with Linksys support over this issue already twice and they haven't provided a solution - the replacement unit they sent was a banged up refurbished unit with the exact same problems as the original.
Expect to spend a lot of time holding if you talk to their cust. service - anything but a first level moron takes about 30-40 minutes getting hold of. All are outsourced in India and speak bad US. English so you're in for a treat there as well!
I'd say the first one was bad but so was the second one so it seems like it is a unit issue. I advise anyone to stay away from this tremendous piece of junk.
|
WRV200 Review, February 26, 2008
By David Nelson
This product has a great feature set. I was especially interested in the VLAN and VPN capabilities. I have tried out the former, but not yet the latter.
The ease of configuration is average. I didn't use the provided "quick start" software, as it started out by wanting the clone the MAC address of the PC. In my case, I need to clone the MAC address of the previous gateway box. I used the web management interface. I found it inconvenient that many (but not all) of "save settings" buttons on indivudal web pages cause the unit to reboot. It would be nice to configure all settings and then reboot once.
My biggest concern is with stability. At least with the firmware version that came pre-installed. I haven't checked for an update yet. I have two of these units, in different locations. Both of them failed to respond via the web-based management interface after a week or so of service. One of them actually stopped passing traffic from one of the wired ports to the WAN port. Both of these units required a power-cycle to clear the fault. I'm assuming that in the absence of a FW update, this problem is likely to recurr.
On that basis, I can't really recommend these units to others. Of course, revised FW might change that opinion. As I say, the features are great.
Linksys Wireless-G VPN Router with RangeBooster WRV200 - Wireless router + 4-port switch - EN, Fast EN, 802.11b, 802.11g - Linux
|
Very Disapointing, February 24, 2008
By John Reitmeier (NW Minnesota Farm)
We run an inbound help desk and needed a QOS router as we just bought a new telephone system that can VOIP to our own private phones at remote locations. This router could NOT handle it at all! The wireless has less reach than the typical cheapie Linksys units we have come to love. Finally we boxed it up and sent it back. Got the Linksys Wireless N without external antennas and it's GREAT! Handles the QOS without fail, wireless G is awesome as we have no N units yet. Pass on this model!
|
One star is one too many, February 3, 2008
By Cory Dixon (Austin, TX USA)
I had moderate hopes for Linksys after Cisco's aquisition. OEMing a 3rd party product isn't one of the things I thought Cisco would do to their consumer base; at least not such a poorly developed product.
The WRV200 is, by far, the worst piece of networking equipment I have ever had the misfortune of installing.
Under normal operating circumstances I typically have to recycle the router at least once per day. This does not ensure all issues are resolved - only wireless connectivity (802.11g only - WPA2). The VPN passthrough consistently drops and is unable to reconnect. Mind you, I am no speaking of VPN endpoint connectivity, which this router supports. I am referring only to establishing a desktop-to-remote VPN connection passing through the WRV200. When it drops it can still ping the remote end-point, just not connect.
At this point, I have completely disconnected the WRV200 as one laptop can connect, one can't at all, another can, but at very low speeds, and my desktop can't bring up my VPN or work email connection. I have reverted to a Netgear spare that warrants about a 2-star rating.
Please, as another reviewer put it: "Save your time and your money." Add to that your sanity and it should be covered. Do not purchase this product; send your consumer message to Cisco!
|
Excellent Router, December 3, 2007
By David Maw
Installed easily, worked fine. I'm a pretty experienced user and had some complex requirements (like wanting a router which could act as a VPN server). I've had no problems at all with it.
The only limitation I've noticed is that it does not seem able to remap port numbers when doing port forwarding so, for example, if you forward port 1234, it's exposed to the Internet as 1234. This can be tricky if you want to forward the same server (and thus, same port) from 2 systems.
|
This is a piece of garbage!, November 22, 2007
By John (Boston, MA)
I purchased the Linksys WRV200 when I purchased my new home in hopes to get a wireless network up and running quickly. I work in IT and usually use Cisco Aironet 1200 but was confident that the cheap Linksys would suffice for home use with two users. I was wrong to think that this little piece of junk would work at all. The router loses connection with Comcast every other day and even after reboot; will not grab the public IP, Gateway, and DNS addresses. You have to unplug the Comcast modem and Linksys router and plug them in at the same time. This resolves that problem but it doesn't resolve the fact that the Linksys WRV200 loses wireless connectivity every half hour or so and I have to reboot the thing to get it to work again. I tried every encryption known to man, I've tried WMM, I've tried different channels, I've tried no DHCP and setting the computer to a static IP, and I've tried lowering the Beacon interval to no avail. Nothing keeps this thing from failing! Make sure you don't have a Broadcom Wireless NIC because that thing may never work with the router. All of my 5 computers have the same issue with the router so I know it's not the computers. I am going to have this thing UPS RED (overnighted) to one of my buddies in Iraq and have him mount it to a tank shell and fire it into the desert. I don't have time to deal with this bull! Imagine all the time we waste screwing around with devices that claim to work but don't. I think Linksys will be one of the companies that succeed in the future when Idiocracy becomes more apparent. The irony is that my router failed when I was writing this review. I had to save it and paste it into a new review. Unbelievable!
|
|
|
DO NOT BUY - SERIOUSLY, WORST ROUTER EVER, November 11, 2007
By RonL (Columbus, Ohio USA)
I've not written a lot of reviews but felt compelled to warn other users against this router. This thing reboots more than Windows 95 used to and, yes, even with the very latest firmware updates. I even reduced the feature set I was using to almost nothing --- turned off DHCP, just tried to use passthrough and not endpoint routing. Didn't matter, got more than 3 people using it and it crashed constantly.
Specific flaws to watch out for:
1. Crashes unpredicatably and for no apparent reason
2. Virtually any admin task forces a reboot (trust me, gets really annoying over time when you tweak one thing and it requires a reboot)
3. VPN pass-through works for 30 mins at a time and crashes
4. Wireless signal easily overpowered by other devices despite the supposed powerboost feature
The real disappointing part is that it advertised up to 10 VPN tunnel support, so I thought it would be an okay small business router. Not so, it has to be the worst new piece of computer equipment I've purchased in the last couple years; probably not the worst ever but it's certainly in the running. I bought it more on brand/reputation since I have had plenty of linksys routers before that did just fine --- and frankly it was $80, so why not give it a try. Big mistake, they rushed this thing to market and you'll waste bunches of time trying to get around the holes and unreliability.
This baby is not ready for prime-time and, frankly, I don't see any firmware improvements fixing the underlying flaws. There is no option to give it a -5 stars or I would. While trying to get this thing to work I actually saw a review article where one guy said, "don't buy this router on pain of death" ... made me laugh. Guess he had it right.
Fyi, I took it back to the store and bought a Netgear VPN router; that router looked "less sophisticated" on paper (only 8 concurrent VPN tunnels) but so far it's been stable. Was about $120 compared to the $80 on this one, so I guess you get what you pay for.
|
Worse Router Experience, August 20, 2007
By Robert
I purchased this item, from a store, because of the impressive feature set and price. It seemed like with the features it (attempted to) offer it would solve one of the most annoying home network problems I have. Immediately after getting it home and installing it, an amazing amount of problems cropped up. I'm quite experienced in setting up and maintaining much more complicated equipment than the WRV200, but this thing was nothing but a waste.
Problems:
The router would restart whenever it pleased.
Constantly dropped wireless and wired connections very frequently (within minutes over and over).
The smallest changes in configuration required a router restart.
The simplest services (AIM, FTP etc) had a great difficulty running.
The router is very unstable.
The web based configuration system would stop working or slow down to very poor speeds.
The router's range and signal strength did not perform as advertised.
The router seems to like flooding the lan with ICMP packets, rather annoying.
Some log entries appear to be corrupted every couple dozen lines or so.
After spending the better part of the day trying to fix these issues, the piece of equipment still performs miserably. A real pity, with those amazing features. Switching Channels, reseting, power cycling, firmware updates (even ran WRV200 Beta Firmware v1.0.33, came with WRV200 1.0.32.2), firmware downgrades and a host of other things did not improve this devices performance up to an acceptable level. Linksys customer service was not much help either.
I highly recommend avoiding this product. Don't be fooled into attempting it based on a few positive reviews and all those promising features. I've just purchased this product today and its going back.
|
Save your time and your money, June 14, 2007
By Leonard Barshack (New York City)
I have had this router for many months and use it heavily.
I keep the firmware up to date (current = 1.0.32.2)
Overall I am very disappointed.
The primary reason is that a few times a week, I lose my connection to various chat service. Specifically AOL and Yahoo. My wife has the same problem, in fact we lose the connection at the same time. Skype and all other internet connectivity is fine, it seem to be just AOL and Yahoo as best I can tell. The only way to correct the problem is to reboot the router. This one issue has me looking for a different VPN router.
Other disappointments:
* Linksys customer service is horrible, and this is being kind.
* The physical quality of the device is poor. The antenna are very lose. At first I thought it was a manufacturing issue, but it seems all are this way.
Positives:
* The feature set is impressive and easy to use.
* Setting up a VPN was easy. In my case I was connection to another Linksys device, so I would expect that.
Conclusion:
I have been a loyal Linksys buyer for years, as a rule I think the quality of Linksys has gone downhill over the last few years. This is not the only Linksys item I have had problems with and although the prices are tempting, in the long run, I seem to waste a lot of time. Time to explore on of the competitors.
The fact that I am planning to replace the WRV200 with a competitors router after a few months tells you that I would avoid buying it.
|
Firmware 1.0.32.2 is working great!, April 19, 2007
By Network Admin (California)
I used to have to reboot the router once a week to get a stable connectivity to the internet. Now with the firmware 1.0.32.2, the problem is gone. I have 2 laptops connected to the router via wireless, and a D-Link VoIP adapter (provided by Vonage) connected via Ethernet port, everything is working great. I don't see any issue with FTP - I have been using Limewire client and Windows FTP client regularly.
|
Firmware 1.0.29 .. still buggy - WARNING!!! SIP for VOIP doesn't work, April 7, 2007
By D. Wu (Irvine, CA USA)
Had the unit up running with the latest firmware. Couldn't get it to work with the Motorola OJO video phone no matter what. Tried Port Forwarding, Port Triggering, DMZ, UPNP and nothing worked. Do NOT .. DO NOT get this router if you are planning to run SIP VOIP behind it, or until they fix it.
|
Junk, Junk, Junk, March 16, 2007
By Jim (Ohio)
Although this router has excellent wireless range, everything else is scrap. It's really no surprise at this price, but for those of you who aren't experiencing trouble, I would invite you to try using FTP or ICQ for more than 2 hours...good luck.
Support is non-existant, and if you search Google for 'WRV200 reviews' or 'WRV200 FTP problem' you'll quickly see why Linksys is in no hurry to help you...get in line.
|
Not stable, February 28, 2007
By Shane Steinbeck (Rochester, MN United States)
Flaky is the best one word description of this router. From settings that don't stay set, to OUTBOUND connections that stop working after a day or two of uptime, I had nothing but problems with these routers.
I had bought them for point to point VPN to connect two offices. They brought us to our knees and were pulled within two weeks. Desktops connected directly to the switch ports would lose the physical ethernet link, causing all kinds of problems. Outbound FTP was usually the first sign of an impending meltdown. Then I could count on outbound VoIP to stop working. The VPN would go down then too.
Calls to Linksys support were worthless. They requested that I configure some ridiculous port mapping to fix the FTP problem, after which I was to reboot of course. I said, yeah it always works after I reboot, can't we do a state dump to see why it stops working after a few days?
Linksys said they would send a replacement, to which I responded, no thanks, two identical routers are doing the exact same thing. They countered with letting me RMA the devices, but I never received the RMA's.
Stay away from these until the firmware has been fully debugged and confirmed stable by some other users.
|
Range Boster, January 19, 2007
By Melamed Eliezer
This unit was bought in order to replace other linksys unit in order to improve the range, however the range was not improved, and the connection stability of this unit is worse then the privious one.
|
Don't Purchase, January 9, 2007
By S. Henes (detroit,MI)
We are a samll shop with 8 employees. I purchased the Linksys to provide both wirless and router use. This router is worthless...I truly would never tell anyone to purchase this. We had had nothing but problems. The router locks up and the VPN doesn't work.
|
vpn usless, December 19, 2006
By Senior Engineer (Aurora, CO)
Don't buy this as a vpn router. I have been through 3 software revisions since July 9, 12, 20 and have yet to see a vpn connection work for more than 2 hours. Release 24 (dec 2006) is available now so who knows. Wireless works ok. With software release 20 at least we are not rebooting router daily anymore.
|
Page 1 2 of Total 2 Pages
|
|
| Copyright 2001-2007 WiFiReview.com |
|