This morning when I woke up, my Linksys wireless router thought it was a toaster. It wasn’t routing anything at all through the cable modem, and it was sending requests for its config page to Apache running on one of my Linux machines. Very disconcerting!
It had actually been misbehaving for a few days, since a brief power glitch here in the house. But this morning, nothing I could do would convince it that it was a router, dammit. And I’ve been looking for an excuse to upgrade to 802.11g on my home network.
So off to Best Buy. I’m not a great huge fan of Best Buy, but it’s where I go when I need these things. I don’t like the way Circuit City has commissioned salesdroids lurking around–and it pisses me off how you can get help with high-ticket items but nobody can be found to help with smaller purchases. And I refuse to shop Wal-Mart. So off to Best Buy I go.
When I get there, I meet a sweet older woman with a “Netgear” nametag on. She shows me how here fine company’s wireless-G router. She showed me how it was feature-compatible with the Linksys I held in my hand. She showed me how, after rebates, it was $20 cheaper than the Linksys. I’ve never bought Netgear before, but I figured what the hell.
So I get this thing home, and nothing I can do will make it get an IP address from the DHCP network. I mess with settings. I plug and unplug the modem, then the router, then the modem, then the router. I go through it’s braindead “plug this cable in there then unplug that then plug that cable in there” wizard. Twice. Nothing.
So I call them up and have a pleasant conversation with a nice Indian man. After an hour, he gives up on me and tells me to try a firmware upgrade (there’s a more recent firmware on their website). I try that. No good.
I pack up my Netgear router. I go back to Best Buy and trade it for the Linksys I initially had my eye on.
Thirteen minutes after walking in the door (yes, I timed it) I’m back on the couch with FAST wireless access. Moral of the story: buy Linksys. I won’t say that Netgear sucks across the board, but that one certainly sucked.
On April 9th, 2005 Rudi said:
Funny, I’ve had nothing but great experiences with my Netgear wireless router. It’s been rock-solid. Any my only experiences with Linksys routers has been awful. I inherited a Linksys setup working at the Kerry-Edwards office in Toledo, OH, last November, and it kept dropping the DSL connection every 10 minutes. I was on the phone with a nice Indian gentleman four times in a 2-hour period, and after it refused to fly, I made a run to Best Buy (same reasons as yours) and bought a Netgear, which was up and running within 5 minutes of arriving back at K-E HQ. It ran solidly throughout the long election weekend.
So… it’s hard to say what SNAFU happened with our respective units, but it goes to show that mass-produced tech will have its fair share of lemons.
On April 11th, 2005 Sol said:
I was always perplexed as to why anyone could say anything good about Netgear. I’ve never had anything but problems. I’ve purchased Netgear about 3 times, always hoping that the previous time was a fluke. Each and every time, I couldn’t even connect wirelessly. I always end up getting Linksys, and every time, I plug it in and it works! Awsome.
On April 12th, 2005 Willy said:
Ditto Rudi’s sentiments. Have configged and run both linksys and netgear and have found them both to be quite capable. One thing that I always try to do is match router and adapter vendors. I know it shouldn’t matter, but in my experience, it seems to.
The only wireless networking vendor that I have had hands down, across-the-board problems-every-time with is d-link.
On April 12th, 2005 Dan said:
Yeah, I’m serving three laptops of different brands (an HP, a Dell, and a Toshiba) with internal wireless adapters of unspecified make (likely all Intel, but who knows).
Only thing now is: my broadcast radius seems SMALLER with the 802.11g router that with the old .11b router. I know that because my next door neighbor (the Toshiba) says she can’t get a connection in her living room anymore, but connects great in her guest room, 30 feet closer to the router. She never had that problem before my upgrade.
On May 24th, 2005 Dan’s Horrendous Waste of Bandwidth » Nerdgasm! said:
[...] Linux-based wireless router from Linksys, but little did I realize when I went through my rigamarole in replacing a dead router that I was buying that very model! Joy! There are [...]