Linksys WRT54GX4 Wireless-G Broadband Router with SRX400

My application is wireless-G in the suburbs with Windows XP SP2 and a cable modem upstream. Windows shows faint signals coming from 4 neighbors in addition to my strong signal. Initial setup was very easy, but my wireless link kept disappearing at random, sometimes coming back in a few minutes, other times not for several hours (unable to reconnect). I used Internet Explorer to log onto the router setup menus 4 times in as many days, changing the wireless channel number, disabling wireless-B, and disabling the "adaptive channel expansion" option. Finally I found a channel with no interference, and the router works perfectly. Having a router with increased range not only boosts your own signal, but also interferes with neighbors and leaves your own router more open to interference from neighbors. So the router works perfectly once you find a wireless channel not being used by anybody else in the neighborhood, but there's no excuse for Windows XP and/or the Linksys router not helping you find an unused channel in the first place. Interference from neighbors on the same channel no doubt causes many of the bad reviews herein and Linksys product returns, so I cannot fathom why they apparently haven't thought about this fundamental issue and come up with a good (i.e. automatic) solution.

The router did not work! Linksys tech support is awful and a waste of time! DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT!!!

Linksys products over the years have proven to be less than reliable and the WRT54GX4 may be the culmination of this dubious achievement status.

Like all Linksys products the main issues are functionality, consistency and ease of implementation. I have only thirty years experience in the IT world which perhaps under qualifies me to properly setup these units.

Avoid using these overpriced, under performing products whenever possible and you'll be much happier or disregard this review and find out why millions of people are on a first named basis with Rashis (from Bombay) one of the dozens of friendly customer support individuals sub-contracted by the company to man their very busy customer support lines 24/7. Too bad they can't ad a few more days to the week to take some of the pressure off these nice people.

I got this router and am very pleased with the ease of set-up and the quality of performance.

After trying to replace the WRT54GX with an N router to get better range, I discovered this router gives me better range than all the N routers I tried: the D-Link DIR-655, the Negear RangeMax Dual Band Wireless N router, and the Belkin N1 wireless router. Okay people, my room is VERY FAR away from the router location, and at least five walls stand in between. I get one bar from the WRT54GX, but it works. The Netgear and the Belkin routers didn't ever register a bar. The D-Link worked but dropped frequently and then locked me out. On a wireless G signal, this router appears to be as fast as the N routers. I have the SRX400 wireless card that goes with it, and when paired up with this routers, its speed is on par with any N card, N router configuration I tried. It's lighting fast. Shame on Linksys for discontinuing support for Windows Vista on adapters for this router, for giving up on its technology basically. It's awesome. I love it and in my opinion, it's the best router out there for my purpose. On a last note, it's been ultra reliable.

This router is the best one I've ever used. I do a lot of gaming, and I use bit torrent and download heavily. I used to have a belkin router which would constantly get choked and I would have to go downstairs to restart it. POS. Since I have bought this router, my range is MUCH better and I haven't had to touch the router. Get this router if you want a router you never need to f*** around with to get working.

It's a good unit but sometimes the signal will be lost on my notebook. I don't know why but i have to unplug the power and it will be fine again. It's quite easy to setup if you know a little about networking. Overall, it's a 85 out of 100.

For Christmas 2006 I purchased a Linksys WRT54GX4 for my dad to replace his older D-Link router that had started having problems.

I got the WRT54GX4 from Amazon for around $80, which is about what I expect to pay for a wireless router.

The router ran fine for a while and then my dad started having issues with his internet (which turned out to be related to his ISP and not to the router). During troubleshooting of the issue, I noticed that his firmware was out of date on the router, so I told him to update it.

Sadly the router update failed and left the router in a "bricked" state. Fine, we figured. My dad got Linksys to send him out a new one and shipped, at his cost, the failed one back.

Fast forward to Sunday, 30 December 2007. I was having problems with the wireless connection to his router. I again checked his firmware and noticed that it was out of date. Again I attempted to update the firmware (and yes I made sure it was the right firmware for the right router) and AGAIN this new router failed to update and ended up bricked.

Linksys wanted to charge us for return shipping of the unit to them, but I told them no way...after sitting on hold while the customer support person tried to reach a supervisor, I looked at my dad and said "this is nuts, I have a plane to catch, let's just get a D-Link".

Which is exactly what I did. I got him a new D-Link DIR-625 "N" class wireless router. Same router that a few friends of mine and I have. It works great.

Needless to say that for making a security product that proved to be unable to accept firmware updates, Linksys has been crossed off my list of vendors to use.

That's right. Because of this, I will no longer be buying Linksys products. Period.

A router is a security device and as such should be kept up to date with the latest vulnerability and bug fixes. A router that cannot be updated is not secure. Period.

The WRT54GX4 is a crappy router and should not be purchased. If you have one, get rid of it with a better product from a better vendor.

Goodbye Linksys, you will not be missed.

got it a week back. works as well as stated. excellent range. dosent drop signals and very fast. Also easy to set up and configure. Overall an excellant purchase

Short and Sweet...This is a GREAT wireless router. Set up was a breeze, in under 10 mins I had mine up and running. The best part, my signal strength increased dramatically.

I bought this wireless router about six months ago and have had stability problems with it since then. The unit keeps disconnecting from my DSL modem. The DSL line almost never goes down so the problem is with the router. I have called tech support, read all the FAQs and tried all the fixes with no success. I replaced a Netgear router for which I only paid $30 six years ago and I wish I had it back. Avoid this unit...

PRO:
Works excellent as a host to one of my clients (LinkSys WAP54G with DD-WRT v.24). Signal strength at 75 feet (through 4 walls) is consistently between (-60) down to (-65). Speed Rate has never dropped below (40 Mbps).

CON:
Slightly Expensive compared to other Mfg's for comparable spec's.
Poor utility firmware.
No 3rd party firmware support as of now (to my knowledge).

All in all, unit is a sound performer as is.

My Other Units:
LinkSys - (1)WRT54GS, (1)WRT54GL, (1)WRT54G, (2)WAP54G, & (1)WPC54GS
Buffalo - (1)WHR-G125 & (1)WHRG54S

Slim, great price, better than any product I researched in office supply stores or PC stores. I highly recommend this product. I can use my laptop anyhere in the house and in my backyard.

After much effort to get this installed and working, it works marginally at best. Technical support was and is also marginal, handicapped perhaps by English being a second language.

I was naive and thought I could get the kinks worked out, and by doing so, missed the window to return it. I am glad other buyers have had good luck with the product, wish I would have.

Installed my wrt54gx4 for home wireless internet. Set up OK and showed really excellent range, but would quit after periods of inactivity. (On the network survey window it showed up and still had good signal, but wouldn't actually connect) Required a power down to restart each time. Got the firmware "upgrade" in hopes of a fix and now it's 100% dead. A check of the message boards, a little late, showed both the link loss problem and the firmware crash problem have been around for MONTHS! Why they haven't fixed it only they know. A coworker who is an expert on this stuff looked at it and said it was "bricked", not a good situation. Called tech support and tried to talk to some guy in Calcutta who was reading a diagnostic script. I HATE that. No joy. First last and only Linksys product.

AFTERWORD: Fast forward 4 weeks. My hair-pulling session with the lady in India resulted in a free replacement from LINKSYS. It fired up immediately and performs well, covering my large 3 story house without any holes. I have run it with up to 4 computers at once for a test. It worked fine and retained full speed. I must say after all, it's a good product that performs as advertised. BUT...Linksys obviously knew they had a problem months ago but made no effort to inform ownwers, and I HATE overseas help lines that need closed captioning to decipher. For some reason Amazon's review editor program won't let me alter my previouly assigned star rating. I would upgrade it to 4 stars.

I think my SSID is seen across the county. At the time, IMHO, this was the best wireless router available.

marginal product, bad cusomer service and returning the product is hell! one advise don't upgrade the firmware. please do some research before buying this unit. the unit setup is easy if all you need is a basic network but the advansed setup page does not work form the web utility and the unit drops connection on it's own, range is five out of ten and a firmware is needed to get a good performance but when you do so you might fry the hardware for some reason this happens a lot and you have to a nightmare of useless customer service to get a refurbished unit that you ship on your own expenses wait for it 10 days and then get a unit with the old firmware again! very sad.

Excellent router with lots of options.
I have purchased two and one was DOA but NewEgg took it back so no worries.
I definitely recommend it.

I thought this was new, but was actually refurbished and it arrived defective. I believe the sender is going to charge me shipping or some sort of fee. I think this is totally preposterous and unfounded. I would never buy from this seller again.

Thank you,
Bernard

I tried allot of different routers and returned 2 others to best buy before buying this one Ive had it for about 1 year now and it is awesome no matter ho many pcs I have in my house ( I now have 5 and 1 laptop) it works great I could not begin to tell you what a difference it has made in surfing as well as transferring files. I can also pick up the signal across the street at the park were I stream music to my PSP when sitting with my kids playing Ive actually been looking for a second one to extend my range.

light weight, small
good range, fast speed.
most important very easy to setup.....

It was easy to setup and install . Had it up and running in about 10 mins

I am very satisfied with the service and the product, I ever had any experience wireless and took me little longer to setup, but after this, is great, now I can have internet acess wireless on any room of my apartment, I will extend my connect to my brother's apartment with high gain antenna. I surely recommend to buy on Amazon and recommend this product. Thanks.

The router is easy to setup, has loads and loads of features if you're a techie, and has excellent bandwidth and range. What more could you possibly ask for - well it ain't free that's for sure. I've setup quite a few routers in my lifetime, hardware as well as software ones, and at this price and performance, I'd very well recommend this for use in professional settings.

Setting this up was a pain. Had to call customer service, who were very friendly in helping resolve the issue. Needed to do a few hard resets. Seems its a known issue with the SRX400. Range is definitely better than my previous Linksys, although not too sure about the strength of the signal. Overall, a good buy especially considering that the new Pre-N technology has a long way to go before being widely accepted/used.

Great solid wireless box! I was able to increase my wireless coverage error with no packet loss.

I got it working few minutes after installation. I couldn't be happier.

I purchased this router to use with a HughesNet satellite system. I had problems during the first month with the unit dropping the connection with the modem. I was considering sending it back claiming it was defective. However, the problem had to do with the firmware being out of date and Linksys tech support was very happy to help me update. Ever since the update (on third month now), the router has worked without a single reboot (required several times during the first month). I recommend this router because it has a remarkable range of about 300-400 yards in open landscape). I don't like the antennas are not replaceable with external ones for even greater distance. It also has quite a few incompatibilities with other Linksys products so you need to ask whether it will work with whatever application you're interested in. Works great for my application. Good luck!

This p.o.s. gave trouble from the moment I took it out of the box. I updated the firmware, I updated my nic drivers and wlan drivers. I moved it to different positions in the room (and then house). I experimented with various settings (encryption levels, etc). Bottom line: It bricks after a few minutes no matter what. So what? Everyone knows Linksys firmwares are buggy as hell. Well here comes the kicker: You **CANNOT** put dd-wrt or other third party firmware on this router. None of them support the chipset. Buy the WRT54GL and know peace. Until the linux firmware hackers start supporting this it's really pointless to buy. Don't say you weren't warned.

I have a network and two desktop computers wired to to this router and a wireless laptop. Great speed and connection yet!

I'm never buying from Linksys again. My friend and I both had the WRT54GX4, and both of our routers stopped working after some storms we have in our area. Mind you, just the wireless stopped working. A direct line to it is fine. Seems Linksys didn't make this product very well as it is sensitive to power surges. And yes, both of us use decent surge protectors.

Previously used a d-link 624, which worked well with all my devices but had limited range.

Bought this based on reviews here as having good range (mimo), which it did, even with channel bonding turned off (so as not to clobber everything for my neighbors).

Unfortunately, it had serious incompatibility problems. Would not maintain connection (WPA/WPA2 TKIP+AES) with PlayStation 3 or with my Cingular 8525 (HTC tytn), and had intermittent problems with my toshiba tecra M5 and dell m700, both with internal wireless mini-pci cards (not sure which chipsets).

Returned it.

Bought a buffalo WHR-HP-G54 instead and everything works great.

I bought this router after reading about MIMO technology and all that claiming that it provides better siganl quality and greater coverage area. It didn't notice much difference compared to my old beat up D-Link DI-514 router for which I paid 9.99. I was looking for a router that would actually give better signal qulaity and strength and also my old router was lacking WPA and WPA2 security. Besides the security aspect it didn't seem to offer a big advantage in terms of signal quality and/or strength.

Nice router! Easy to set-up and it works great. The reasonable price was just a bonus. I recommend this router.

It's very easy to install and very good !!!

It's a good purchase .

This router works as advertised. To date I have found this unit to provide the greatest wireless range over other routers that I have used. Out of the box it does have a tendency to drop connections after several hours. This problem is quickly remedied by a firmware upgrade. Good choice for the money.

Very easy to set up for a first timer and works great. I would recommend this product very highly.

This product was OK. It did almost everything I wanted accept the URL Filtering did not work at all. The reason I give the product 1 star is because of the support organization. I work in Information Technology and have been on many technical support calls. This, by far, was the worst experience I have ever had. I started the support process with an Email. We tried two troubleshooting steps and they determined the router was faulty and sent me a new one. The new one had the same problem. This time I called into support for assistance. I was on the phone for an hour and a half troubleshooting with a technician. They were unable to resolve the issue. I had another appointment so they said they would call me back at a specified time. I did not receive a call and had to call back in. This time I was on the call for another two and a half hours doing the same things we did in the first call. The problem was still not resolved and they wanted to send me another router of the same model. At this point I told them I wanted a refund or a different model. The call was escalated up to a supervisor. In that process my call was dropped twice. When I finally talked to the supervisor they wanted to send me to another tech for more troubleshooting. At that point I was sick of the process and they sent me to customer support who said they would do nothing because they did not have a "valid" case number. By that they meant they had not determined the router to be defective. Needless to say I did not get my money back or a different model router. I would advise to stay away from all Linksys products. I know I will.

I am a computer service engineer and I have setup a few of the Linksys WRT54GX4 for my clients, they are easy to install. One of my client has an 7500 square feet home, they can access wireless network anywhere in the house, even in their yards. Make sure you setup WEP and give it a passphrase, or even use MAC access list, or else your neighbors will be on your network in no time.

When I switched from DSL to cable I needed a new router and began looking around. I liked the WRT54GX4, but read many reviews stating how there were many problems. I decided my tech knolwedge could overcome these issues and decided to buy the WRT54GX4.

When I got it out of the box, It worked right away! It connected to my Nintendo Wii and 2 DS systems, along with my laptop running on a wpc54gs by linksys. I also have a pc and a Packet 8 VoIP system wired to it and they wok perfectly.All I had to do was set security adn tweak a few settings to my preference.

The range is very impressive on it. It reaches quite far and drastically farther than my old wi-fi router. So can safely say this router should give no problems now to even a novice setting up their home network.Don't hesitate to pick one up!

I bought this router because I was looking to improve the distance and signal in the large house I was renting. I didn't notice much of an improvement with the non SRX400 enhanced cards that I had in my laptops. But when I bought the card, it made all the difference. Works great! Improved the signal and performance significantly.

Great router, easy to configure. Range is not as great as I thought. I have a 4800 sqft house and after about 2000ft I get 45% signal. Works good though and I would recomend it to anyone looking for a great router. Also have 4 plugs in the back to hard wire anything next to the router. Makes it very handy.

Got it today and it was a snap to setup and so far my wife loves it.Did not slow down my computer and the laptop is working great. Check this one out if you need a router

I just installed the Linksys WRT54GX4 Wireless-G Broadband Router with SRX400 and it provides a great connection throughout my house. The router is installed in my office on the ground floor, and I am getting 246 mb of speed upstairs and downstairs, about 70 feet away from the router. Amazon's pricing and free shipping really made this a great deal.

Like others, I was very pleased (initially) with the very quick installation of this router. Since I am very familiar with Linksys products, working through the web utility to configure the router is a snap. I was up an running inside 5 minutes. Signal strength was awesome, and I had an iMac connected wirelessly with WPA security and an XP machine connected through the ethernet port. Life was good.........

After a few days of blissful surfing, I tried to connect a Mac PowerBook pro to the network. Bad idea -- would not connect unless the wireless security was turned off completely (another bad idea.) After resetting the router a few times it made the whole system very unstable. The iMac now loses it's connection every 15 minutes or so.

Soooooo, once again I'm resigned to spending fruitless hours on a tech support line to a faraway land. I purposely stayed with 802.11g because this technology is several years old and SHOULD be rock solid. I found a forum at [...] that proved to me that many others are having DHCP problems with these routers.

There's no excuse for having to spend this much time setting up a very simple network! If I hadn't already tossed the box, I would be returning it for a refund.

Great router! It was a snap to setup, install, and run! Highly recommend it. Linksys tech-support is great. A monkey can install this thing. Note: I didn't mention a Caveman. Look what happened to Geico when they did.

I bought this router and since day one I had problems in accessing the configurations through the web utility. Linksys support's suggestions didn't work. I researched the problem and noticed that a lot of other people were having issues in accessing the router configurations through the web utilitiy. I problably had a faulty router to begin with. Anyhow I send it back for a refund.

I have a basic knowledge of networking and I found this router to be just what I was looking for. The CD that came with the router did not work in the initial set up, but I called their 1-800 number and their tech support was fantastic. The walked me through every step of the installation; they are very knowledgable and courteous. My house is 2300sqf and I don't have any dead spots. I higly recommend this device.

have to say this product really made my life easier!! i live in the city on the 5th floor in my bldg. i recently built an enclosed music studio in my garage space...installed this product and the LINKSYS WMP54GX IEEE 802.11b/g PCI Wireless-G Adapter with SRX adapter and life is good!!! 4 bars for signal strength all day long with no dropped signals!! took me a minute to dial in the right security to work with my ISP but once that was done i have not looked back. life as a musician in an apt has not looked better!!LOL

I studied the following Linksys products: WRT300N Wireless-N Broadband Router paired with the WUSB300N Wireless-N USB Network Adapter; and the WRT54GX4 Wireless-G Broadband Router with SRX400 paired with the Wireless-G USB Network Adapter with SRX400 (WUSB54GX4). Review of available customer/owner remarks on Amazon as well as elsewhere revealed a fairly consistent story: unless you have a no-kidding firm requirement for 11n, don't bother with the WRT300N, or bother with replacing an SRX400 11g router thinking you are upgrading. There has been a fair amount of disappointment concerning signal strength comparing the SRX400 11g router to the WRT300N 11n router. The SRX400 wins at least for now. According to multiple independent sources, the signal strength of the 11n router is much less than the SRX400 11g. I have to agree. Furthermore, the SRX400 11g is a very stable, mature product that is well understood and there exists a deep experience base which could be a useful resource. Although the SRX400 signaling mode is a proprietary protocol, the Linksys 11g SRX400 also supports open standards such as plain vanilla 11g and 11b as well. Because SRX400 is a proprietary protocol, I also purchased the Linksys WUSB54GX4 SRX400 wireless client to avoid possibly spending a lot of integration and test time, i.e., hassle, on getting the link up. I also wanted to take advantage of the Linksys SRX400 signaling protocol because it offers excellent range and uses an adaptive transmit/receive algorithm to attain optimal signal strength. For straight-forward applications such SOHO and consumer requirements, the 11g SRX400 model is recommended. My previous WAP was a Microsoft 11g unit (no longer sold) the MN-700. The driving concerns in replacing it were: (1) poor signal strength, (2) no support for WPA2, and (3) no firmware updates (important for security and stability). The Linksys 11g SRX400 answers those needs. Using the MN-700, the rated speed between a given PC and the MN-700 WAP was about 15 to 20 Mbps with signal strength typically 40 to 50 percent but there were excursions to 20 per cent or less, to include some recent experience with dropped connections. With the Linksys 11g SRX400, it's 240 Mbps with signal strength hard over to 100 per cent at all times. Given the market presence of the Linksys 11g SRX400, it would be pretty easy to add a range extender or upgraded antennas to get to a better signal. However I do not need to do that in my situation, carrying the wireless signal through a number of internal walls without problems. I have to say that the Linksys 11g SRX400 is rock solid. It achieved very high throughput while running WPA2 AES encryption. Also it allowed a full length WPA2 PSK which some WAPs don't allow. In my opinion it is good to care about using WPA2, AES, and a full length PSK when your personal information is being broadcast over a radio. Of course my external internet connection isn't 240 Mbps (I wish) but the Linksys 11g SRX400 answered every concern I had. Furthermore, it was very easy to set up. I'm very thorough (and OK I will admit to persnickety) in reviewing and optimizing set up parameters in such devices, especially in terms of stability, performance, security, and reliability. I was pleasantly surprised that all set up and configuration was accomplished very quickly. If I had been in a hurry and not taken the time to really study it, I could have had the Linksys SRX400 router up and running A-OK in at most 5 to 10 minutes including interruptions. Of course, I pretty much know what I'm doing in detail, but even a novice with some technical knowledge could easily follow the manual and walk through the process without frustration and end up with good results. I'm likely broadcasting an 11g signal all the way to the end of the block or maybe even further. A couple notes on features: the SRX400 11g logging options I rate excellent. There's a lot of visibility if you want it. It would be nice if the WAP/firewall would email those logs to somewhere for review. I would like to see capabilities to finely tune and closely monitor its internal firewall, for example, to be able to define policy rules by service and to make exceptions for specific external static IPs. However it does support setting up a DMZ or even opening ports if that is needed for games and so forth but in my case I would not recommend it as that creates security and integrity issues. I security-scanned the WAP/firewall from an external location and it passed those tests with flying colors (although periodic rescans are recommended to ensure something hasn't changed). I have not tested whether an enterprise-type VPN connection will work through it; for example, using an IPSec VPN, although its firewall set up allows for IPSec pass-through as well as other VPN modes so I anticipate it would work. Another metric is that I noticed it is quite fast in terms of throughput using its router mode from a directly-connected (wired connection) system to the internet. While I can offer no specific test results, I estimate it is at least 25 per cent faster than the MN-700. Set up of its internet interface was very straightforward. You can readily set up the SRX400 11g WAP/router/firewall in a DHCP or static IP configuration. I updated its firmware from the Linksys web site without any problems (this is important to ensure bug fixes are incorporated). Finally, the SRX400 11g WAP/router/firewall is making my most demanding customer happy, the one who is on my 1 minute response list, i.e., my wife. She just wants to use her system to accomplish things she is trying to do (what a thought) vice understanding how it all works from an engineering perspective. All in all, the SRX400 11g router together with the WUSB54GX4 SRX400 wireless client is a very solid combination which has had no complaints from a demanding customer who tolerates very little computer-type foolishness. Bottom line: the Linksys 11g SRX400 router and the WUSB54GX4 SRX400 wireless client met my expectations and those are not low. They are performing excellently in a set and forget mode.