Review: Linksys Wireless Networking Hardware

If It’s Good Enough For The Internet, It’s Good Enough For Me

The Internet is one big giant network with all sorts of routers and cables and servers with the potential to bring every website in the world to your computer at the speed of electrons. It has been said that much of the hardware that makes the Web work is made by Cisco, parent company to Linksys.

So, when we started planning our wireless network, we figured what’s good enough for the Internet is good enough for our little network.

As we had no wireless equipment whatsoever, we needed to buy everything:

  • WRT54G—Broadband Router
  • WMP54G—PCI Wireless Network Card
  • WUSB54G—USB Wireless Network Card (we just wanted to try this one out, plus, it’s just as cute as a bug)

All these products use the latest wireless protocol, 802.11g; the most important part of this is the “g”. When combined with Windows XP, 802.11g protocol equipment is easier to install, has a stronger signal, giving you more range, and the far better WPA security (you need to download a patch from Microsoft to make this work, but it takes seconds with broadband, is free and the security you get in return is well worth the five minutes you take to implement it).

The Actual Installation: Somewhere Between Heaven & Hell

The thing with installing wireless networks, in our experience, is they go one of two ways: like a dream or like a really, really bad nightmare. Our network was somewhere in the middle.

The USB card went in without a hitch; total installation time, about five minutes. The router also worked so well, we were able to do everything via the wireless signal, although the instructions recommend hardwiring everything together for configuration purposes.

The one problem we had was with the wireless card and it was less the fault of the card than the way we used the PCI slots inside our computer.

The first time we tried to install it, we left our old 56K modem in place, thinking we might need some quick Internet access if something went wrong. The network card evidently wanted to use the same IRQ as the modem, so Windows XP just could “see” the new card.

We unhooked everything, removed the network card and the modem, rebooted to let Windows see the IRQ was now free, then reinstalled the wireless network card.

This time, it went in like sunshine and puppy dogs.

Conclusion: Living with the Network, Day-to-Day

Wireless network equipment uses radio waves to communicate. You may have heard the phrase “signal to noise ratio”; this becomes easier to understand when you know the signal is the stuff we want our network to “see” and everything is noise.

Living in New York, which is pretty much the interference capital of the world—just the cell phone traffic alone <sheesh>—can cause minor drops and broadband losses. We’ve found that we have to re-boot the network, which is much simpler than it sounds, at least once a day.

(Editor's Note: A new driver for the PCI card recently appeared on the Linksys support page here, that appears to resolve this problem.)

For all of that, we have no wires running through walls and under furniture. The network works 99.99% of the time and hey, how about that broadband!

Highly recommended.

Updated: November 18, 2005