Cisco-Linksys WRT300N Wireless-N Broadband Router

Update 6-17-06: After having good results initially, I have been discouraged by the signal strength being inconstistent and bouncing around a lot. I would now rate this router two stars. Hopefully, future firmware updates will work out the kinks....Hi, I bought this router on Amazon the first day that it was available. I was surprised and disappointed when I came back to write my review and other customers have been having problems. I am writing this review based on my own experience - which was nothing but good. I replaced my old router (which was a Linksys MIMO SRX) and I was up and running wired and wirelessly in about 2 minutes. I bought this router in hopes that it would improve my performance on my Media Center Extenders (MCX). The Linksys WRT300N Wireless-N Broadband Router (12X speed) made a noticeable improvement over my MIMO (which is 8X speed of normal wireless-G). My MCXs run smoother than ever and I do not any longer have the stutter or delay in videos when I fast-forward. I did not see any noticeable improvement over the 8X MIMO when it came to my laptop or on my wired workstation while running the interenet. That is probably because I was already getting all of the bandwith I needed with the 8X. If you have a standard G router, then this will dramatically improve your performance. But if you already have a MIMO router, then the Linksys WRT300N Wireless-N may not show noticeable improvement unless you are already having network congestion problems. I hope that Linksys can work out any bugs in the connection that some are experiencing because this is their best wireless router to-date.

I have a unique situation where we only have access to broadband through a local wireless company as DSL is not available and cable is too expensive. Unfortunately, we need to have line of sight to the tower which is only available on our barn. The house is about 150 feet away so I needed something with a strong range.I was hesitant to get this router as it is a "Pre-N" router and not quite finalized. I tend to buy the latest technology but not before things become standardized. However, with my need for long range I didn't think I had other options.Setup went pretty smoothly. I was up and running in no time. The signal was excellent (about 80%). I'm not using this to share files on a network so the speed throughput was not important. Everything worked smoothly for a couple of days and then nothing. The router was no longer giving out DHCP IP addresses. The old 169 IP... :( Hours and hours of troubleshooting... releasing and renewing ipconfig, restarting the router, swithing many settings, trying static ip's, firmware upgrade, etc. and no luck. Then after one final reset, it assigned the pc an IP address again and I was back up and running. I hoped that the IP issue was just a fluke. Sure enough, 3 more days go by and again no IP. Hours of troubleshooting again but this time no luck.Frankly, I'm not exactly sure what the problem is. I don't think it is my PC (6 months old). I'm fairly knowledgeable about networking but this one baffled me so I gave up.I just bought a Linksys WRT54GS as I have had excellent performance from this router in the past in our offices. My only concern was the range. I then discovered I can get a high gain antenna kit that extends the range considerably. (Linksys HGA7T) By the way, the WRT54GS uses a TNC connector for the antenna so any TNC type antenna will work.Also, fortunately, the WMP300N Wireless-N PCI adapter will work with B/G/N so I can still use it with the G router. It has excellent antennas and hopefully between the high gain antennas on the router and this, I should pick up a decent signal. I can experiment with directional antennas if necessary. I wish the specs would specify whether or not the antennas could be upgraded and if so what type of connector. This info is hard to find.Anyway, I don't think the Pre-N routers are really stable yet. I've read a few magazine reviews stating that the Pre-N's actually performed worst than the Draft N specs. Oh well...

Okay, I'm a retired computer geek with 30 years experience and I was upgrading my wireless network from 80211.b to 80211.n.Out of the box the WRT300N router was ready to go to work. I was not able to use the EasyLink advisor that came with the router because I already had a newer version installed (downloaded) but using what I already had installed all I did was upgrade the router and we were off to the races. Using 80211.b I was getting 11.0 mps throughput moving to 80211.n gave me 270.0 mps. Using the Speakeasy web site to measure my broadband speed I was getting about 2 mps download speed under the old protocol but under the new protocol? I'm currently getting about 8 mps download speed.I have not setup security as of yet. I want to do a little reading about WPA2 before I go there. We live in a rural setting right now so security isn't a real issue at the moment but I will be moving back to the Chicago area later this year so it is something I will need to address at some point.So, bottom line is: I love this router. It's not as bad as some have said to set up. I was actually impressed by the ease of setup.Buy this router, you won't be sorry. Oh yeah, the price here on Amazon was %10 (USD) less than anywhere else.