Linksys (WET54G) 802.11G ETHERNET BRIDGE ADPTR
1 LINKSYS IS JUNK!
If your looking for a device to bridge with, as I once did in this device, head on over to Belkin's F5D7330 Wireless Ethernet Adapter and read my review. Belkin's equipment is so much more reliable, it does what you ask it to and doesn't flinch like inferior DLINK and LINKSYS products.
This LINKSYS device is straight GARBAGE!
2 Most Linksys products great, this one is *AWFUL*
I don't usually write many reviews, but after seeing so many reviews being so critical of Linksys and people saying that they'll never buy another Linksys product I felt I had to say something. I've been using Linksys products for years, both the 'b' and 'g' products, at home and at work, and they've been great. Reasonable prices, easy to set up, work without a hitch -- just set up and forget about it.
The WET54G is the *exception*. It's like they took all their worst engineers and instead of firing them, made them into the WET54G team. I'm on my fourth box, the first was a version 1 and didn't have a range beyond 5 feet. It eventually died with a blinking power light and I got it replaced by Linksys. The second died during a firmware upgrade. The third had better range with newer firmware but barely got a signal, about 20%. It eventually died too. I finally got them to send me a version 2 box and that's been much better. It's worked for months, gets good signal strength and range, but it seems to lose the connection after a couple of days and sometimes just powers off.
The new WET54GS5 seems to be getting decent reviews other than complaints about the WPA security, so the masochist in my is thinking about giving it a shot.
3 Linksys/Cisco:"NOT FOR STREAMING, NOT for VPN..."
If you are considering this bridge to do video/audio streaming inside your house, think again. This review is based on over 2 months worth of testing this unit and then working with Linksys/Cisco trying to figure why it does not deliver. A saleperson at a local store may have told you that you can stream MP3s over your wireless network, or perhaps you have two DVRs in your house and your want to stream recorded TV shows from one to another. This is not the device you want to use for this purpose. Don't belive me? Ask Linksys level 3 support. Its architecture is not designed to support high levels of network traffic needed for streaming -- it has very small or zero I/O buffers to handle it -- as a result, the device will crash after 2-5 minutes of streaming. You can power cycle it and it will resume for the next 2-5 min. But forget streaming for a moment, WET54G crashed when I was simply working from home VPN'd into my company. Not for that either?! Do you think that WET54G ver 2 is better than WET54G ver 1? Been there, don't waste your time -- the architecture is the same. Alternatives? WET54GS5 might be better, but I'm yet to find that out myself. I know you want to try it yourself. Piece of advice -- buy at a retail store, and if it doesn't work, return within 30 days. Do not get into RMA exchanges with Linksys - unless you enjoy 2 months of 2-3 hours/day trying to get your money back.
4 Completely Disappointed
Review of the LinkSys WET54G bridge point, and WRT54GS router
Completely Disappointed
("two Stars", both for the support, and none for the products)
These LinkSys wireless device both failed utterly. The WET54G was replaced, and the replacement failed identically.
Who will repay me for my lost time, and productivity? Noone.
I have used LinkSys wired devices for years, and have found them reliable. This is why I purchased the LinkSys WRT54GS wireless router and WET54G bridge point despite their higher price, and negative reviews.
I must start by saying that LinkSys gets full points for the fine women and men in India whom they employ as their technical support staff. While I have mixed feelings for the socioeconomic ramifications of the North American jobs being outsourced to India, I must say that the general level of courtesy and expertise was higher than I have ever experienced before. Kudos to India for training such superior technicians who can work so much more cheaply than North Americans. In all, I spoke with eight LinkSys support technicians, and seven of these were from India. The Senior Support technician I spoke to in the end was in California, and he was also most excellent in his demeanor and knowledge.
That said, the devices don't work.
At first, I thought the router (WRT54GS) was working, and that I was experiencing signal drop out on the Bridge point side (WET54G). There was some initial contact, but it faded quickly to nothing. I suspected that the doors between the two points were affecting the radio signal, or that the local airport was interfering. Bringing both devices into the same room didn't help, though, and the airport shuts down at night - removing that as a source of interference. The senior support person I spoke to suggested that my wireless phones (also operating in the 2.4 GHz frequency range) could be interfering with the LinkSys products, but it made no difference when I disconnected them.
The Bridge point (WET54G) repeatedly power cycled itself - establishing a link for a few seconds, up to a few minutes, and then mysteriously shutting itself off, and losing the link. This happened every few minutes forever, and eventually it failed to find the wireless connection at all. It just sat there turning itself on again, and off again. After speaking to several technicians in India, I was advised to have the Bridge point replaced. The replacement failed identically.
No amount of tweaking, configuring, upgrading, or resetting makes it work for more than a few minutes. The failure is unrelated to distance between the nodes, time of day, version of the firmware, temperature of the product, OS of the host machine, or any other feature I may discern. It simply does not work. In fact, the two of them failed identically.
I had thought that at least the router (WRT54GS) was working, but I was wrong.
The router functions (or it's supposed to) as a 4-port wired router with a wireless connection. I was attributing the failure of the wireless connection to the Bridge point (WET54G). It took me a while to suspect that the wired connections to the router were perhaps failing sometimes as well. When I did notice that the configuration web page on the router was sometimes inaccessible through the wired ethernet port, I upgraded the firmware (on the advice of the local senior technician). This didn't seem to help, and in fact I then found that there was a complete failure of the wired machines to ping the router.
Unfortunately, when I re-reinstalled the firmware (guessing that the first reinstall had perhaps failed partially), the wired connection to the host failed in mid-upgrade, leaving the firmware corrupted, and unfixable. (There was no firmware to tell the machine how to upgrade the firmware - a sad state.)
The unit started lame, and died completely. Dead, dead, dead.
LinkSys has offered to replace the units, and to replace the bridge with the more recent version (WET54GV2), but I have declined the offer. At best, the units were sometimes working - transmitting with a 50% packet failure rate, which is unusable for me (and most people, I suspect). I now realize that I will fare much better with a trench, and a buried cable to my garage. Ironically, I had initially opted for the wireless equipment on the notion that it would be quicker and easier than digging a thirty foot trench. That was three painful weeks ago. I am now looking gleefully at the trench as the cheaper, quicker, easier, and more reliable option.
After having been a happy and loyal LinkSys customer for years, I am sad to say that I am utterly disappointed with my most recent experiences.
What a major drag. I am very frustrated. If you need speed, and reliability in your network solution, I strongly advise you to seek another solution than LinkSys Wireless devices
5 Consider the WET54GS5 instead
For just a little more money, the WET54GS5 adds a 5-port switch. Installation could not have been easier, and the unit seems well-made.
6 Watch out for Hardware Version!
Actually, the hardware is fine. I'm disappointed in Amazon.com. . .
I bought the WET54G Wireless Bridge from Amazon.com to use with a WRTG54G Router in a small business network I support. I picked the WET54G after reviewing it on the Linksys site and noting that I could enable WPA security since both devices support WPA and WEP.
UNFORTUNATELY, the WET54G I received from Amazon.com was NOT the hardware version 2 device but, instead, version 1.1 which shipped with firmware 2.05 (upgradeable to 2.06). . . BUT I need to have a vers 2.0 hardware with firmware 2.08 or higher in order to have WPA security capability!
Watch out. Make sure that the product you buy is the current version!
7 Very unreliable!
I have to join the chorus of negative reviews of this product. I bought the WET54G and the WRT54G to replace a non-standard (RadioLan) wireless connection. My first suspicion that this might not be a quality product was when I noticed the Ethernet plug wouldn't lock into place. I thought the install was straightforward, and I was initially please with the speed and reliability, but after several days of continuous use the connection began to get fairly flaky, and finally the unit couldn't detect ANY of the numerous wireless networks that suround me. In the meantime, my Apple iBook sitting 3 feet away had no problem setting up a reliable link to the WRT54g. I have more money then time, and didn't want to hassle with customer support, so I foolishly bought a 2nd unit, thinking perhaps I had just picked up a lemon. Same symptoms: an initial honyemoon, increasing unreliability, and finally total failure. I STRONGLY advise against this item.
8 Is Amazon shipping WET54G hardware version 1 or version 2 ?
It seems that version 2 fixed most bugs, as well as introduced WPA encryption (firmware downloadable from Linksys web site).
Does anyone know whether recent Amazon orders are shipping V1 or V2? The 03 stars ratings are assuming V2.
Thanks.
9 Garbage product and garbage support
These units are pieces of scrap. we have 8 WET54G ver 1.1 units and all give flahsing power symptoms after snmp or UDP scans. Firwmare version 2.06 was supposed to fix this, BUT DID NOT. Linksys refuses to return money or send better/updated units...they will send 3 more of the same...what good is that? 3 more pieces of garbage is still garbage. Linksys support is also garbage....nobody knows anything, but I'll bet they're still selling this SCRAP aren't they?
Totally ticked off, and will never buy another LINKSYS product again...IF YOU'RE READING THIS LINKSYS, THEN TAKE HEED. YOUR REPUTATION IS TURNING TO GARBAGE..MY CASE NUMBER IS 2374421. THANKS FOR NOTHING
10 It works however......
I found out that this locks up my router every time I hooked this device up when I had to configure it. This is when I had to hook this up to my laptop directly. I did look on linksys' site and they have 2 versions of this bridge only found on their download section. The one that I got was the v1.1 which many people on this board may have written about this particular version. (...)
11 Great Product, but Pricey and Hard to Setup.
I've read a lot of complaints about this bridge, and I'm glad I didn't listen to them. I've been able to get 1 Mb/s transfer rates through the bridge(I've been transfering large files). The bridge is not in the same room, and the signal has to go through 2 walls at least 50' a way. I think this is an excellent product, although its very pricy. Some of the other brands over much cheaper bridges, however they might not interoperate well with your router. The G bridge was able to give me a much more stable xfer rate than my B bridge was able to.
Now for the bad stuff. It is a pain to setup, a lot more painful than the linksys B bridge. Its probably best if you don't use the setup cd and just connect to it via the browser to set it up. It doesn't work real well on a mixed network(g and b). I had to change a couple settings on my router to get in the 1 Mb/s range.
12 Simply doesn't work
This device simply doesn't work properly. I purchased one, dealt with Cisco support, updated the firmware, etc., but still wound up returning it three days later.
I bought it to interoperate with my Linksys WRT54G. I used the 11 mb WET11G for years and it was great. But the WET54G would run great for a few hours, and then it would slowly deteriorate. If I left it on overnight -- which I always do -- by the morning it would be barely working. A reboot would fix it, but then it would start the process again. I would literally need to boot it two or three times a day.
A complete waste of time and shipping expense.
13 Set-up for X-Box or anything else is tricky.
I never got the CD-ROM that came with my WET54G to work, recomend it be used as a coaster. Go directly to 192.168.1.226 to configure it. Make sure to keep track of the "X" and "II" switch on the back. I didn't have any problems accessing the WET54G when hooked directly to my PC or to my WRT54G and going to the IP address directly, the Linksys software (on supplied CD-ROM)never did find my WET54G even when hooked directly to my PC. Note: My PC is hard-wired to the WRT54G, always configure the WET54G using wire, even after you have it up and running. Mine now bridges X-Box to the WRT54G and works very well. Also Note: I had to disable all my SECURITY on my WRT54G until I got past the basic configuration. Add security back into your net 1 piece at a time (i.e. SSID broadcast, WEP, MAC filtering, and etc.) until all is up to the level you need it to be.
14 Works great.
The first thing you need to do is upgrade the firmware with the latest version available in the linksys web site.
I have it connected with a Kiss DP-500 player's ethernet adapter, and it can play divx and mpeg movies across the wireless network (video files are located in my PC's hard disk, this PC is connected to the switch by 100 Mbps ethernet) with no problems.
By the way, my wet54g is placed about 12 meters away from my wrt54g gateway, with 2 walls in between.
The one important thing that is missing in this product is WPA security. Hopefully Linksys with release another firmware with support for it.
15 Piece of Junk
I echo all of the comments below. I've burned more time with customer support than this thing is worth.
16 If I could give it no stars, I would.
I have had my WET54G a total of 7 months and have had nothing but problems with it since I got it. At first they were minor, such as having to reset the device every couple of days, but things steadily got worse. Now the unit cannot even see the access point positioned less than ten feet way from it. I contacted their customer support. They had me reset and unplug the device in every possible combination imaginable (I am assuming they were trying to get the firmware to work). I ended up RMA'ing the unit only to receive another unit that is having the same problem. Get this: you have to pay the shipping to send the broken unit back! So I get to pay for shipping twice. With the money that I have spent on this unit, I could of had an electrician run a hard line.
17 HORRIBLE RANGE DO NOT BUY!
The range on this is horrible. I have a wireless laptop card 1 floor below this and it works fine, yet the bride doesnt work good on the 1st floor. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS!!
18 DO NOT BUY
Worst product I have ever bought - it has never worked - sent it back to Linksys 5 times - supposedly to get a new unit - none ever worked - I won't even try to sell it on ebay because it would ruin my reputation - I sent it back to the head of Linksys as a gift. I just wish he was forced to use it and waste as much time as I have with it.
19 Worst Piece of Equipment I've ever bought
If I could have given it zero stars I would have. These devices are fairly easy to set up and get a network connection going, however it is VERY slow. At best I get 180 Kbit/s - that's about 25% as fast as the 802.11b (11Mbit) bridge I was using before. I complained to Linksys, they could do nothing and said a firmware upgrade was on the way.
Firmware upgrade was release and it killed both of my WET54Gs. Waiting to hear from linksys.
These are the same problems everyone seems to be having.
Save yourself a headache (and hours of your time) and NEVER EVER buy a WET54G, better yet never buy a Linksys - that's what I plan to do.
20 54 means 20
I'm returning my WET54g. 802.11g is kind of a scam - they claim it can do 54Mbps, but in reality the maximum you can do is 20Mbps; 14Mbps if you also have 802.11b devices on the same wireless network. The WET54g itself is an OK 802.11g device, but I had more connection flakiness with it than I expected. Mostly I was disappointed that 802.11g isn't nearly as fast as the advertising claims.
21 I thought it was just me...
but from the other reviews, I realize it's the WET54G. I'm having all the same problems as the other reviewers. Very poor signal strength unless it's in the same room as the access point... and now I've got the blinking power light. Linksys also declined a valid rebate. I'm getting another bridge and never buying another linksys product.
22 Finally got it working, but ,,,,
I really needed a wireless "G" Bridge to boost a signal where hard-wiring was not an option. I couldn't wait for Linksys to come out with a "g" signal booster. If you can wire or wait, do so. If you can't, here are some things I did to make this buggy thing work. You need to be pretty tech savvy to get the job done.
I was hooking up the bridge to a wireless Linksys G access point ("wap").
To setup the bridge, I attached it to my Linksys G router. I initially got a System Error/IP Conflict message that made my network unusable. Tech support was not much help. I ended up attaching it to my network via a low-tech hub (I removed the hub later). The error went away and I could start programming.
I set the WAP, bridge, and router to the same SSID. Tech support gave inconsistent advice on this.
I put the WAP and router on different wireless channels. Tech support gave inconsistent advice on this as well.
On the WAP and every other wireless device OTHER THAN the router, I filtered out the MAC address of the bridge. This way, the bridge would only pick up the wireless signal from the router. If you have multiple access points on your network and need for the bridge to pick up the signal from an access point closer than the router, you would apply filter to the router too -- basically every wireless transmitter EXCEPT the one you want the bridge to pick up.
Once the setup was complete, I connected the bridge and the WAP (filtered, of course) to each other using the ethernet cable. I moved the bridge and its attached WAP to their final destinations and plugged them into their AC power. At this point, I abandoned the hub I used for setup. Please note, the bridge needed to be fairly close to the unfiltered transmitting device in order for it to work consistently. The attached WAP can go anywhere its cable will reach.
At this point, every thing "pinged," but not consistently. My last move was to play around with the channels of the unfiltered transmitting device until I found one that worked best.
One last pointer, this configuration required endless unplugging/repowering of the WAP and bridge. If things aren't working, be sure to try repowering before throwing in the towel
I nearly lot my mind doing this project. If my blood, sweat, and tears over this helps you then perhaps it wasn't a complete waste.
23 The Worst Product Ever! - Never buy Linksys
This is absolutely the worst product I have ever purchased - it simply doesn't work - Linksys has replaceed it four times with products that are equally bad - I give up - throw it away - waste of money and a big waste of time. Do not buy Linksys!
24 I Should Have Listened to The Bad Reviews
I currently have an 802.11b network and WET11 from Linksys. The system works great. When I read the bad reviews here I thought that it couldn't be true. I am writing to assure everyone that the bad reviews about this product are absolutely on the money. Poor connection, slow speed (slower than 802.11b if you are farther than 20 feet away), buggy software and no WPA! Do not buy this product. I had just purchased all new Linksys hardware to upgrade to 802.11g. I am returning it all. It's too bad - I have been turned from a Linksys supporter to a detractor. Now if there are any other wireless hardware manufacturers reading this - make a 802.11g wireless bridge. I will buy your bridge, router and notebook adapter right now. Good-bye Linksys!
25 Do NOT buy this Linksys WET54G!
The Linksys WET54G is a nice looking product, but it fails to connect effectively and consistently. (I have a Linksys WRT54G wireless network and a Linksys WPC54G notebook adapter card that I am very happy with). I attempted to install WET54G using WinXP, install CD failed with an error message BMCP.dll. I then attempted to install on Win2000, install got further but install failed due to "link lost" with WET54G. I gave up on the install CD and manually configured the Linksys WET54G using Internet Explorer on 192.168.1.226. I completed config, but it was extremely difficult to get the WET54G options to match my Linksys WRT54G which is the wireless station. Eventually I got a signal, but Ethernet on the WET54G kept dropping or was very, very slow. Finally I tried to reset the WET54G using the reset button. Now the power light flashes green but does not stay lit steady. This product has potential, but Linksys programming is sloppy and failed too many times. I returned this product as it does not work as advertised.
26 WET54G. unit trashed by firmware upgrade
Out of 3 units, 2 were trashed beyond use (flashing power light)
by the LinkSys firmware upgrade.
Cisco should have taken hold by now and not permitted such
atrocious programming.
The WET11 bridge has its own quality assurance problems,
but is nothing close to as bad as the WET54G
The one good unit (on firmware version 2.05) locked up and
needed rebooting after a week sitting around not doing much.
I cannot belive a company would be willing to risk its reputation
with such shoddy products...
27 Bad technology
I bought this bridge to connect to my Linksys Wireless-G Router (WRT54G). No matter what configuration settings I used, the two would not communicate unless they were connected via the Ethernet cable. All I wanted to do was connect my Ethernet enabled printer to the wireless network from the next room over. Maybe you need two bridges and have one physically plugged into the router and the other plugged into the network on the other side (in this case my printer). But then you have to fork over more than [the price](for two bridges) to do so. Linksys documents that the bridge will communicate with a wireless access point. Isn't the wireless router just a router that contains the wireless access point built in? The WET54G should communicate with the WRT54G wirelessly, and they do not.
28 Power issues
I have had 2 out of 5 of my WET54G bridges fail for no apparent reason. The power light just blinks on those, and the Linksys Support just says to send them in. I also had a Linksys BEFW11S4 start doing similar things. It is not my power's fault since they were all plugged in in 4 completely different locations/buildings when they failed. Linksys has some work to do to make these more stable/steady.
29 Still a work in progress
The setup of this access point is very straight forward and the web interface is fairly easy to use (although some advanced settings don't seem to be explained anywhere). However, the signal from this device seems to be very poor. If I put the access point next to the wireless router, I get around a 1.1Mbs transfer speed (same as my PCMCIA 54G card). At 15 feet (in direct sight), it drops down to between 500K-700Kbs. Put it around a corner (in my case, seven inches from being in direct sight) and you might as well give up. With a wall between the bridge and the router I would get about 6Kbs [six kilobits/second] (when it would work or not drop the line, etc). My PCMCIA card is still holding up at 800-900Kbs at this point. If you are not in direct sight and close to your router, you can expect your downloads to take tens of minutes rather than a handful of seconds. In all fairness, there could be something terribly wrong with my unit, but when I searched the web, I found similar complaints (other than here on Amazon). Also, we are running a G only network so the bridge cannot fall back to 802.11b speeds.
30 Connection Very Slow
I replaced two WET11 bridges with two WET54Gs. One is connected directly to a PC running Win2000; the other is connected to a network hub which in turn is connected to two PCs, one running Win2000 and other Red Hat Linux. On all PCs, the connection (both LAN and WAN) is extremely slow. I used to get close to 7 Mbps (LAN) and 1.2~1.5 Mbps (WAN through Comcast), but they're both under 500 Kbps now! I set up the bridges using the included CD-ROM, pretty much identically to the old WET11s. If this is the best the product can do, I must say I am highly disappointed.
31 Works Great! Setup a bit confusing.
I was able to get the bridge up and running with my Sony Playstation 2 in about an hour. The documentation was a little misleading and tells you to use the setup utility to configure the bridge. Since my router is using WEP encryption on key 3 I couldn't use the setup utility since it only allows you to specify encryption on key 1. I recommend using the admin web interface utility to set up the bridge. Then things becmoe very easy. I have not had any connection problems with this like I have seen in the other reviews. One down side is that the is no new firmware update for the WET54G to allow for WPA security, which is currently available for the WRT54g (wireless router) and the WPC54g (wireless notebook card).
32 Doesn't work with X-box live
I purchased this for the sole purpose of connecting my X-box. The setup was a breeze, but the connection is not strong enough for x-box live game play.
33 Still a work in progress
Let me say that I've been very happy with most of the Linksys products I used over the years, both wired and wireless, including my current wireless G router and PC card. However, along with the wireless B USB adapter I tried a few months ago, the WET54G did not quite live up to expectations. I couldn't communicate reliably with the device pure and simple. When I could access the bridge via it's ethernet or wireless connection either my browser would time out, or more commonly, I would get some of the web setup page, but with script errors or only partial information about the setup. When I could communicate with it, the reliable range was less than 30 feet direct line of site with no walls in between. I couldn't even stream mp3's reliably from a PC connected to it unless the bridge was within 10 feet of my WRT54G router. I second Tim Higgins excellent review at smallnetbuilder.com about it's limited range and hope that a firmware fix is in the works. Until then, my server PC will have to stay connected to my router via Cat5.
34 Is it G or B?
I had one heck of a time getting this to work with my WRT54G wireless router, and the reason for the difficulty is I couldn't get a connection when my router runs in G-only mode. When I set the router to mixed (b and g) mode it works fine. I'm not sure how this is an improvement over the cheaper WET11 B bridge. Interestingly, the WiFi certification label on the box indicates this is interoperable only with 2.4Ghz at 11Mbps and not 54Mbps.
How do they get away with calling it 2.4GHz/54Mbps?
