****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
The Linksys 4-Port Cable/DSL Router has always been my top recommendation to friends, family, and co-workers needing to setup a small home or office network. It has more features than what most small office networks need, and is still very intuitive. The web interface makes changing options a pleasure. A pleasure, that is, unless you are an advanced user. This is my only complaint. There are times that having a remote logging shell (rlogin, telnet, ssh, SOMETHING) would ease many administrative pains. This especially goes for unix lovers who live under the wing of the bourne shell. But, again, this is for small home/office networks. Both DHCP and static IP's can be utilized. Port forwarding is another great feature, for anyone wishing to run a server that can be accessed outside of the network. For example, you can have all requests to the router on port 21 (FTP) to be forwarded to an adminitrator-specified machine. And all requests to port 25 (SMTP) to go to another machine. There is also an option for DMZ Host, which allows all ports to be forwarded to a single machine (in other words, all ports are open). You can even define the MAC address for the WAN. Another cool feature is filtering certain computers from getting internet access. Great for parents not wanting their children to get on the internet in the privacy of their own room, or an office computer that general clients/public can use. Also has an extension port, so if your network keeps growing, you can always buy a small switch (or hub if you're cheap) and there you go! More ports! One more thing. The uptime is good. Only once have I had a problem, which I never had the chance to really troubleshoot because it stopped occurring. What happened was this: About every 5 minutes I would lose internet access, but upon logging into the router and checking the status, it would say it was connected. Not until I would manually reset the router would I have internet access again. This happened repeatedly for about a full day, out of the blue. But then the problem stopped, just as quickly as it came. I haven't had the same problem again. My own linksys is about a year old and is still in great shape. So, to sum up, for the price this is a true bargain. A great quality product that has won my loyalty and the loyalty of many friends and relatives.
