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Linksys WRT55AG (Sucks) Review

July 20, 2005

Linksys WRT55AGI hate it when I don’t do my homework on a new piece of hardware, and it comes back to bite me in the ass. Particularly when it’s from a company that I’ve sworn I’d never buy from again, like Linksys.

For several years I’ve been living happily behind a little Linux box, running IPCop as a firewall and router. It worked excellently, even on the old last-legs box it was running on. Unfortunately, it had gotten to the point where it was out of legs, and I’d need to actually drop some money into hardware to keep it running much longer.

At the same time, I was trying to fix my problems with Windows Media Center by making sure all of my hardware was on the “certified” list. Although I wasn’t looking to solve any network problems, I happened to notice that the Linksys WRT55AG was on the list, and so figuring to kill two birds with one stone, I purchased one (along with some other more on-point hardware), and sat it off to the side.

In due course, the little IPCop box finally expired, and I dug out the WRT55AG and plugged it in.

What a nightmare!


I’ve had trouble with Linksys routers in the past, but this was a new low. It had plenty of problems, but the absolute worst was that if the upstream side of the connection got busy, the damn thing would just die. No response to ping, let alone an actual connection to the internet.

It’s bad enough when this happens during an FTP session, but this thing would die when you tried to press your luck and open a new web page while on a VOIP call.

Forget about running anything like bittorrent, or multi-player games.

Digging around online looking for a solution — a setting, or a firmware upgrade, or third-party firmware perhaps — I found that I was far from the only person with this problem.

Folks who didn’t have this problem had problems with WEP encryption killing the wireless, poor wireless range, non-working MAC address filters, and a myriad of other problems.

Unfortunately, I left it sit too long to make returning it practical, so I’m now the proud owner of another useless Linksys piece of crap.

If you’re shopping around for one of these routers, take my advice and run. On the other hand, if frustration is your thing, and you still want one, let me know — I’ll make you a hell of deal.

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2.8
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Written by User ImageChuck Lawson · Filed Under Reviews, Tech 
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Comments

8 Responses to “Linksys WRT55AG (Sucks) Review”

  1. no imagerimone (Check me out!) on July 24th, 2005 1:08 pm

    yeah, we have one which just half-died yesterday…i’m ok (wired up) and now chris is wired as well. we’re both not too pleased and are getting another ASAP (i’ll talk to you first).

    Rate this:
    		2.5
  2. no imageChuck Lawson (Check me out!) on July 24th, 2005 6:11 pm

    Sorry to hear it — I don’t know what all specifically you’re looking for, but I’m still real pleased with the d-link, for whattever that’s worth.

    Rate this:
    		2.5
  3. no imageF451 (Check me out!) on August 23rd, 2005 10:41 am

    I’ve had one for some time now and it has worked perfectly. Which version of firmware do people have in their WRT55AG? It does make a difference.

    Rate this:
    		2.5
  4. no imageKerrin (Check me out!) on August 29th, 2005 6:53 pm

    Please, please, please help. I have a $100 bet on the fact I can get this piece of junk working with a friends IP phone. I’ve opened every port put the phone in a DMZ and evey other thing I can think of and it still persists in blocking all inbound streams to the phone. Please someone recommend a good third party firmware….

    Rate this:
    		2.5
  5. no imageMike Moran (Check me out!) on September 14th, 2005 7:39 pm

    Forget this POS. I just found out after 3 units and 6 hours of tech support that there is an incompatibility issue with most motorolla VOIP modems. (Cablevision). Linksys finally admitted they are working on a firmware release to fix. Would NOT acquire a routable DHCP address from ISP.

    Rate this:
    		2.5
  6. no imageAndy Hall (Check me out!) on October 13th, 2005 3:31 am

    Well - I too wish I had done my homework. Had two of these damned things, now and they have both managed to ’switch off’ completely while running radiocast during the night. Cannot get the power to come back on again. Good job there are good consumer laws - I’m getting something else.

    Rate this:
    		2.5
  7. no imagePaul Cobben (Check me out!) on February 12th, 2006 10:44 am

    I’m a happy user of 2 perfect routers from the brand Linksys. I’ve used a third-party firmware (Sveasoft) and setup a wireless WDS-link between those routers. It was done in a few minutes. Even WPA-encryption was a simple thing to do. But yeah, I’m sorry to tell, that i am someone who Reads The Fucking Manual. (RTFM)

    Rate this:
    		2.5
  8. no imageChuck Lawson (Check me out!) on February 12th, 2006 10:47 am

    Paul, that’s great — only this isn’t one of the models of Linksys that have third party firmware available (or at least it wasn’t at the time I posted this; I haven’t bothered to look again.)

    I did RTFM. I just wish I hadn’t BTFR.

    Rate this:
    		2.5

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