Product Review: Linksys WRT350N Wireless-N Gigabit Router

I've been using the Linksys WRT350N Wireless-N home network system for several months now. The device consists of a wireless access point, a built-in four-port full-duplex 10/100 switch which connects to an Ethernet device, the router, a storage link which can take a USB hard drive or flash drive for additional storage space, and a built-in media server which can stream media from this storage device to a universal plug and play media adapter. Wireless-N technology uses Multiple In, Multiple Out (MIMO) technology to increase the rate of data transfer. The Wireless-N router is compatible with Wireless-G and -B equipment.

The Linksys WRT350N wireless home network is fairly easy to install. Overall I have had a good experience with the router. It is very fast, and the signal is very strong. Yet I have run into some problems using it.

While Wireless-N is the newest and fastest technology presently available, and is very secure, I have had significant problems logging on. The software installs fairly simply from a CD. A wireless access point must be installed on the other computers in the network. I have two other computers which I connect to this one; an IBM Thinkpad laptop, and an HP Pavilion a600n desktop with an AMD Athlon processor.

Once the initial setup for the Linksys WRT350N Wireless-N router and access point are complete, the log-on should be pretty automatic. However, I still found myself reinstalling software and re-entering passcodes when I should not have to. There was a considerable amount of frustration, particularly when my son tried to log on to his computer. The software for the wireless access point continually lost our network name, and instead simply listed the network as "linksys." It often reported the router as Wireless-G rather than Wireless-N. It became difficult to tell which network was ours. Then it gave us the wrong log-in type, so that we had to attempt to log-in several times before we were successful.

In one instance, I was forced to reset the router, and my entire high-speed internet service stopped working. I had to reset both the modem and the router to get them working again.