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Linksys EtherFast Ethernet Router

EtherFast Ethernet Router

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Most recent User Reviews for

Linksys EtherFast Ethernet Router

  • Reviewed by: daDave

    03-23-06

    Duration of ownership: 23 Months

    Strengths: Loads of features, VPN, Firewall, etc.

    Weaknesses:Tends to die a slow death.

    Overall Evaluation: I've had two BEFSX41's. One I bought in April 2004 which died in July 2005 whence I bought the second one. The second one became unstable and undependable and kept losing connection on my LAN. Frustrated, today I replaced this router with a Netgear which I hope to have better luck with. The BEFSX41 when new was a fabulous router. It just gets old fast or dies on me. I?m giving this a low rating because of it?s short life span.

  • Reviewed by: gyndoc

    01-04-06

    Duration of ownership: 2 Years

    Strengths: Works ok for about a year but that's it.

    Weaknesses:Throw away product after 1 year

    Overall Evaluation: I had two of these babies, one at home and one at work and both worked well for about a year and then there were innumerable crashes requiring the units to be powered off and reset. Two or three times a week without any consistency. I tried everything including flashing to the latest bios and spent a lot of time driving to the office to reset the system everytime it went down. Contact to support was worthless. Found an article on the web suggesting that the capacitors in the unit become deformed after a year and that is the probable cause of the problem and I suspect it is. There are many complaints on the web about these units having unexplained failures requiring power off and reboot. Switched out home router with office one and still had the same problem. At least when the home router goes I am right next to it and reboot is easy.Bought a d-link 604 just to see if it worked better and have not had one single need to reset the unit since I switched and that is about 1 month. I depend on gotomypc to connect to my office system and my units are always on line since I switched to dlink. Now I haven't had the dlink for more than a month or so and I can't give long term results yet but so far the money I have saved on gas alone driving to the office to reboot the router has paid for the new router and a 16 port switch. From my experience I would not go near another linksys product again (even though I own stock in Cisco). Next, I will put a dlink at home and plan on taking the linksys apart to see if my capacitors are deformed as observed by others. Than I will throw the linksys units away as the cost does not warrant repair. Hope this helps others.

  • Reviewed by: dave_1

    12-19-05

    Duration of ownership:

    Strengths: Easily configurable, marketing seems good, good store presence.

    Weaknesses:Weak firmware updates, linksys has not made a firmware version since 2004, allows DOS attacks, people able to view private ip, needs help.

    Overall Evaluation: I just bought this firewall/router, and am not impressed, I had software that worked every bit as well, and that should never be the case. Linksys needs to get on it with the firmware upgrades to fix the bugs that the bef series of firewall/routers has. I have seen much better equipment out there, I gave this firewall/router a chance because the stores were out of the brand I was looking for, I am not impressed with the quality of this equipment.David C. Atkin

  • Reviewed by: dougpenneman

    11-01-05

    Duration of ownership: 2 Years

    Strengths: Cheap solution (but not in the long run)

    Weaknesses:Random disconnects, bad tech support

    Overall Evaluation: We have two VPN connections to one router and they constantly reconnect on a random basis. They can actually go for days without a problem and then one connection will reconnect every two minutes for a while. Then the other may be every 3 hours. It is a great mystery. Unreliable and the users are getting upset about being kicked out of their accounting. I will be replacing these routers. There is no tech support for a bad design. I figure I could spend $500 each on new ones and it would be cheaper. P.S. - I have used Linksys routers for years. They have their problems but seem to be decent for plain old Internet access, but don't use them for anything else.

  • Reviewed by: marcin12

    08-31-05

    Duration of ownership: 2 Months

    Strengths: Good for heavy traffic, good performance

    Weaknesses:Kinda hard to setup with intial firmware. Lack of firmware.

    Overall Evaluation: I have this router and very satisfied with it for right now. I use my internet connection for downloading and uploading and this router doesn't give me any problems with it. I had wireless routers before from belkin and linksys and both would turn internet off or slow it down once the internet was under heavy use. When I got this router I had problem with setting it up but finally I setup, till to day I don't know how. It took me like 30min. Funny thing is that I updated firmware to 1.51.0 reset router few times, hook it up and it worked without any setup. Yes router was reset becasue later when I went in configuration my setting were earased. The firmware 1.51.0 is a beta firmware not offical release. It seems that router works better with this firmware for right now

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