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Linksys WRT540 - A First Look
After having returned an Airport Extreme Base Station for the lack of a Web Configuration Utility (so I can modify the config within a Linux system) I ordered a machine at more or less the same price: A Linksys WRT350 with Pre-N-Wireless and storage link to attach external USB devices. Today it arrived and I have already made some tests. But first things first: After opening the package I got a bad feeling seeing Software-CD while noticing the system requirements on the box: Windows XP or newer. My feelings got worse when I saw the first pages of the manual telling me I should insert the CD, blabla...
But finally I read something. If you want to do the alternate configuration via HTTP, do... So I quickly connected everything and boom! The HTTP interface let me configure all the things I needed. First I set the wireless name to 'Wardrivers Hell', then I made sure this router deserves this name :). WPA2 and a Mac filter did it for me. Then I enabled my MacBook wireless on Ubuntu with the Madwifi driver and... damn, it connected! Speed was only 54 MBits, but that's okay for me.
Then I fired up my favourite open source game - Tremulous - and looked at the ping. Coming from the Apple Extreme Router which gave me partly unplayable pings even in OSX I did not expect too much. At first it also seemed to lag. But the pings started to get lower and lower. I ended up at 40! This means this Linksys baby added only 5 to 10 ms to my ping which used to be about 35 with direct cable connection without a router! I haven't done heavy testing so far, but this Linksys machine seems to be the most impressive router I have ever seen. I didn't even know that such low pings over wireless are even possible.
Ok after the game experience I faced the less important things: I attached my USB-harddrive and - in a few minutes - I had set up an FTP server in the Linksys HTTP configuration. I tested the download speed and got about 2,5 MBytes per second, which is Wireless-G speed. But my MacBook does more, so I booted in OSX and... same results. A lil bit confused I tried to figure out howto check wheater this Wireless-N-Enabler is still active, because I did a system reinstall a few days ago. It was not... So I grabbed the latest and greatest enabler again (don't ask me where :-) and did the update. After a restart I ended up in 3,5 MBytes per second reading from the attached USB hard drive - not that speedy, but nice! Then I tested IChat Video Conversation with a friend and still no problems.
Finally I have to admit, that a Router cannot prove its brilliance in one single day. In the long run, stability and robustness are the important keywords... but for now I think this baby was worth the price!
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