Cisco-Linksys E1000 Wireless-N Router
Monday, September 6th, 2010I bought my E1000 to replace the Netopia 3347 provided by AT&T for our connection. We needed better QoS support than the Netopia could offer for our Vonage box and 3G microcell, so we "downgraded" the DSL modem to a Speedstream 5100 set up for bridged mode and bought the E1000 to use as a PPPoE router for us.
I should say up front that our needs are slightly unusual. We have a block of static IP addresses and a separate NAT router for our "inside" network. The devices on the "outside" network need addresses in that block to be served by a DHCP server, and I needed there to be no NAT or firewall in front of them.
This set of requirements befuddled other routers, but the E1000 was simple to set up for this configuration. I simply clicked two extra checkboxes to disable SPI and NAT after filling in the blanks to set up the DHCP server. It's refreshing that what amounts to an unusual configuration today was handled in stride, but given that this is a Cisco product, should not be that much of a surprise.
The only thing that hasn't worked 100% straight out of the box is the QoS setup. There is a setting to tell the router what your upload bandwidth is so that it can properly prioritize the packets. There is an "Auto" setting, but that doesn't appear to work properly. I wound up having to set it to manual and play with the numbers until I could see the latency stop going up on the high priority device(s) when I did a low priority bulk upload operation. It turns out that the right setting was the literal upload bandwidth of our DSL line (you'd expect to have to reduce this number by 20% or so to account for the overhead, but it appears that the router is doing this compensation for you).
I can't comment on the wireless aspects of the product - for me, the wireless is disabled, since I don't need it. And that, I guess, is the only other negative comment I might come up with - and it's not a knock against this product, but against the Cisco product line: there is no equivalent product that doesn't have wifi built-in. So you do have to pay for functionality you don't need. But the price is already so reasonable it's hard to complain too much.
The performance is excellent. With our DSL connection, our first-hop latency is just under 8 ms. That's the lowest I've ever personally encountered for a home Internet connection.
Model: E1000
Wireless N Router
- Enjoy the benefits of Wireless-N in your home--ideal for wireless Internet usage and home office productivity
- Connect your computers, wireless printers, smartphones, and other wireless devices at up to 300 Mbps of transfer speed
- Use four Fast Ethernet (10/100 Mbps) ports to directly connect wired devices
List Price: USD 72.99
Lowest Used Price: USD 45.99
Great
Had to get technical assistance in setting up (never used before). No one has problems logging in their laptops. No problems with interference in home. Would recommend.
Easiest install ever
Easiest install ever. Open box, insert instruction cd into computer, plug in power (step 1), plug in modem cable (step 2), wait a few mins for auto-install to take place (step 3). Done. Been up and running for 2 weeeks without any problem.
Effortless
I have never had a wireless router before. Bought this after my cable modem was installed. Connected in 1 minute, ran the cd and was up and running in minutes. Have had no problems. Excellent signal, works on our 2 laptops and is frankly amazing. Not sure why people have had problems, but I just ran the cd and have been happy. I download music and stream netflix all over the house. Amazing!
Once you get it going, great.
Aside from the typical statistics already listed i'm going to tell you how easy it was to set up.
First off, don't waste your time using the included the CD. At one of the very first steps of setting up it came back as failed, even though all plugs were set up properly. The program also won't advance any further and just gives you a link to the customer support page. There is also no paper manual in the box, you'll have to go online if you need further assistance. It is good to connect a physical ethernet while installing incase you do need to use the internet for help. Their customer service had me on hold for 5 minutes and by that time i had figured it out myself.
Instead use the browser based utility by entering 192.168.1.1 into your browser. (everything must be connected at this point, obviously.) The first thing you will want to do is change the password. It does come already default password protected- but the password is quite obvious. Next I set up a simple MAC restriction to the mac addresses of all items within the household. (Iphone, computers, etc.) This should provide you with more than enough security against the everyday snooper/hacker. I'd also recommend finding a simple (free) password generator program, the first result on google is a very nice one. this was actually quite SIMPLE! just go straight to using the browser utility and you shouldn't have any problems.
Performance: I did notice a nice little increase compared to my 8 year old non-wireless linksys, (improved about ~500kbps on a ~6mb/s line, and slightly decreased latencys, but this is all subjective depending on time of day. For all i know it made zero difference.) I would not recommend buying new routers simply just to get better download speed unless you really have a need for a product like this. You also won't need a 10/100/1000 E2000 model unless you are paying for some insane download speeds. At which point you probably won't be reading this if you have money like that to burn. Great every day average consumer product for newbies and pros, with some good customization and an easy interface. They really hit their target market with this product.
