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Linksys Etherfast Cable/DSL Router BEFSR41
Linksys (
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Electronics |
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£
32.74 |
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subject to change. |
usually dispatched within 24 hours. |
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Linksys BEFSR41 - networking is so easy  |
I had been investigating the purchase of a router for a while and settled on the Linksys BEFSR41. With 4 switched ports, including an uplink for connection to a hub, it can service over 200 PCs on a network. For my 3 bedroomed house, I felt that would be enough for my needs (haha). Also, being a switch, it gives you full broadband speed on all internet connections and doesnt share the bandwidth as a hub would do. Congrats too to Amazon. Checked all the specialist suppliers and the usual retail sites. Guess who was the cheapest ? Yep Amazon. Setup is a breeze. I had an existing network, but simply running the "Run me first" CD that comes with the router sorted everything out. The setup changed all the IPs etc as necessary and also picked up my existing MAC without any manual intervention at all. I also have a VPN connection for work, and it took 5 minutes to get that going. In all complete setup took 30 mins from opening the box. Great piece of kit, easy to use, great support and online documentation. If you have ever fancied having a home network, but were maybe a bit scared you were out of your depth.....then the Linksys is for you.
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Fantastic piece of kit |
I bought this router recently to accommodate the various broadband enabled devices in my home, allowing them to share the connection and was very impressed at how easy it is to set-up. It is not difficult to do and will auto-configure itself to "mimick" the PC you registered your broadband with. Then, simply connect your other devices to the ports on the back of the system and away you go! If only all things in life were this easy :)It has a rich feature set and has a very effective web-based interface to accommodate changes to the system and your home network, some well written manuals (worth a read) and external links to web support if you do hit any problems. Also included are facilities to update to routers firmware, which is also very simple to do (get this: download driver, go to firmware upgrade, open file and, er, thats it!) The router also works well with XBox and Gamecube online features - simply plug and play, literally! Overall, money very well spent.
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Linksys do a Top Job |
After weeks of trying in vain to share a cable modem with Windoze Connection Sharing and other, equally hopeless, software solutions, this was well worth ... [the price]... and has the added advantage of not putting extra strain on the resources of one machine that software sharing could. The fastest and easiest piece of hardware I have ever installed in 9 years of tech support, bar none. I put the router setup disk in the pc with the cable modem attached (must be by network card, not USB) and ran the wizard. It read the configuration and asked for both pc and cable modem to be disconnected and plugged into the router. Setup continued, set the router up, then finished, and all I had to do after that was connect the other pcs one by one and run the disk on them. 3 machines set up fine this way, so we put it to the test by linking a standard 8-way hub to the next port and connecting three more machines. Even through the hub the setup wizard ran once on each machine and voila! All 3 were online, first time, no hassle. One of these is now happily sharing 6 machines at work, making secure, centralised email and browsing much easier for us and adding a hardwired component to the security software; another runs 2 at home. The machines range from a 2.5 P4 to a 500 Laptop to an old P100, most being between and 1 and 2GHz. We have yet to find anything that hasnt worked with it. For a no aggravation network with secure internet access for the home or small office, this is how it should be. It does exactly what it says, sets up a fast, permanent internet connection that will work on any pc you connect to your network, even across hubs and, for me at least, first time. This is what real technical support is all about. Outstanding.
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