Why Linksys routers are so cheap...

[Jerry Feldman]

On 09/22/2009 09:24 AM, Hewitt_Tech wrote:
> That's true. I thought of that as I made the recommendation for more 
> competently designed/built equipment. Cisco does own Linksys. I would 
> say that back when Linksys was a standalone company they did a much 
> better job supporting their gear but that was at least 4 or 5 years ago.
>   
Basically, I would not place a low-end router in a mission-critical
business situation. I have used Linksys routers for years at home, but
the last one I bought ended up failing to the point where it would not
even work as a switch. I am using a WRT54G here in the office as a WAP,
but we don't depend on it, and the price was right (eg. free another
company abandoned it). I am currently looking at changing our ISP here
at work. We currently are using Regus' internal service that gives us a
shared environment capped at 2Mbps. Before they upgraded we had a higher
bandwidth. Furthermore, they changed their carrier from AT&T to Level3,
and there is a significant latency. For instance, on the old network, I
could ping blu.org in where it now takes over 70ms consistently. A
traceroute shows the latency occurs in Level3's Cincinnati  center. In
any case, I think that Regus is going to give us 3Mbps dedicated for the
same price we are paying now (exorbitant). I do have a meeting with RCN
on Thursday. However, if we go with another carrier, I'll need to
acquire a router because we must have several static IPs. My thought is
that I should be able to save a few $100s per month for a higher bandwidth.

We don't server any web pages from here. Mainly what we do is downloads
and some X over IP when someone works from home (through Citrix).

The basic bottom line is that I will no longer buy Linksys until they
improve their systems. I replaced my home system with a D-Link that
seems to be working fine. Sorry for the harangue, but I used to be a
Linksys proponent.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846


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