Why Linksys routers are so cheap...

[Gerry Hull]

Wow.

I've been on this list for a about a year now, and am always impressed
by the knowledge of this group.

However, I simply cannot understand why you guys have to bash consumer
products so much.

I have a completely opposite opinion of Linksys routers.

They serve a market.  They ARE cheap enough to be replaced if necessary.

However, for the money, the MTBF for the dollars are incredible.   And
they do perform.
If you understand their limitations and implement them effectively,
they can a perfect solution in home/office or small business
networking.

I've used the WRT54 series since inception in my decent-sized home
office for, gosh, as long as they have been around (10+ years anyway).
 I've used DD-WRT ever since it's been available.  DD-WRT is pretty
great stuff.

How many failures have I had in ten years?  One.  We had a nearby
lighting strike, and I lost a bunch of wal-wart powered gear.  It had
lasted about 7 years.

I have 8 PCs, two servers and an Asterisk PBX behind the WRT54GL I am
currently using.
It works flawlessly.  I use SIP, IAX, UNISTIM and SCCP telecom
protocols as well as a couple of favors of VPN through the router --
and I can configure it very easily while other fumble with extremely
complex configuration procedures.

I do agree that some of the other consumer-level routers are just BAD.
  Most of the consumer products run the same group of chipsets -- it's
usually the firmware that is really buggy.  I avoid consumer products
outside Linksys, and try to run open-source firmware whenever
possible.

On the support front, I can name you dozens of big-name technology
companies who have support FAR worse than Linksys consumer support.  I
would suggest, however, that 99% of the people on this list know more
about Linksys products than 100% of the Linksys support staff... So I
would not waste your time calling.

Thanks for such a vibrant list!   I'll go back to reading now.

YMMV,

Regards,

Gerry
gerry at telosity.com
SIP:gerry at telosity.com, *0111599 at sipbroker.com | Skype: gerryw1ve |
iNum: +883-510-07-300 2810