Customer Reviews
Very Disapointing 
2008-02-24
We run an inbound help desk and needed a QOS router as we just bought a new telephone system that can VOIP to our own private phones at remote locations. This router could NOT handle it at all! The wireless has less reach than the typical cheapie Linksys units we have come to love. Finally we boxed it up and sent it back. Got the Linksys Wireless N without external antennas and it's GREAT! Handles the QOS without fail, wireless G is awesome as we have no N units yet. Pass on this model!
One star is one too many 2008-02-03
I had moderate hopes for Linksys after Cisco's aquisition. OEMing a 3rd party product isn't one of the things I thought Cisco would do to their consumer base; at least not such a poorly developed product.
The WRV200 is, by far, the worst piece of networking equipment I have ever had the misfortune of installing.
Under normal operating circumstances I typically have to recycle the router at least once per day. This does not ensure all issues are resolved - only wireless connectivity (802.11g only - WPA2). The VPN passthrough consistently drops and is unable to reconnect. Mind you, I am no speaking of VPN endpoint connectivity, which this router supports. I am referring only to establishing a desktop-to-remote VPN connection passing through the WRV200. When it drops it can still ping the remote end-point, just not connect.
At this point, I have completely disconnected the WRV200 as one laptop can connect, one can't at all, another can, but at very low speeds, and my desktop can't bring up my VPN or work email connection. I have reverted to a Netgear spare that warrants about a 2-star rating.
Please, as another reviewer put it: "Save your time and your money." Add to that your sanity and it should be covered. Do not purchase this product; send your consumer message to Cisco!
Excellent Router 
2007-12-03
Installed easily, worked fine. I'm a pretty experienced user and had some complex requirements (like wanting a router which could act as a VPN server). I've had no problems at all with it.
The only limitation I've noticed is that it does not seem able to remap port numbers when doing port forwarding so, for example, if you forward port 1234, it's exposed to the Internet as 1234. This can be tricky if you want to forward the same server (and thus, same port) from 2 systems.
This is a piece of garbage! 2007-11-22
I purchased the Linksys WRV200 when I purchased my new home in hopes to get a wireless network up and running quickly. I work in IT and usually use Cisco Aironet 1200 but was confident that the cheap Linksys would suffice for home use with two users. I was wrong to think that this little piece of junk would work at all. The router loses connection with Comcast every other day and even after reboot; will not grab the public IP, Gateway, and DNS addresses. You have to unplug the Comcast modem and Linksys router and plug them in at the same time. This resolves that problem but it doesn't resolve the fact that the Linksys WRV200 loses wireless connectivity every half hour or so and I have to reboot the thing to get it to work again. I tried every encryption known to man, I've tried WMM, I've tried different channels, I've tried no DHCP and setting the computer to a static IP, and I've tried lowering the Beacon interval to no avail. Nothing keeps this thing from failing! Make sure you don't have a Broadcom Wireless NIC because that thing may never work with the router. All of my 5 computers have the same issue with the router so I know it's not the computers. I am going to have this thing UPS RED (overnighted) to one of my buddies in Iraq and have him mount it to a tank shell and fire it into the desert. I don't have time to deal with this bull! Imagine all the time we waste screwing around with devices that claim to work but don't. I think Linksys will be one of the companies that succeed in the future when Idiocracy becomes more apparent. The irony is that my router failed when I was writing this review. I had to save it and paste it into a new review. Unbelievable!
DO NOT BUY - SERIOUSLY, WORST ROUTER EVER 2007-11-11
I've not written a lot of reviews but felt compelled to warn other users against this router. This thing reboots more than Windows 95 used to and, yes, even with the very latest firmware updates. I even reduced the feature set I was using to almost nothing --- turned off DHCP, just tried to use passthrough and not endpoint routing. Didn't matter, got more than 3 people using it and it crashed constantly.
Specific flaws to watch out for:
1. Crashes unpredicatably and for no apparent reason
2. Virtually any admin task forces a reboot (trust me, gets really annoying over time when you tweak one thing and it requires a reboot)
3. VPN pass-through works for 30 mins at a time and crashes
4. Wireless signal easily overpowered by other devices despite the supposed powerboost feature
The real disappointing part is that it advertised up to 10 VPN tunnel support, so I thought it would be an okay small business router. Not so, it has to be the worst new piece of computer equipment I've purchased in the last couple years; probably not the worst ever but it's certainly in the running. I bought it more on brand/reputation since I have had plenty of linksys routers before that did just fine --- and frankly it was $80, so why not give it a try. Big mistake, they rushed this thing to market and you'll waste bunches of time trying to get around the holes and unreliability.
This baby is not ready for prime-time and, frankly, I don't see any firmware improvements fixing the underlying flaws. There is no option to give it a -5 stars or I would. While trying to get this thing to work I actually saw a review article where one guy said, "don't buy this router on pain of death" ... made me laugh. Guess he had it right.
Fyi, I took it back to the store and bought a Netgear VPN router; that router looked "less sophisticated" on paper (only 8 concurrent VPN tunnels) but so far it's been stable. Was about $120 compared to the $80 on this one, so I guess you get what you pay for.
Not even sure it deserves one star 2008-07-09
I've owned several other linksys products and I've been pretty happy with them. So happy that I blindly ordered the WRV200 thinking that it had the features I need and it should just work as advertised ... I was wrong. I battled with it for a few days and boxed it until the new updated firmware came out. Unfortunately it's more of the same. If you want to save yourself some pain and frustration, look around for something else.
So far so good. Easy to use and conf. 
2008-07-08
Personally hv had this item for few months by now, and it pretty much matches my expectation so far. It's easy to conf., and surely easy to use. I don't need to dig into the user manual and study it for finding how to use it. That's why I'm giving out 5 starts on this one.
Continually needs reboot - not dependable at all 2008-06-02
Talk about a pile of junk. I thought Linksys would be better after Cisco as well, my previous Linksys experience was poor so switch all of my equipment to a different brand which worked perfectly for 4 years until a recent failure. When it came time to update, that company is no longer making routers (bummer) so based on my VPN needs decided to go with the Linksys WRV200. What a mistake that was! The thing was horrible to set up and drops the connection many times throughout the day. All computers and the router itself needs to be re-booted to restore service. I am an IT professional and still these problems persist. Of course just make things more difficult, it may work fine for 1-2 days then just go down. DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT! Consider it as representative of Linksys, perhaps that will get their attention. BUY SOMETHING ELSE!
Useless product + atrocious cust. service makes this a definite NO!!! 2008-04-24
I am an IT technician and have worked with numerous routers over the years - this is the worst I've seen!
I had to recently install one of these routers on a client installation with 5 PCs and 5 VoIP phones connected via VPN to a central office. The bottom line is that this router has been nothing but trouble!
When more than one phone is connected (talking) the wireless connection intermittently starts shutting down. I've been with Linksys support over this issue already twice and they haven't provided a solution - the replacement unit they sent was a banged up refurbished unit with the exact same problems as the original.
Expect to spend a lot of time holding if you talk to their cust. service - anything but a first level moron takes about 30-40 minutes getting hold of. All are outsourced in India and speak bad US. English so you're in for a treat there as well!
I'd say the first one was bad but so was the second one so it seems like it is a unit issue. I advise anyone to stay away from this tremendous piece of junk.
WRV200 Review 
2008-02-26
This product has a great feature set. I was especially interested in the VLAN and VPN capabilities. I have tried out the former, but not yet the latter.
The ease of configuration is average. I didn't use the provided "quick start" software, as it started out by wanting the clone the MAC address of the PC. In my case, I need to clone the MAC address of the previous gateway box. I used the web management interface. I found it inconvenient that many (but not all) of "save settings" buttons on indivudal web pages cause the unit to reboot. It would be nice to configure all settings and then reboot once.
My biggest concern is with stability. At least with the firmware version that came pre-installed. I haven't checked for an update yet. I have two of these units, in different locations. Both of them failed to respond via the web-based management interface after a week or so of service. One of them actually stopped passing traffic from one of the wired ports to the WAN port. Both of these units required a power-cycle to clear the fault. I'm assuming that in the absence of a FW update, this problem is likely to recurr.
On that basis, I can't really recommend these units to others. Of course, revised FW might change that opinion. As I say, the features are great.
Linksys Wireless-G VPN Router with RangeBooster WRV200 - Wireless router + 4-port switch - EN, Fast EN, 802.11b, 802.11g - Linux
