Customer Reviews
RUNS HOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
2008-05-11
This product works really well. I feel though that there should be a recall on the product though many of the products are running extreamly hot and some people have problems configuring the product. I have been working with linksys products for over 7 years now this is by far the fast router I have ever used. I have my laptop hook up to the router on a Intel Draft N card built in my laptop. I will receive about 130MBPS. I have a wireless B printer and my PS3 hooked up on the linksys router. They all work really well.
Pros
Great look space saver for smaller areas such as a studio and a dorm room
Blends in to about everything
Runs just as fast with a heavy load on the router such as two computers on it at the same time and the PS3 on gamer mode.
Cons
Runs hot really hot. like a 3 year old laptop
Configures easy. Its so easy a monkey can do it.
Would I buy it again?
I live in a small area and linksys has the most secure settings on the market. I love the looks even though the heat issue is major for me I can live with it or until they make a fix for the router.
A very difficult company to deal with 
2008-05-06
This is a bad company. I purchased a wireless router from them and, truth be told, it never really worked right. The speed was ok, but it was impossible to set up without tech support and every so often it would simply stop working. When that happened I would be forced to call tech support and spend 30-60 minutes on the phone fighting with them about resetting the router. I recently purchased a new computer and decided to save a little money by moving this router to it. When I called tech support I was told that the router was out of its warranty period and they could not help me... unless I would pay them to. That's right, I would have to pay for the assistance on their product - a working product because it was not under warranty.
So be warned that you are only buying the option to use Linksys' products for a limited time - that is if you have any problems whatsoever that require tech support. I am now trying a Trendnet. Let's see if they are any better.
Great speed and range 
2008-05-04
I have been very pleased with my purchase of this product. It offers great speed and range for my wireless devices. 802.11g devices have no problem connecting to it. Setup was a breeze. I highly recommend this router.
Wireless N Router 2008-05-03
Excellent product I replaced my old router for this one and I really like how it works, I am not an expert in computers, bur it was really easy to install.
Works fine with Mac 2008-05-02
For years, we have been happy users of a Netgear MR314 wireless router. But it didn't reach the farthest corner of our home. In looking at various routers, I found many mixed reviews for the newer Netgear routers, so decided to try the Linksys WRT160N. We use almost nothing but Macs in our home.
Setup: Forget the included CD that comes with this router, it is Windows only. It does have the User Guide as a PDF buried in one of the folders. But it is not much help.
Instead, just turn on the router, look for the wireless signal (or plug in directly using an ethernet cable), then use FireFox - the current Safari doesn't work and any changes cause a "server unexpectedly dropped connection" error.
Type: 192.168.1.1 in the browser, then user name "linksys" and password "admin" to get the web based setup menus.
From there, if you have any questions, click on the "Help" link for the individual pages. The help there is much better than in the User Guide.
This router does reach the far corner of our house, and is able to use WPA, etc.
I would have given the router 5 stars if the documentation had been better, and if the Mac had been included. (Even though it's really really simple to set up the Mac for wireless, it's still nice to be recognized.)
Sleek 2008-04-28
The Ultra RangePlus Wireless-N Broadband Router is really three devices in one package. There's the Wireless Access Point, which lets you connect to the network without wires. There's also a built-in 4-port full-duplex 10/100 Switch to connect your wired-Ethernet devices together. The Router function ties it all together and lets your whole network share a high-speed cable or DSL Internet connection. The Access Point built into the Router uses the very latest wireless networking technology. By overlaying the signals of multiple radios, Wireless-N's Multiple In, Multiple Out (MIMO) technology multiplies the effective data rate. The robust signal travels farther, maintaining wireless connections much farther than standard Wireless-G. Wireless-N can dynamically enable double-speed mode for Wireless-N devices, while still connecting to other wireless devices at their respective fastest speeds. In congested areas, the Good Neighbor mode ensures that the Router checks for other wireless devices in the area before gobbling up the radio band. To help protect your data and privacy, the Router can encode all wireless transmissions with industrial-strength 256-bit encryption. It can serve as your network's DHCP Server, has a powerful SPI firewall to protect your PCs against intruders and most known Internet attacks, and supports VPN pass-through. Configuration is a snap with the web browser-based configuration utility. The incredible speed of Wireless-N makes it ideal for media-centric applications like streaming video, gaming, and Voice over IP telephony, and gives you plenty of headroom to run multiple media-intense data streams through the network at the same time, with no degradation in performance. With the Linksys Wireless-N Broadband Router at the center of your home or office network, you can share a high-speed Internet connection, files, printers, and multi-player games, and run media-intensive applications at incredi
Indeed a stronger signal 2008-04-25
After 6 years I replaced my old wireless b router with this N router. I had difficulties with a weak signal with the old one. With the old one the signal sometimes dropped completely and it roled me over to a stronger wireless signal from one of my neighbours. This N Router has a powerfull signal. It improved the reliability of receiving a wireless signal a lot. The router looks slick, it is small and stylisch compared to the old one. Installing was easy an quick. Good documentation. I had difficulty going through the recommended WPA set-up compared with the WEP set-up I was used to. I don't understand the need for all the options, but I guess you can always select the default. Some of the wireless game receivers had difficulty with the WPA set-up. I therefore plugged my old wireless into one of the ports and set that up with WEP for the game applications. It is all working fine.
Not too powerful at all, my G router was better 
2008-04-25
I wanted to like this sleek router and I paid extra for the N capability as I wanted to improve my connection strength and speed. Unfortunately, this works no better than my G router, in fact it keeps disconnecting me from the internet for no reason at all and even when it works the signal strength keeps fluctuating and the "Connected" box keeps popping up every few minutes making it extremely annoying. In fact, the signal strength is actually poorer in some spots where it used to be good. It also does not support VPN connections and results in a lot of drop outs. I also use a Vonage VOIP phone over my cable internet connection which is connected to this router. I was expecting some voice quality improvement too after installing this router, but there is no improvement at all. In fact, since the connection keeps getting dropped people keep thinking I'm hanging up on them, which is not good at all!
However on the pro side, the set up of this router was super-easy and took no effort on my part. All I did was pop in the CD and then followed the simple directions and 10 minutes later the router was installed.
I find the design very sleek but the blue icons on the front panel are very brightly lit and very distracting at night unless covered with something.
Overall, I am quite disappointed with the performance of this router and I'm going to send it back and go back to my older G-router.
Dropping connection & seems no faster than B 2008-04-25
I really struggled with how many stars to give this system. Set-up and configuring wasn't too bad. We had a couple glitches but got through it without too much profanity. It looks great! Our previous router was Linksys wireless-B. Hubby got me a brand new laptop for my birthday with draft N card so my thought was "why not utilize that upgrade or otherwise, what's the point?" (Note to self from this point on: Always be wary of trying to fix something that isn't broken.) Actually, the wireless B was a little "broken" as in we had to constantly (2 to 3 times per day) unplug and plug back in the power cord to the router. We were never able to figure out why we had to do this.
Anyway, after a huge amount of reading I decided to go with the Linksys WRT160N. Long story short-I am now losing my connection on my laptop 10x's more than I ever did with the wireless-B. I could surf from anywhere in the house with the old router and now have trouble when I'm in bed about 15 feet away from the router. We may have had to unplug and plug a few times a day with the old router but 99% of the time it was after it had set idle for a few hours. For example, in the morning it always had to be done. I never lost my connection in the middle of working like I am now.
Hubby said he's lost his connection downstairs too, only not near as often as my laptop. He's directly below the router with a wireless-N adapter. Router is connected to another pc upstairs. (Which is what I'm writing this review on b/c I'm sick of my connection dropping.) Upstairs is where I am surfing 99.9% of the time with my laptop. Always within 20 feet of the router.
Also, says it's running anywhere from 80-130 but I swear my laptop isn't any faster now than before. Maybe it's constantly trying to find the connection, not sure. I've contacted Dell making sure there was nothing I'd done wrong with my laptop and there isn't. I know it's the router b/c I can be on my sofa and lose the connection and while it's trying to find it again, get up and walk towards the router and voila! Connected again. Walk away and repeat. This distance I speak of is less than 20 feet away with no walls in between. FYI:We live in the country so I'm not getting interference from other "users" either. I don't think they could get connected anyway.
I really wanted this to be awesome and it just isn't. I have to keep my whining to a minimum b/c I was the one who insisted on getting a new router. I almost got the wireless-G and yet I'm not sure that would have been any better. I guess a positive note is that we don't have to unplug and plug every morning, afternoon and night. For the most part, my laptop seems to be the only one struggling with this router. Which is why I gave it 3 stars. After all, what good is a wireless-N router if it can't keep a wireless-N (draft) laptop connected?
As always, Amy/Daryll's better half
Good but not enough - poor VPN support 2008-04-22
I have used wireless networking at work for quite a while but had put off installing it at home for security reasons. With a few new gadgets that could take advantage of new high speed capabilities, I decided to jump in and ordered a WRT160N to replace my existing Linksys wired router.
The wireless router showed up very quickly on my doorstep. I unpacked it and was very impressed with the small size and the good looks. I appreciate technology, but I like the style of this unit since it does not appear to be an alien space craft.
Loading the CD and following the instructions, I had it up and running in just a few minutes. My new laptop connected wirelessly very quickly and a few simple firewall updates had the system running the existing wired network, the laptop and even my Blackberry Curve using the WPA2 Personal security encoding with minimal hassle or delay. Connection speed was 130 Mbs and I was able to get a signal at the far end of the house. Subsequent connections had no problems either. I was impressed.
As I mentioned, I was connecting my laptop from work to the system. My employer is security conscious, so we use a VPN every time we connect from outside our building. The WRT160N connected using the VPN without a problem. However, part of the WPA security protocol is the concept of changing the encryption key on a regular basis. The sender and receiver are supposed to exchange the new key and then continue on seamlessly. Unfortunately, the router dropped the internet connection every time the key changed. This was a pain, especially when doing big file transfers when the connection was dropped. The dropped connection cannot be reconnected until I went through the whole VPN authentication routine again, which gave me another hour or less if I didn't manually re-connect right away.
I set to the key resynchronization interval to different times (very easy to do in the router control panel) and confirmed this was the cause. My family also noticed some weird browser lockups that had not occurred before installing the router (or after replacing it).
I contacted Linksys technical support about this issue. First, I will say that I was very impressed with the support person I spoke with. They responded very quickly, were knowledgeable about their product and very helpful. They seemed very friendly too. Unfortunately, they told me that dropping the internet connection when changing keys was a known problem with the WRT160N. I suppose these things happen (don't the developers try this with their Cisco/Linksys laptop at night?), so I inquired about a firmware patch. Unfortunately, there is no patch scheduled at this point. They suggested using WEP, but I noted that their own manual stated that WEP encryption was easily broken, not secure and not recommended. There was no push-back on this.
I discussed the situation with the support person, and they recommended that I return the unit. So I did...I took it to the post office this morning.
In honesty, the support provided was about the best I have ever. The symptoms were quickly understood, problem was identified, a possible solution was proposed and an honest recommendation was made in a matter of minutes. They even sent me a complete transcript of the exchange. I was very impressed with the support team, especially compared to some other high-tech products.
I wanted to like this unit and never have to think about it again (because it was just doing its job). Installation was fast and easy, it looked good, and it connected well. Support was top notch. However, dropping the connection all the time is not acceptable. I consider this very normal usage (certainly not an exotic application) that should not happen. I am back to the wired router. It is working, but I am disappointed with the WRT160N.
