SmallNetBuilder

As a caveat, it is quite fast when working properly. however a majority of the time this sh*t crashes CONSTANTLY. not worth the $150

There must be something wrong with me, I keep buying product from Linksys but they ALWAYS let me down. the latest E4200 after 6 months has suddenly started hanging and has cut throughput from my internet connection from 30MbPS to about 3MbPS. When they work they are fine but how can a company this large get away with building such fragile products?

Even though these jokers offer 12 months of hardware support there is only 90 days of telephone support so you have to pay to get this useless hardware working despite the hardware warranty. So after countless WRT54G's, two E3000's and now the E4200 I paid my money to Apple and bought an Airport. It may not have all of the fancy features of the Linksys but I have a feeling it will be working in 6 months time.

Any suggestion for what to do with my Linksys graveyard of 6 dead wireless routers?

Not impressed. Maybe the reviewer got a golden sample. The range on my first one was about 30 feet before signal dropped off massively. Straight shot down the hall of my house, no metal. The second one, after RMA, was better for the first day until it had a chance to heat up (overheat?) then it's range dropped off as well. THAT seemed very telling to me. I live in a cool region of the country, and this thing still gets very hot here. Designed with no thought to heat dissipation, the top is cup shaped, holds heat in. If it lasts long enough to be out of warranty I'll drill holes in it to let heat out. They could have put unobtrusive lights on the top to indicate cable connectivity, just make them muted and unblinking, like my 5-port D-Link switch. Antenna design is poor, but maybe the best you can do in a saucer shape?

Pros:
Easy to set up
Separate 2.4 & 5GHz SSIDs.
Looks swoopy like a flying saucer
Can run DD-WRT
RMA process was quick. (something of a pro, I guess)

Cons:
Short radio range
HOT, HOT, HOT
No lights on top, you wonder if your cable is plugged in, no?

Other:
I think it would have great radio range straight above and straight below it, just based on the antenna design. Do you live in a tall, thin, tower ? Put it on the top floor and try it out !!
I would also keep in mind that my perceived radio range is affected by the laptops antenna design as well, maybe I just have a crappy laptop.

I owned a DLink 855 that was a simultaneous dual band device. However the 5 gHz range was so low that I couldn't use it practically, I would get about 6 mbs connection that constantly dropped out. This router gives me a solid 120 mbs with stability. That pretty much says it all for me.

Latest firmware (1.0.0.2) does support IPv6 even though Tim Higgins review says that it doesn't.

Pros:
Amazing routing speeds thanks to Cut Through Routing and Fast NAT (this is even faster than the OpenSource firmwares available for it)
Great wireless range and speeds on both, 5gHz and 2gHz
Compatible with many OpenSource Distros.

Cons:
Logging is very poor.

Indifferent:
NAS, FTP and DLNA features, why bother! The CPU really is not up to the task for smb protocol hence poor transfer speeds, much the same with the DLNA (Twonky) server and no value in having an FTP server these days.
Tim highlights guest access as a con. Probably so for the niche number of people who genuinely need it on the 5gHz channel.

After good reviews bought myself an upgrade to the e4200 over my good old dir-855. Instead of your own performance tests lan-wan didnt even get up with 100mbit full (my internet connection). Wifi was a bit better on 5 ghz but the 2.4ghz was dead in a day... Hard reset changing settings nothing helped. Helpdesk gave me the advice to swap as i did. Big suprise to see the 2nd one dying on the 2.4ghz within a whole whopping hour... Nr 3 was not better... Absolute crap for a router in the pricerange. Result the good old dir-855 with latest firmware perfomance better on wan-lan and wifi is rock stable.