Linksys WRT400N

I bought this device 2 months ago and it already broke. 1) I called the customer service department in India and received the advice that Linksys will replace my unit, after I obtained a Service number,… than an RMA number, allow them to charge my credit card over $180, after receiving the replacement unit, I would have to mail the broken unit with insurance and tracking number via USPS within 10 days back to LINKSYS (are you still with me) and only then my credit card would not be charged. 2) After doing this nothing happened and only after calling back 3 days later and speaking to a US based agent who was much less friendly than her India counterpart, but appeared more knowledgeable I was able to actually get assurance that the replacement would go out in 3-4 days and should arrive at my house in 7-10. Secondly, before it broke it did not do anything different or better than my 5-year-old Netgear wireless router. The Linksys did not stream HD video the either band, it did not have better speed, it did not have more range and it was not more reliable. My recommendation: Avoid Linksys and don't bother spending more than $100 on a wireless router. If you need more range, I recommend a range-expander.

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Let me get this out of the way: The WRT400N is one fast wireless router. After turning on 40MHz mode (bonded channels) on the 5GHz side (since my Intel 4965AGN will not do bonded channels on 2.4GHz), I… was able to achieve 9-11MBps (that's megaBYTES) transfers to my NAS that is hooked up directly to the back of the WRT400N. That means that I was getting enough wireless speed to nearly saturate the 100Mbps Ethernet connection. That is fast. The range on the WRT400N is also excellent and I can get great connections throughout my 1200 square foot house (the router is in one corner of the house). The router has some serious issues though. Two that I want to mention are: 1) The UI for the router is broken. When I went back to the router to change the DNS servers, the page that I used to change the settings would freeze up the router. I would enter the information, click "Save" and then the whole router would lock-up. Power cycling the router brought it back up, but without the changes. The only way around this was to reflash the firmware and set things up from the start again. After that, the same symptom showed up again. 2) The router is very unstable and it doesn't look like Linksys/Cisco is interested in fixing stability issues. I have to reset the router at least once a day, usually twice a day because it will become unresponsive -- no web interface access, no internet access. This is very annoying. Looking at the support page, Linksys has only the original shipping firmware for the WRT400N -- and that is from December of 2008. It is too bad that the WRT400N has these fatal flaws as it is a very fast wireless router with great range. I would not recommend the WRT400N.

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