Home > Consumer Reviews > Linksys W11S4PC11 Wireless-B Network Kit

Linksys makes a good product, but 802.11b is several years out of date. For the same price as this router you can get an 802.11g which is much faster, has better range and will be more reliable.

I purchased the Linksys router/hub about 5 months ago based on reviews and talking to IT co-workers. I was surprised at the ease of setup and installation. I have 5-6 PCs (using MS Win 98, MS Win 2000, XP Home and XP Prof) networked at home. One recommendation I took from written reviews was to put some money into Orinoco Gold Wireless PC-Card NICs. I'm also running a couple of wired connections via 3Com NICs. Everything has worked beyond my expectations. After 15 years of working in IT, I'm fairly hard to impress, but this is one thing that I have thoroughly enjoyed.

Setting up the access point was a little difficult, but once the right settings were tweaked, this thing hums along with little problems. The signal strength is high even to the backyard: makes working outside on the nice days easy. The security options are nice, since this can screen wireless cards unless you input their hardware address. Some fiddling with ports was necessary to get the virtual private networking (VPN) to go through correctly, but some help can be found on the internet. This access point also plays well with other vendor's PC cards.

However, there are some issues with the PC card. This setup comes with version 4 (v4) of the card. There are SEVERE issues if you need to use a VPN to log into work. This card simply will not do it--but oddly, version 3 (v3) WILL. This is known on Linksys' website, but no fix is available. The v4 also seems to get worse reception than v3.

Overall, it can work well, but be careful with the version of the PC card.

I received the package yesterday. It took me less than one hour to read the instruction and complete the installation of the router and adaptor card. The version 4 adapter card came with the kit works great on my Windows 2000 laptop. Actually, it's signal strength is much better than the version 3 adapter card that I have. I got more than 80% of the signal strength even with the router and laptop separated by two floors in my house. I was worried reading an earlier review regarding the problem with the version 4 adaptor, but that turned out to be unfounded.

I previously bought the D-link wireless set and could not get it to work. I had nothing but problems. I returned both items. I just bought the linksys network kit with the wireless router and notebook card. I hooked everything up and was very pleased everything worked immediately and I didn't have a single problem. I am able to go throughout my entire house and outside in the yard and be connected to the internet. I occasionally get a dropped connection but that is not a problem as far as I'm concerned. I think the linksys wireless is the best.