[NTLUG:Discuss] What happened to Linksys?? BEFSR81v3 is junk

[Jay Urish]

Get away from linksys...
They are cheap junk in a plastic clamshell.

I use netgear... An FVS318 to be exact. It has a 8 port switch built in and 
is an IPSec VPN enpoint which
means you can connect to it remotely with any IPSec VPN client




At 06:31 PM 6/30/2004, you wrote:
>As some know, my BEFSR41 4port Linksys went out (apparently).
>It's diag light was on and never would go off (more later on that).
>
>So I went and bought a new BEFSR81... the 8 port version.  It's
>the BEFSR81v3 the CISCO version!  Wow... figured that Cisco
>would actually help Linksys out in the quality dept.
>
>I could not have been more wrong.  I have an SB3100 Surfboard
>cable modem.  Appears that the BEFSR81v3 cannot correctly
>autonegotiate with the port of the SB3100.  Yes.. I get
>connected, but my speed is about 100Kb... instead of the
>nice 3Mb that comcast users expect.  Oddly, my uplink speed
>was not affected and was actuall >200Kb which is about right.
>I'm guessing it has to do with auto neg since the "Internet"
>light (there are much fewer lights on the "new" Cisco v3
>version of their routers) blinks with a steady pulse (not the
>flickering of traffic, but a steady beat which on some
>Linksys switches indicates an auto neg error).
>
>So what happened?  I know that Cisco prides themselves on
>their own understanding of auto negotiation and indeed I've
>seen many Cisco devices improperly auto neg.  Figured it
>was just a fluke in only a few cases, maybe Cisco is just plain
>dumb.  I don't know anymore.  All I know is that the BEFSR81v3 is
>a hunk of junk, unlike my original BEFSR41v1 which worked for
>many years without problem.
>
>Now... back to that red light issue.  Seems that I'm not the
>only one who's BEFSR41 went red light.  I smell a remote
>exploit against the BEFSR41.. shame it actually kills the unit
>for good.  This is of course sheer speculation.  Just odd
>that so many are reporting the same problem.
>
>Anyone else have an SB3100 modem, comcast and can recommend
>a descent cable/dsl router??  Esp. if you know it can still
>be purchased.  For example, I doubt I'd have problems with
>the v1 version of the BEFSR81.
>
>For now, I've enabled the SUSE firewall and am going direct
>(which works flawlessly of course!!).  I may setup a dedicated
>Linux box as my router, but it's a waste of equipment IMHO.
>
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