Home routers are pretty much commodity products these days, and most users will just join, give some details of the account of the ISP, then let them to get with their routing magic. So is everything that promises to simplify the out-of-box experience welcome. Some vendors, such as the Belkin, have definitely got it down to a tee, so how is Cisco's new Linksys E3000, an updated version of the WRT610N, rate?
Soon we realised that the Setup routine is focused on Wi-Fi. It is not explicitly tell you this, but a wireless network enabled PC ' is listed as one of the minimum system requirements.Wired Setup works, is using one of the four Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports, but this option is not listed anywhere, that less savvy users might confuse. we have ended up with the new and easy-to-use Cisco Connect configuration utility happily installed.
LogMeIn Rescue: A fast, secure solution for PC, Mac
& Smartphone support. Try it for free!
Our cable ISP account (the E3000 may not have a DSL modem) is bound to the MAC address of a long-dead PC, so we needed to change this. Clicking on "Advanced settings" in the Cisco Connect launches the web configuration interface, which we easily made the changes.At the same time we changed the default Admin password and wireless SSIDs for the twins 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios. This was a bad idea.
Upon exiting, wouldn't work, Cisco Connect announcement that because the corporate router password was changed, we were on our own. We restore to factory defaults, but Cisco Connect still refused to talk to the router and, worse still, we couldn't access the Web GUI or as we do not know the default password. This is in the manual, which is not on the CD; there's just a Web download link.
We eventually prevailed and decided to bypass Cisco Connect, only to find that it is necessary to some useful features, namely the 2.4 GHz guest wireless network and the per-device parental settings.These settings be bafflingly omitted from the otherwise admirable comprehensive Web interface.
Cisco connect calls also on how to set the password for admin access and both wireless connections, whereas in the Web GUI you can them all different. but if you have a change, Cisco connect will again wash its hands of you.
This Kafkaesque interaction between software and hardware is a crying shame, as the E3000 has many good qualities, and wireless performance of the 2 x 3 internal antennas is excellent. for a 2.4 GHz connection we record Passmark network throughput values of 1 m and 70Mbps 24 Mbps on 25 m measured at 5 GHz, and we saw almost 100 Mbps at close range and 30Mbps connections to about 12 m.
To be honest, less technical users will appreciate Cisco connect's simplicity, and advanced users will find many business opportunities. hardware is sleek and well built (although our sample have a sticking WPS button) with a lot of status information of the of the top-mounted LEDs.
A few additions there would be almost perfect, namely support for 3 g dongles and printer sharing to the USB port in addition to the existing NAS and UPnP media streaming functions. too, so guests can connect without having to login via a Web page would allow browser-less devices to connect.
Excellent hardware and easy-to-use software, but it is a shame that the two do not always talk to each other, and with the exception of some features of the advanced settings madness. but apart from this, it's a well-made device with large wireless performance and many professional features.
£ 129.99 Inc. VAT
No comments:
Post a Comment