Added to Rants on 30/6/09.
The Linksys WRT310N Router. A Tale of Consumerism Gone Bad.
I have never been so furious as with the Linksys/Cisco company and this WRT310N router. Currently, I’m convinced they are out to rob me by simply giving me the run-around until I give up from frustration.
Many of us have had the Linksys 54G series router. I had one of the WRT54GS v7 models I bought at Sam’s Club. It performed remarkably well. I loved the advanced wireless security and other features for the price.
This January I bought a Linksys WRT310N with it’s “sleek new look” which is dog poo by the way. Cisco took off the external antennas and put them in the shell of the device. That was a super idea, wasn’t it?
The answer is hell no.
The WRT310N is the biggest piece of garbage out there. It wasn’t long before I kept experiencing dropped connections and a mediocre signal. I have wasted so many hours and so much time, thinking the issue was something I had done. Maybe it’s because I have Macs. Maybe it’s because I’m registered independent. Maybe it’s because I like hot peppers. No, this router is junk. Believe me. I tried every trick I know. I tried turning off the wireless security. I tried changing the channels. I tried a different SSID. I tried another computer. Each time I would divide the problem in half only to find the half with the problem always came back to the wireless portion of the router. I knew the symptoms.
- It connects to the internet fine. You might even get a web site or two.
- Now try to download some kind of large file. Your connection is dropped
- Often, the only way to reestablish the connection is to restart the router.
- Often, the MacBook would try to reconnect to the network, only to have a ‘connection timeout’ and finally be forced to restart the computer to get anywhere.
- Even web sites could cause the router to freeze.
- One notebook could get the router to freeze and the other notebook would also loose connection.
- Yup, notebooks work fine on other networks. Big files are not a problem.
- Yup, my old workhorse, the WRT54GS works great with the two notebooks.
I knew I couldn’t be alone so I researched hard and deep. The Linksys forums are full of complaints on this crappy model.
Some of the remarks from this Linksys forum point out:
- “I have the WRT150N with the same problem… the MOST annoying thing in the world. I have 3 laptops and they all drop at [various] times.. the wired connections never drop.”
- “My WRT310N worked fine for about a week, except for the overheating that a lot of people have been complaining about. But now the wireless signal drops after about 10 minutes of being turned on.”
- “I have 4 opinions: 1. Linksys brought this product to market either with an inherent design fault or 2. They released this product too early, before the firmware was ready to go to market or 3. there is a serious quality control issue during manufacturing or 4. I have been extremely unlucky getting 2 faulty WRT310N’s in a row.”
Another forum at Linksys point to the WRT310N wireless connection stability issues.
Here’s some reviews at CNET for the WRT310N, many pointing to the heat issues. The product only gets 2 1/2 stars. I looked more on the net and found mixed reviews at various places. I searched the BestBuy and Amazon web site and found 3/5 ratings or less. Some people were happy, but several identified the problem with heat and dropped connections.
The Bigger Problem of Trying to get Linksys to admit the router is broken.
Identifying the problem was not that hard for me. I always try very hard to make sure it’s not something I’ve done wrong. You check your settings. Check Google. Check the forums to make sure others are having the same issues.
Today has been a horrible draining day of my life on the phone with Linksys. It’s like you have to go to war with them to get them to believe you. So far I’ve made 3 calls of 28 minutes, 12 minutes, and then 1 hour and 15 minutes. All and all, I’ve been on the phone with this lousy company for 1 hour and 55 minutes. Almost 2 hours of my life is gone. You know you have to go through their step by step process before you can ever get to a senior tech. Here come the stupid questions,
- “Did you try downloading files without the router hooked up.
- “Did you try another computer”
- “Do you have the latest firmware”
Then they go about with one ineffective thing after another. We change the channel. We change the MTU. We change the SSID. We change the wireless security. We change the firewall settings. NOTHING WORKS. Several people in the forums report going through the same thing. I’ve had several keyword searches to this blog post for “MTU settings WRT310N” on this router. I can tell you that Linksys support tried several manual settings for MTU which didn’t do the trick. Several people in the forums tend to think that there is some ‘magical MTU setting’ that can be found. The idea would be that smaller amounts of food would go through the air at one time.
Every so often I say something like, “I’ve read in your own forums and several other places online that this model has heat issues. Several people have the exact same problem as me. I seriously think this router is defective.” They flat out ignore me and once again tell me to go to 192.168.1.1. You know, even if that was going to fix it, IT SHOULDN’T BE THAT HARD IN THE FIRST PLACE. You should be able to plug it in with minimal adjusting and have it work.
You would have thought that I’d get my RMA by now, but no. The last go around was being left on hold for 10 more minutes before a voice comes on to say, “We can’t ‘call the router defective’ until a senior tech gets to talk to you.” I swear, I think they just keep letting you sit until you give up. So now a senior tech is supposed to call me. I can already imagine that it will be more settings.
Linksys, you are the most horrible company I’ve come across. I hope this post gets dugg or stumbled upon, so others can learn about your terrible products and practices.
UPDATE:
So the senior tech calls back with the big solution. I spend 27 minutes reloading the firmware. Little did she know that I’ve already done this. In fact I even tried running DD-WRT. The router had the exact same symptoms. Several people in the forums also say that they get told to reload the firmware and then clone the PC mac address. It didn’t seem to work. Keep in mind that there are 2 versions of this router now, 1 and 2. Mine is version 1. Many say that the firmware is supposedly going to fix the overheating issue, but more than one person has said it does nothing. My thought is that the firmware only fixes version 2 routers. I think Linksys is well aware of their overheating issues and is scrambling to do something about it to avoid a huge recall. Every time I spoke to a tech I would say something like, “I bet you get a lot of calls on the overheating issue with this router . . .” Each time, they’re like, “Nope, not at all. We don’t get very many calls at all.” Linksys has them trained very well not to let you get a foothold.
I almost thought the firmware update was going to work, but then I remembered that I had unplugged the router for several hours between the last tech’s call. It will work fine for 20 minutes or so until it gets a chance to heat up again. It wasn’t the firmware that helped it, it was just the fact that it was cooler. Some people in the forums are saying that turning the router in the vertical position avoids many of the of overheating issues. I haven’t tried that. It seems a bit janky. It is clearly designed to sit on a table top. I remember a time ago, putting a fan on the thing and getting no results. I don’t think airflow alone can cure the heating issue.
With my fifth call I spent 35 more minutes pleading with anybody who would listen. I get put on hold, transferred, put on hold again. Bad scratchy country music plays from India. Still, the tech keeps on with ‘try this’ and ‘try that’.
On a side note, any sane American is ready to commit suicide at this point by listening to bad Indian accents. Companies like Cisco / Linksys can afford to have a whole building of Indians run you around in circles for little cost. It saves them millions in returns, because many people just give up after a while. There were dozens of times I had to ask, “Please repeat yourself.” and “What did you just say?”. Any time you buy a new product, you should check where the support is located. The Indians try hard and stay polite, but they are often lack the knowledge and communication you need. Let’s be honest, they drive us bats.
Finally, after almost 3 hours of my day, the dance could go on no longer. The tech got me to the team manager and my fraking RMA number so I could return this lemon piece of junk.
Lessons Learned
The WRT54G series of Linksys routers from version 4 or 5 onward were super boxes. They had a simple design and worked well. The 802.11 G networks we all knew and loved were really ‘just fine’ if we thought about it enough. The new N standard was supposed to promise more, so many of us tried new N routers. Here is where Cisco/Linksys pushed out a new unproven design and use of an unfinished draft standard. There is bound to be problems.
Whenever you think about purchasing new tech products, the first thing you should do is type the model number into the company support forums and see how many complaints there are. Basically PRETEND YOU ALREADY OWN IT BEFORE YOU BUY IT. There will always be some ignorant complaints that you’ll have to sift through, but other times, you’ll keep seeing a very specific problem again and again. Check popular sites like Amazon, BestBuy and NewEgg. Read the comments. Many will be positive because they just bought the device and it’s all new and shiny. Look for reviews where the person has had the product for several months or more. Look for repeating patterns.
Often times, a company’s new models are junkier than the last season. They offer no improvment at all. With the router, I seriously should have just paid $30 bucks or so for any capable WRT54G on eBay. Ebay has great deals, and often you can get a SquareTrade warrenty on products you buy.
( comments ported from old word-press site )
I been having big problems too. I have the att modem. So bad the problems that i tried reseting the router and start over several times. Then i got so mad i tried using a different address for the router..I used this one 192.168.1.64 and since it been doing ok. My friend still having disconnection problems on his end but mine been great for 2 days with out any problems.
Same issues…
I just RMA’d my 2nd WRT310N - this is just a bad design. I have it up on stilts to get better air flow, and I unplug it at night.. I used to run my 54g 24/7. It runs very hot. Both of mine worked fine for 2 months, then started crashing a couple of times a day. I had live chat telling me to call tech support, and tech support telling me use live chat - what a laugh! Finally I had a chat session and a tech support call happening at the same time and got two RMA numbers. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
That’s it for Linksys though… I’ve have enough. They’ve jumped the shark ;-
You are still using Internet Explorer 6, so you can't have soup—or look at this site. I would really prefer you download