Linksys Wireless-G Broadband Router review

We reviewed the Linksys Wireless-G Broadband Router with Speedbooster in Labs, Shopper December 2004, but this update introduces Linksys's Secure Easy Setup (SES).

As with Buffalo's AOSS, SES lets you configure wireless clients at the touch of a button.

Before you get to this, though, you set the router up as usual. You can do this the hard way by connecting to the router's web-based control panel, but Linksys also provides a wizard on a CD. Follow the simple steps and it helps you configure your internet connection and wireless settings. However, we ran into problems when we got to the security settings. Although we'd chosen WPA protection, our notebook was convinced that the router was using WEP and wouldn't accept our eight-digit key. In the end we had to reset the router and start again, after which everything went smoothly.

This is likely to be all the contact most people need with their router. However, if you need to configure advanced features, such as port forwarding for internet applications, the control panel lets you do this. It's one of the better web interfaces we've seen and, as wireless routers go, is easy to use.

From this point you can use SES to connect wireless clients. On the router side, this involves pushing the glowing Cisco logo to put it into SES mode - not the SES logo, as you'd think. You then have to press the SES button in the client software.

You need a matching Linksys wireless adaptor for this to work as, unlike AOSS, SES doesn't currently support Centrino notebooks. It worked well when we tried it with our Linksys adaptor, configuring our PC automatically for access.

Our test results showed excellent throughput using a Centrino notebook at close and long range. We even managed to get a connection 20m away, although this was good enough only for web browsing. Throughputs improved when we used Linksys's own wireless adaptor.

With excellent throughput and SES for its own-brand adaptors, the Linksys Wireless-G Broadband Router is an excellent product. However, throughputs lag slightly behind those of Buffalo's HighPower router (below), which also has AOSS.