Linksys by Cisco WRT160N Wireless-N Broadband Router

For the price I paid I can't complain too much. I went with Linksys because i knew they were part of Cisco and are known to have respectable customer service. I ordered this product because of the supposed "extended range" however once installed it was hardly that. I couldnt get a wireless signal outside of the office. After 2 hrs on the phone with their customer service, we finally got the router to work like it was supposed. Since this was a factory refurb it needed to be updated, however it came with a 30 day money back guarantee (with customer service included - normally they would have told me to get lost).

I purchased a LinkSys WRT160N v2 wireless router about 7 months ago.
Its performance was very variable.
It screamed when downloading from news servers, but when web browsing about 25% of page loads permanently failed.
This is a known problem for the v2 version - the fix is to downgrade the firmware to a version officially unsupported by LinkSys. This fixes the page loading problem, but opens other issues. (The v1 and v3 versions may be OK - I have no personal experience)
So Linksys appears to have messed up. Hundreds of people have reported the issue on the web - and in the LinkSys official forums.
Unfortunately the official LinkSys FAQ has no mention of the issue or the work around. LinkSys customer support denies there is a problem (and in my case claimed the serial number on my 7 month old unit PROVES it is out of the 12 month warranty period).
I personally get the feeling that LinkSys now cares very little about their customers - they just want to sell the latest product.
That's a big change from a few years ago.
Linksys by Cisco WRT160N Wireless-N Broadband Router

I recommended this router to a friend who was in need of a new router. I did so based upon my past experience with Linksys routers. Well, after four days of effort, four days of frequently dropped signals and 4 days of frustration, it's going back. I checked several online posts and it is clear that there are many users that are experiencing the same problem...there was never any mention of a solution to the issue. This model has the latest Linksys firmware (3.0.02) yet it still will not reliably maintain a wi-fi connection. I did not flash the unit with DD-WRT but truth be told, I should not have to flash a brand new router with a third party solution to obtain stability. I expect a seventy dollar router to work right out of the box. Is that an unrealistic expectation? Anyway, I gave a glowing recommendation to a friend in need and ended up with egg on my face. The negative reviews on this one proved to be true. Proceed with caution regarding this model.

Good luck with your purchase!

Overall this router follows previous Linksys conventions. The show stopper is the power supply. Per linksys web site, "The new WRT160N V3 is delivered with a new type of power adapter (model number MU06-6120050-C5) which doesn't power up according to the steps described in the installation wizard.".

The net net of this restriction is that the unit wont reboot after a power outage without intervention. You have to, per Linksys:

"Power up this unit, you need to do the following steps:

Step 1:
Plug the power adapter to the power source.

Step 2:
Plug the power adapter jack to the WRT160N v3.

This is totally unacceptable, see:

[...]

2+ hours on my own trying to install this for a couple of computers and a home theater system - with no success. Another 5.5 hours with Cisco tech support (1st and 2nd level). Still not working. I've become used to challenging Linksys setups, but have continued to purchase because once they're installed, they tend to be bulletproof. However, this product, and the associated WAP610N's, have hit new benchmarks for setup difficulty and tech support. They're going back in the box , and are being returned. Just unbelievably bad. Amazing. I'll never buy another Cisco/Linksys product. The installation pain threshold is just too high.