DecisionalReview.info

Terrible Product. Terrible Company.

I should have known better. I’m a geek (I’ve owned more than 20 computers/servers in my >10 years as a software engineer and I’ve setup >10 wired/wireless networks for friends and family), so when I read all of the bad reviews on this product, I just figured it was people who couldn’t figure out what they’re doing. I was wrong, so wrong. The WRVS4400N is totally worthless - don’t make the same mistake as I - BUY A DIFFERENT ROUTER.

The problem is that every 24 hours or 36 hours (on the exact second) this router stops sharing the internet connections to all computers on the network. It must them be unplugged or rebooted via the web interface and then the problem goes away. So far their tech support has been unable to resolve the problem they keep sending me new routers. After this last one, they told me there is nothing more they can do and it will have to be reported as an issue to their product development team. My internet connection is fine as evidenced by plugging in a laptop when the router fails and they have reported no compatibility issues with my cable modem. And furthermore other people are experiencing the exact same problem.

This router does offer a great set of features for the price, but be careful - they’re implemented poorly. So you’ll likely turn them off.

The IPS (special security features that this router offers) features are worthless - if you want to FTP anything, you’ll need to turn them off. And even with them off, I still can’t connect to several of the FTP servers that I routinely connect to, which I could with my last router - for example Google Base FTP servers and Yahoo’s webhosting accounts.

The QoS (quality of service) features are extremely hard to configure and there is NO documentation on line, include with the product or in the help section of the administration tool, which explains how to actually configure it.

The range of the N wireless network isn’t very impressive. It’s only slightly better than the G router from Linksys that it replaced. Both routers were placed in the same spot in my basement.

I haven’t tried the VPN connectivity yet, but you’re only limited to 5 clients connecting, which is a limitation that’s not published on this product description, nor easy to find on Linksys’s site.

Now, I’ve been a long time buyer and recommender of Linksys products, but in the last two years their product quality has plummeted as evidenced by the ratings they get her on Amazon. They keep sending me these survey’s every time I contact their tech support and I share these same complaints, but they don’t get any better. If anything they’re getting worse.

Linksys’s phone technical support is horrible. This unit isn’t serviced by the “home” area of Linksys’s tech-support staff, you must go through the “business” area and their level 1 support staff aren’t even trained, so you go right to their level 2 support, which you’d think would mean you’d get good support, but not from Linksys. They have no idea how to solve problems with this router. Several of the tech support people have given up and made excuses to get off the phone - my favorite was to reapply the same version of the router’s firmware, waste an hour reconfiguring it, and then wait 24-36 hours to see if the problem came back; and sure enough it did.

Linksys’s phone customer support is horrible. After my last tech support tech’s manager determined that I have yet another defective router and I should get a new one, I was transferred to their customer service department so that they could process an RMA. It took them 43 minutes to process the RMA. The customer service person, who could barely speak english, said he had to read everyone of the case notes in order to process an RMA. Then it took 24 minutes to get transferred to his supervisor to complain about him.

So to reiterate my review: While this router looks like a great set of features for great price, you’ll need to turn off much of those features to be able to FTP, and you’ll need to reboot your router every 24-36 hours if you want it to router internet service to other computers on your network. And if you have to call tech support or customer support, you’ll be in for some horrible experience. So don’t make the same mistake as I did. Don’t buy this router.

Update (2/7/2012): I also found some auctions for this item here.

The featured review for this product, Cisco-Linksys WRVS4400N Wireless-N Gigabit Security Router - VPN v2.0 Electronics, was written by Java Geek.

The average rating for this item is 1.3 out of 5 stars, according to 3 reviews.