Linksys WRT610N = POS!

ebilcake · 2 Jun 2010 at 19:24

So just setup this router, easy enough to setup however the signal is awful, I've got a device just a metre away with a poor signal.

Tried a few wifi enabled phones, no signal or the signal doesnt last for long, no chance connecting from another room in the house.

wtf is this crap?

Is this normal? I want a refund! :mad:

ebilcake · 2 Jun 2010 at 20:48

Requested refund...

5GHz wireless has poor signal

2.4GHz wireless won't work, nothing will connect

twist3d0n3 · 2 Jun 2010 at 21:11

i've got one, 5GHz signal took a bit of faffing to get right, but it's great up to about 30m, the 2.4GHz is fine up to about 10m

when i get home, i'll have a look at what settings i've used and post them up if you like

Azuse05 · 2 Jun 2010 at 21:17

Linksys built these routers cheaply, no where near the quality of the wrt54g routers, but used the WRT prefix to shift them.

Quick google could have told you

ebilcake · 2 Jun 2010 at 22:04

Azuse05 said:
Linksys built these routers cheaply, no where near the quality of the wrt54g routers, but used the WRT prefix to shift them.

Quick google could have told you

All the reviews were very positive; don't understand how they can be so wrong. :eek:

Seriously just one metre and signals already getting poor, there’s bad and then there’s bad, this is horrendous

2.4GHz wireless doesn’t even work it seems, maybe it's faulty, don't really care though as I'm not trying another one.

lay-z-boy · 2 Jun 2010 at 22:45

I've had mine for about 2 years now, still going strong.

Running the latest-ish version of ddwrt on it. Had a 2 month uptime now. (since i last i last updated it)

5ghz is blazingly quick but is limited to about 15-25m indoors depending on wall thickness (500 year old house) but the 2.4 covers all but the far ends with reasonable speed. Obviously dropping the further I go away.

I had loads of problems with the 5ghz disappearing after a while on the stock firmware so it was kept as a router +2.4 only until dd started working on it. Not had a problem since then.

A few tips; set wpa2 only, manually set the broadcast frequency (try the middle to begin with) and switch off the rubbish features like upnp media server.

ebilcake · 2 Jun 2010 at 23:11

Well I managed to get my Wii to connect, yay!

Still phones are not connecting, can't even connect to 2.4GHz wireless with HTPC which is weird.

Do the latest firmware improve range at all?

lay-z-boy · 3 Jun 2010 at 12:35

ebilcake said:
Well I managed to get my Wii to connect, yay!

Still phones are not connecting, can't even connect to 2.4GHz wireless with HTPC which is weird.

Do the latest firmware improve range at all?

Have you not even got the latest stock firmware loaded? If I had any problems that would be the first thing I'd do.

ebilcake · 3 Jun 2010 at 15:56

lay-z-boy said:
Have you not even got the latest stock firmware loaded? If I had any problems that would be the first thing I'd do.

I only installed the router last night, the router itself was not finding any updates.

But before I download any from their website how do I know which version I have? are they still shipping v1 or are all the latest ones v2 now?

Also, what is this "ddwrt" I keep seing mensioned?

lay-z-boy · 3 Jun 2010 at 18:50

Look on the underside of the router for the version.

Routers don't go looking for updates, you have to download them and upload them to the device manually.

ddwrt is a 3rd party firmware that supports a wide variety of hardware, the wrt610n being one of them.

Linksys and many other router manufacturers are terrible at providing firmware updates for routers. ddwrt is updated quite regularly to fix problems, introduce new features and stability.

Should you have any problems with it you can go back to the stock linksys firmware.

ebilcake · 3 Jun 2010 at 19:15

lay-z-boy said:
Look on the underside of the router for the version.

Routers don't go looking for updates, you have to download them and upload them to the device manually.

ddwrt is a 3rd party firmware that supports a wide variety of hardware, the wrt610n being one of them.

Linksys and many other router manufacturers are terrible at providing firmware updates for routers. ddwrt is updated quite regularly to fix problems, introduce new features and stability.

Should you have any problems with it you can go back to the stock linksys firmware.

Thanks, but it doesnt say what version, under verison all I have is the model name.

But I'm presuming it's verison 1, from what I've read CTG0 = v1 and CTG1 =v2, plus the firmware it shipped with is version 1.

I'll try the latest off linksys site and report back.

ebilcake · 3 Jun 2010 at 19:56

Flashed to v1.00.03.15, all went well and everything still works which is a good sign. signal strength using 5GHz wireless is still not great, unstable would be the best description.

2.5GHz seems ok now, stronger signal than 5GHz and range is about what I would expect.

Is it possible to flash with v2 firmware?

lay-z-boy · 4 Jun 2010 at 13:21

v1 and v2 use different hardware so that's not possible.

The 5ghz will have a shorter range than the 2.4, the advantage of it is you can hit nearly 200mbps transfer speeds when you are reasonably close. (you loose about 1/3 due to overheads/encryption) Which the 2.4 won't be able to do.

As per my post earlier, I had instability with 5ghz using the stock firmware which was seriously irritating as that was the main reason I bought it back then but switching to dd has fixed it.