Rant against wireless routers without external antennas. Arrgg with Linksys WRT310N

[Snake]

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My WRT160N worked fine.......for just 1 year and it stopped working completely. I got a D Link and never had any problems.

+6  IMHO Linksys products are extremely, highly overrated.  I can give the aforementioned comment a "+6" because that's (at least) how many failed Linksys products I've replaced in my own, and customer's, installations.  They overheat, their power supplies are undependable, their construction quality on their consumer products is poor IMHO...and now a number of their products are hackable ( http://www.thenewnewinternet.com/2010/07/20/router-flaws-creates-easily-exploited-vulnerability/).
 
Linksys consumer...just say NO.  My old D-Link DI-624 was so dependable that, even though it was 7 years old, I gave it away rather than trash it when I upgraded to the new DIR-655.  Linksys?  2 to 3 years, it's toast.

 

[MCC]

All hardware can fail and we had a business class D-Link gigabit switch die several years ago. It just seems that Linksys is more prone to failure, potentially because of their use of terrible electrolytics. The datasheet for the Su'scon caps in my 610N gives ripple current specs that can't be matched by competing Nichicon and Panasonic capacitors- a red flag that the specs are fabricated. As mentioned earlier I've invested $5 in polymer caps that should hopefully lengthen the lifetime of my router.
 
Otherwise the design of my 610N seems solid. They don't appear to have cheapened out on any of the other hardware inside it.

 

[Moontan13]

If support warns you off a product and you don't listen...
Based on my experiences with linksys, It might be a difficult decision to not buy my next chunk of network hardware from them. The stuff works and works. Their online diagnostics are usually spot on, and on the rare occasion i used chat support, issues took very little time to resolve.
Given the support experiences I've had with others, I wouldn't want anything but Linksys. 

 

[Jon L]

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Otherwise the design of my 610N seems solid. They don't appear to have cheapened out on any of the other hardware inside it.

Do you just open the unit by taking off the bottom panel?  Nothing is attached to the bottom panel?
Also, how do the internal antennae look.  Are there actual antennae (with plastic pole) or just wires inside?

 
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Linksys consumer...just say NO.  My old D-Link DI-624 was so dependable that, even though it was 7 years old, I gave it away rather than trash it when I upgraded to the new DIR-655.  Linksys?  2 to 3 years, it's toast.

How is DIR-655?  I'm looking at other N routers, and there are some awful customer reviews of DIR-655 as well.  I'm interested in longer-range (30 meter) speed throughout mostly.
 

 

[MCC]

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Do you just open the unit by taking off the bottom panel?  Nothing is attached to the bottom panel?
Also, how do the internal antennae look.  Are there actual antennae (with plastic pole) or just wires inside?

You need to remove 4 screws from the bottom and then work your way around the edge seam with a flathead screwdriver. The two halves snap together with plastic tabs. The top panel is actually what you'll be removing.
 
The antennae are small metal cutouts attached to the sides of the router. Each frequency has one (comparatively) large and one small antenna on one side and one large antenna on the other. I can take a picture in a few days, the router isn't currently accessible to me.

 

[MCC]

Here is my WRT610N. I just tested the capacitors on the ESR meter I finished building about an hour ago, 2 of the 5 470uF/10v electrolytics measure 5x higher than they should. These Su'scon capacitors are as worthless as I thought they were. The replacements should be here tomorrow.
 

 
Antennae: