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Puerto Rico, San Juan
1 Level
720 Review
27 Karma

Review on Linksys WRT150N RM Refurb Wireless N Router by Brandon Hunter

Revainrating 3 out of 5

Great router with Draft-N speeds at a great price - and you can use custom firmware

Bought a pair of these to replace a pair of Linksys WRT54GL routers. First minus. . I would give 5 stars if the antennas were RPTNC like the older WRT54G routers (above V4) and WRT54GL wireless routers. They could be removed and replaced with other antennas. The antennas on these are built into the case (no connectors), making it difficult to simply replace them with higher gain antennas (which I have from the WRT54G/GL routers I use). Apparently, Linksys issues antennas with connectors, which allows them to be removed and replaced with other antennas. . . and even newer devices (e.g. WRT160N) have internal antennas. Aside from the built-in antennas, these are great routers at a great price (which has gone up a bit since I bought mine). The default menu system is typical for Linksys with some additional features/options specific to Draft-N. Tested them with Linksys firmware and then flashed Sveasoft Talisman Basic. Set them up for Draft-n, but otherwise set them up for the same Wireless Distributed System (WDS) that the WRT54GL pair was used for. Sync together instantly and all client devices are connected. I upgraded the same system that was running 'g' with around 25 Mbps end-user throughput to 'draft-n' with around 75-100 Mbps end-user throughput (depending on client's distance to nearest router ). -- everything secured with WPA2-AES. Significantly faster than the 802.11g system it replaced and extremely reliable. Note that the actual throughput of end-user data is always around half the "signaling" rate. . . regardless of router or firmware (e.g. 54 Mbps is the maximum data rate for 802.11g - the maximum actual data rate for the end user is about half that). While I can cite the stability and reliability of the hardware, I won't comment on the stability of Linksys' stock firmware. . . because I didn't use them long enough with Linksys firmware before flashing them with custom firmware. I will eventually - after the warranty expires - modify them by removing the built in antennas and replacing them with RPTNC connectors so that the high power antennas I used on the routers they replaced can be reused.

Pros
  • Useful for more than it's intended purpose
Cons
  • I vaguely remember