E1200 - Ports not working and mac filtering problem

Question

If there was a way to give negative stars to this router, I would. As it is, the minimum rating I can give this product is one star, and that's one star too many.
I was upgrading from the WRT54G, which is an ugly thing to look at, but a reliable workhorse nonetheless. I turned that in to a downstream switch in my comms hub.
On the E1200, I flashed the latest firmware, used different Cat5 cables, and different laptops before committing to hating this product.
The first time I reached out to Amazon, the Amazon rep gave me a Cisco number to call. Turns out, that's some shady mortgage refinance hotline. Try it for yourself! 1-800-666-1771.
Now, the rant -
1. Two out of four wired LAN ports don't work: What can be the fix for this?! The activity lights on ports 3 and 4 blink and suggest data transfer is taking place, but the wired laptop simply can't acquire an IP address and access the internet. Same result when I connect my Panasonic Blu-Ray player to ports 3 and 4. None of the Viera Cast features load.
2. MAC filtering unreliable: The wireless routing works somewhat reliably, if and only if, one settles for the most basic security. If I only choose a password and WPA2 protocol, things work fine. If I add another layer of security (in my case, enabling MAC filtering and only PERMITTING gateway to listed MAC IDs), things break down. As soon as I disable MAC filtering, wireless access to authenticated clients is restored.
3. Cisco customer service: The censored world we live in, compels me to criticize politely. TERRIBLE. Cisco website is unintuitive, and frustrating. There's no easy way to register your purchased product. The Cisco "registration" is intentionally misleading and deceptive. For all intents and purposes, it's just an information gathering tool for Cisco. Don't bother registering there, unless you love the idea of storing your personal information on their servers. Their phone-based customer service is apathetic and uninterested. My rep was so distrusting of my intelligence and motor control, that he simply wouldn't believe that I had selected "PERMIT" and not "PREVENT" as the option under MAC filtering. After he asked me the same question for the fourth time, I raised my voice, and he gave up the idea of checking for the fifth time.
However, this review is a tale of two companies. I reached out to Amazon again. This time, I got a rockstar in the shape of Leanne C! She was incredibly helpful, and understanding. What's more, she set up my return without any hassle and this Cisco dud is on its way back. I'm a big fan of Leanne's and my confidence in Amazon is restored.
I'm sure that i received a lemon. I've never had problems with Linksys products. Maybe others' experience is different from mine.

Answer 1

In your case as port numbers 1 and 2 does not work, what you could have done a loop back test. To perform a loop back test you need to take an ethernet cable, connect one end of that cable to internet port and the other end to the non-working port on the router. If you get the led to glow on both internet and the respective ethernet port that indicates that the port is working fine.
It could also be a sychronization issue between the above mentioned lan ports and the lan card of your computer. As a part of trouble shooting you can try to reduce the card speed of your lan card. Following are the steps to reduce the speed of your lan card.
START--> right-click My Network Places and click Properties
right-click on the device manager and click properties
Click on the CONFIGURE button
Select the ADVANCED tab and in the box under the header property select "speed and duplex" and change the value on the right to 10 mbps half duplex. A restart would be recommended after performing these steps.
In the second half you said that after enabling the mac filter option the internet breaks down. Here, do you mean to say that the computer
gets disconnected from the wireless network or it stays connected with a valid IP address but without an internet connection.
Well, it is an unusual issue however you could have reset and reconfigure the router as you got the latest firmware upgraded on it.
Steps to reset the router:
Push the reset button on router for 30 seconds, turn off the router wait for 30 seconds and then power it on. Power light should blink when you perform the reset process.