For Users of WRT350N - My experience

Question

For all you WRT350N Users out there, I thought I'd post my experience and tips gained over the past 7-8 months using the WRT350N since my WRT54G died.
I purchased the WRT350N obviously as a replacement for the WRT54G with extremely high expectations. Though I did not have any -N equipment as yet, I was planning on it. I did like the fact that it had the USB port. It was also a Linksys product so I expected the same good, reliable experience with it as I had in the past. I was upgrading some of my home office equipment and wanted to embrace wireless for all my peripherals (ie. get rid of the wires).
In the beginning, it was hell.
I suffered from all kinds of bizarre and cryptic events. The WRT350N was at 1.03.2. I had all manners of dropped internet connections, extremely poor wireless performance (WEP and B/G Mode). You've read the threads, I've experienced them all. I almost threw the unit out in total frustration. I upgraded to 1.03.7 about a month after purchase following the procedure outlined by other contributors on this forum...(You must follow the instructions to the letter).
Since then, the unit has worked as advertised in wired modes: internet connection has been solid and stable with no re-boots. The wireless piece has been a bugger running WEP and in B or G... still had 54MB/s when close to the WRT350N but this dropped considerably when the wireless device was moved to other parts of the house.
Well, I fixed the problem... and wireless piece is now running at 270MB/s (-N Mode) flawlessly throughout my house. See below.
So, what have I learned and is it of any use to anyone else?
First off, everyone's configurations, equipment, environment, needs and expectations are different, so take the following with a grain of salt. This is my experience.
My Network and stuff:
Cable Broadband - Cable modem
DellXPS-3.4Ghz (Desktop), 1 TeraByte drives configured for RAID 0, 1 GB Network card, lot's of USB devices hanging off it - everything running on MS XP - System is wired to the WRT350N.
Dell8100-1.5Ghz (Desktop), 500GB Drives, 1GB Network card and a bunch of peripherals - everything running on MS XP - System is wired to the WRT350N.
1 Terabyte USB External Drive used primarily for backups. Originally purchased to hang off the USB port of the WRT350N as a quasi-network drive... It can be configured and it does work. However, I had trouble with Norton Ghost 12 doing backups to the drive via the 350N USB port. I removed it from the 350N USB port and re-attached it to a spare DELL XPS USB port - no problems since. I also have a number of printers, three of which are directly connected to the Desktops.
I purchased a HP Photosmart C8180 All-in-one (good unit BTW) as a network (wired or wireless) color printer and for photo printing etc. It worked intermittently with the 350N when configured for wireless using WEP and in B/G mode. The printer, unfortunately does not support wireless in -N mode using WPA2 Personal-AES. So it is now wired with network connection at 1 GB.
Dell Latitude D600 Laptop... Frustrating!!! With the on-board Intel Wireless B/G, I never really got consistent, solid network or Internet connections via the 350N. It worked poorly with the 350N - wireless. It worked fine wired to the 350N.
Solution: I disabled the on-board Intel Wireless and purchased a Linksys WPC300N - It is a -N device. I really crossed my fingers with this purchase. Well, the card works. I get solid, repeatable wireless connection to the Network/Internet anywhere in the house at 270MB/s. I have had absolutely no interference from any of my neighbor's B and G routers. I have yet to experience any degradation in speed or signal. Use: WPA2 Personal-AES for security. Faster than all the other settings I've tried.
So the 350N works in my case, as advertised. My first -N appliance - the WPC300N card for the Dell laptop also works as advertised. I haven't hooked up XBox or fully utilized/explored all the other features nor have I set up the router for VPN (one step at a time).
So here's what I have in the configuration:
Under SETUP/Basic Setup: Internet Connection Type: Automatic configuration - DHCP
DHCP Server: Enabled - Use DHCP Reservation and assign your devices (MAC Addresses) to IPs
Under SETUP/MAC Address Clone: Enable. My DELL XPS MAC is cloned here (Must do)
Under SETUP/Advanced Routing:NAT Enabled
Under Wireless/Basic Wireless Settings:
Network Mode: Mixed (b/g/n)
Network Name (SSID): Put your SSID here (anything other that linksys!) Radio Band: Wide - 40MHz Channel
Wide Channel: 3
Standard Channel: 1 - 2.412GHz
SSID Broadcast: Enabled
I've experimented with the Auto settings here... it works but I got better results in my case with the above.
Under Wireless/Wireless Security: Security Mode: WPA2 Personal
Encryption: AES
Passphrase: I put a name in here
Key Renewal: The default I believe is 3600 (works). I put in 7200 (works)
Under Wireless/Wireless MAC Filter: (Kind of up to you. For added security, I enabled it and put in my Laptop and other wireless devices MAC addresses here.
Wireless MAC Filter: Enabled
Access Restriction : Permit PCs listed below to access the wireless network.
MAC Address Filter List : Fill out your applicable MAC addresses here. Under Wireless/Advanced Wireless Settings: AP Isolation: Disabled
Frame Burst: Enabled
Authentication Type: (Default: Auto)
Basic Rate: (Default: Default)
Transmission Rate: (Default: Auto)
N Transmission Rate: (Default: Auto)
CTS Protection Mode: (Default: Auto)
Beacon Interval: 50
DTIM Interval: 1
Fragmentation Threshold: 2307
RTS Threshold: 2306
Under Security/Firewall:
Firewall-SPI Firewall Protection: Enabled Everything else - default
Under Storage: I had this configured to handle my USB Terabyte drive but since decoupled it for other reasons. It works and has worked as a Network drive in my case.
Under Access Restrictions: I left everything default here.
Under Applications and Gaming: I have done nothing here. Can't advise on port forwarding or the like.
Under Administration: Everything here is vanilla except under Management I have enabled Upnp.
Hope this helps someone.
Cheers!

Answer 1

My WRT350N has given me very little trouble, however the storage link does not work that great. I definitly like the WRT350 router over my old WRT300. Thanks for the tips and info. I just wished that LInksys came out with firmware updates for there products more often that fixed bugs.