Should I buy the WRT610? What say you Linksys???

Question

I am in the market for a new wireless router and found majority of the reviews out on the web to point me in the direction of the new wrt610n. Here is the problem that I have seen so far. I come to the site here and all I see from WRT610N owners is how many issues they are having with this router. I also see a ZERO lack in response from Linksys in this matter which is very discerning.
Linksys are you there??? How about some info on whats going on with this latest product of yours? Has these issues been looked at or does everyone have to wait for the next release of the product... What does a guy have to do to get a decent wirless N router without heading over to apple (no offense meant to apple people).
So in short why Should I buy this product? Feature set looks great but is that all this router is all looks and nothing else? What say you?

Answer 1

This is a community forum.  As far as I know, the only Linksys employee here is the forum moderator, and he rarely answers questions.
The forum is designed to help people solve their router issues.   So naturally, the vast majority of the threads contain reports of various router problems.  You should also consider that the most popular routers have the most postings, not because they are bad routers, but because many (often inexperienced) users are using those routers.
I would estimate that about 75% of the router problems are actually just "user error", that is, not understanding how to setup your router and network properly.  This category also includes users who insist on trying to push the limits of the router, for example, trying to use a brand new (cutting edge) WRT610N with their Windows 98 computer, using a wireless b adapter with an 8 year old driver.   (In theory, this should work, but in reality, there are often problems.)  Another 15% stem from poor wireless connections caused by such things as overcrowding in the 2.4 GHz band, buildings that have "radio dense"  walls  (i.e. walls that have building materials that are hard to penetrate), and the fact that the wireless n standard is not yet finalized (this causes some incompatibilities).  The last 10% of the threads might truely be problems that Linksys could potentially fix.  Linksys generally gets blamed for far more than the problems they are actually causing.
The good news about Linksys is that they have this forum available (Not all router manufacturers run a forum), and it is widely used, so there is a lot of router info here.     Also, to my eye, Linksys seems to have the best documentation of any brand of router.  The other thing is that, especially with newer routers, Linksys does appear to be actively working to correct firmware flaws, as evidenced by their postings of updated firmware.
As to whether or not the WRT610N is best for you, that really depends on a lot of factors including  (1) what other wireless equipment do you own (is it wireless n, g, or b ? ) ,  (2)  how fast is your Internet connection?   (3) how are you planning to use your wireless n?  game play?  large file transfer?  ordinary web surfing?  (4)  do you have any special networking needs (VoIP, video cameras, web servers), or do you just need to surf the web?  (5) Are you willing to buy additional equipment, such as wireless n adapters for your computers?  (6) If you already own a router, what is the make and model?
Please describe you networking equipment, and the planned network workload, in detail. 
Message Edited by toomanydonuts on 08-02-2008 08:20 AM