Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
At the moment, Linksys is unique in offering a Wireless repeater product; I believe it is the only company with FCC clearance in the US to manufacture and sell such a device.
So last week when I purchased several of them, at $80 apiece. I was very interested in seeing how they work.
And I'm not going to lie: the WRE54G is not a good product.
In construction, the WRE54G is a fairly simple device: it's a silver box about the size a couple packs of playing cards, with two LEDs on the front (Link and Activity), a button on the side, and a short antenna. It comes with two different electrical plugs. One allows direct connection to an AC outlet, making for an exceptionall large wall-wart. The other AC connection is on a 6' cord. I found the 6' cord to be rather long and messy but I suppose it could be useful elsewhere.
The device comes with a whopping two pages worth of directions. It can be summed up in a few words: Plug it in and press the button on the side. The two lights on the front should, ideally, turn blue and stay that way while you wander to the nearest client connected via 802.11 to your WLAN, to use its configuration software.
Let's examine that again, shall we? Anyone see a problem with "the nearest client connected via 802.11 to your WLAN"?
The two pages of documentation don't mention the native IP of the device is 192.168.1.240. Nor would I have guessed that one. Nor guessed that the configuration CD will not function unless it detects an active wireless connection on your PC.
I'd call that an oversight. Of course, one CAN connect via a wired client, once one manually types the IP into a browser, but that's not something I'd trust a normal user would know how to do.
Anything else they left out in their two pages?
Yup! The WRE54G is utterly incompatible with WPA. Doesn't work. Not at all. It only works with WEP if you've used its internal configuration software to enable WEP, and to top it off, it only picks up APs with broadcast SSIDs, so you have to literally turn off every security feature on your AP before it will integrate with your WLAN.
Oh. And "press the button" really means "hold the button in for 10 seconds". Turns out the device ignores momentary pressings, like the kind that are only five second long.
What else? The WRE54G is compatible only with products that operate with a Linksys defined "standard" - three products, all made by Linksys. As a test I tried one with a 3Com AP and a Netgear AP. It didn't work with either. Linksys' support site indicates that users should check with their AP manufacturer to see if their device supports whatever weirdo repeater protocol the device uses, but right now, it's vendor lock-in.
I don't think it's unreasonable that, as a repeater, it re-generates a half-speed signal, but it's something else to keep in mind. Not everyone would expect that.
My last major complaint required a conversation with an Indian fellow who claimed his name was "Steve". To whit: The product documentation - both pages of which I was intimately familiar with after a certain point - suggested that, in the event that the Range Extender was doing its job, its Link and Activity lights would flash or maintain a solid blue color, as appropriate. The documentation did not mention the solid red indicator *I* saw on the Link LED of all my REs (although blue lights flashed during the startup sequence).
On Linksys' support site, the Red indicator supposedly indicated that the device detected a WLAN that it couldn't connect to (a secure WLAN, or one with a horribly attenuated signal).
Except, in my case, neither device was more than 20 feet from an AP and I had already turned all the security on my WRT54G off.
"Steve" from Linksys confidently informed me that this was a known defect on several production runs of WRE54Gs, and that Linksys was looking into it. On the affected units, the Link indicator would always be red... thereby offering ZERO feedback as to whether or not the device is actually working.
So, did the devices work?
The best answer I can give is "sort of". I installed three of these devices around an exceptionally large home. In one case, a single range extender was all that was needed for a PC in a basement to get a "good" signal from the AP 50 feet and three floors directly above it, where no signal existed before.
In another case, though, TWO range extenders were requied to allow a marginal (Low or Very Low) connection in a bedroom perhaps 80 feet (in open air save for ONE(!) wall) from the base AP. One didn't cut it.
I suspected that there might be an interference issue involved, so I also tested a RE at my parents' home (where I have a good map of existing 802.11G coverage, and where there's virtually zero chance that any other 2.4GHz source might be interfering) while I was there over the weekend. I used my father's Dell X300 notebook and its integrated 802.11 support for a test device.
Depending on where I plugged the Extender in, I achieved approximate gains of 15 to 50 feet (I measured with a laser tape-measure. They aren't highly accurate at those distances. They are fun to play with, though). As one might expect, the best-case gains were made largely in open air. Average was about 28 feet. I tested five locations for my extender. I got the biggest boost from having one installed outside their house on a utility outlet (paranoid-types, ready your foil hats). I got the least gain from plugging one in at the top of a set of stairs at the entrance to their basement.
As with all things wireless, your mileage may vary.
So last week when I purchased several of them, at $80 apiece. I was very interested in seeing how they work.
And I'm not going to lie: the WRE54G is not a good product.
In construction, the WRE54G is a fairly simple device: it's a silver box about the size a couple packs of playing cards, with two LEDs on the front (Link and Activity), a button on the side, and a short antenna. It comes with two different electrical plugs. One allows direct connection to an AC outlet, making for an exceptionall large wall-wart. The other AC connection is on a 6' cord. I found the 6' cord to be rather long and messy but I suppose it could be useful elsewhere.
The device comes with a whopping two pages worth of directions. It can be summed up in a few words: Plug it in and press the button on the side. The two lights on the front should, ideally, turn blue and stay that way while you wander to the nearest client connected via 802.11 to your WLAN, to use its configuration software.
Let's examine that again, shall we? Anyone see a problem with "the nearest client connected via 802.11 to your WLAN"?
The two pages of documentation don't mention the native IP of the device is 192.168.1.240. Nor would I have guessed that one. Nor guessed that the configuration CD will not function unless it detects an active wireless connection on your PC.
I'd call that an oversight. Of course, one CAN connect via a wired client, once one manually types the IP into a browser, but that's not something I'd trust a normal user would know how to do.
Anything else they left out in their two pages?
Yup! The WRE54G is utterly incompatible with WPA. Doesn't work. Not at all. It only works with WEP if you've used its internal configuration software to enable WEP, and to top it off, it only picks up APs with broadcast SSIDs, so you have to literally turn off every security feature on your AP before it will integrate with your WLAN.
Oh. And "press the button" really means "hold the button in for 10 seconds". Turns out the device ignores momentary pressings, like the kind that are only five second long.
What else? The WRE54G is compatible only with products that operate with a Linksys defined "standard" - three products, all made by Linksys. As a test I tried one with a 3Com AP and a Netgear AP. It didn't work with either. Linksys' support site indicates that users should check with their AP manufacturer to see if their device supports whatever weirdo repeater protocol the device uses, but right now, it's vendor lock-in.
I don't think it's unreasonable that, as a repeater, it re-generates a half-speed signal, but it's something else to keep in mind. Not everyone would expect that.
My last major complaint required a conversation with an Indian fellow who claimed his name was "Steve". To whit: The product documentation - both pages of which I was intimately familiar with after a certain point - suggested that, in the event that the Range Extender was doing its job, its Link and Activity lights would flash or maintain a solid blue color, as appropriate. The documentation did not mention the solid red indicator *I* saw on the Link LED of all my REs (although blue lights flashed during the startup sequence).
On Linksys' support site, the Red indicator supposedly indicated that the device detected a WLAN that it couldn't connect to (a secure WLAN, or one with a horribly attenuated signal).
Except, in my case, neither device was more than 20 feet from an AP and I had already turned all the security on my WRT54G off.
"Steve" from Linksys confidently informed me that this was a known defect on several production runs of WRE54Gs, and that Linksys was looking into it. On the affected units, the Link indicator would always be red... thereby offering ZERO feedback as to whether or not the device is actually working.
So, did the devices work?
The best answer I can give is "sort of". I installed three of these devices around an exceptionally large home. In one case, a single range extender was all that was needed for a PC in a basement to get a "good" signal from the AP 50 feet and three floors directly above it, where no signal existed before.
In another case, though, TWO range extenders were requied to allow a marginal (Low or Very Low) connection in a bedroom perhaps 80 feet (in open air save for ONE(!) wall) from the base AP. One didn't cut it.
I suspected that there might be an interference issue involved, so I also tested a RE at my parents' home (where I have a good map of existing 802.11G coverage, and where there's virtually zero chance that any other 2.4GHz source might be interfering) while I was there over the weekend. I used my father's Dell X300 notebook and its integrated 802.11 support for a test device.
Depending on where I plugged the Extender in, I achieved approximate gains of 15 to 50 feet (I measured with a laser tape-measure. They aren't highly accurate at those distances. They are fun to play with, though). As one might expect, the best-case gains were made largely in open air. Average was about 28 feet. I tested five locations for my extender. I got the biggest boost from having one installed outside their house on a utility outlet (paranoid-types, ready your foil hats). I got the least gain from plugging one in at the top of a set of stairs at the entrance to their basement.
As with all things wireless, your mileage may vary.
