why there are so many negative comments about WRT310N?

[diablo2man]

I'm looking for a wireless N router for my NAS stream media. I saw here that WRT310N is a great router with high speed and reasonable price. But when i turn to amazon or neweggs, there are tons of negative complaints about the constantly connections drops.

Why the SmallNetBuilder doesn't mention it when it reviewed the router if those complaints are true?

Any current users here can recommend it for me?

Thanks.

 

[thiggins]

Three reasons:

- We don't spend enough time with any product that we review to comment on long-term reliability.

- People usually are vocal about bad experiences and not good ones.

- With a top-selling product, there are more units sold so more chance for negative experiences.

 

[bigclaw]

It's been my experience that wireless products in general receive poorer user reviews simply because they are tricky to set up and often do not live up to the marketing hype or user expectations.

For example, I'm extremely satisfied with my WRTSL54GS unit; it has worked wonders. It uses Linux and supports third-party firmware, has more CPU and more RAM than the popular WRT54GL, and also comes with a USB port.

If you look, it's got an abysmal rating on Amazon too.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Common rule of thumb in retail...

9 out of 10 people will comment about a negative experience
1 out of 10 people will comment on a positive experience

...so you rarely hear about the people that have them working well for them.

The brands that sell more volumes at the common "big chains/retail outlets" reach a larger number of people..and that's a much larger pool of the people who will post negative things about it.

Add to all this...commonly it's the average home user with little or no computer/network experience who is trying to set these things up, have a hard time, thus are vocal in a negative manner at feedback sites such as you see at Newegg. So take them with a grain of salt.

 

[Madwand]

There have been some problems with wireless stability in some of the new Linksys routers. I haven't seen any myself, but for the WRT610N at least, Linksys has explicitly acknowledged this by releasing new firmware with such fixes:

Product: WRT610N

Classification: Release History

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last Released Date: 01 / 21 / 09
Firmware version: v1.00.02 B10

- Resolved wireless connection drop issue.
- Resolved Wi-Fi Protected Setup interoperability issue.
- Resolved same internal ports not allowed issue in port forwarding feature.
- Resolved USB storage handling issue during large file transfers.
- Resolved IPv6 and other security issues.
- Resolved FTP server anonymous login issue.
- Resolved other minor issues.
- Improved timing of push button initiation.
- Improved recognition of USB external hard drives.
- Enhanced wireless range.
...

It takes some time for such fixes to be released, and even more time for them to come built into the new routers winding through the retail chain.

 

[tipstir]

I'm looking for a wireless N router for my NAS stream media. I saw here that WRT310N is a great router with high speed and reasonable price. But when i turn to amazon or neweggs, there are tons of negative complaints about the constantly connections drops.

Why the SmallNetBuilder doesn't mention it when it reviewed the router if those complaints are true?

Any current users here can recommend it for me?

Thanks.

Firmware is buggy from Linksys, a buddy of mine told me his wireless drops. So I had installed DD-WRT firmware mini.bin then V24/SP2/11650.standard.bin.. Issue gone. That one has 300MHz NPU 16MB of RAM and 4MB Flash and gig ports.

 

[Britgeezer]

My son bought a Linksys WRT310N and it triggered me to update my LS wired and wireless G Network which had worked absolutely fine.

His with two laptops has worked fine.

Mine with a higher workload and a combination of wired and wireless was fine initially but after 4 -6 weeks simply became a dog. Had to be reset every other day since the wired as well a wireless Internet and Network would do the notwork trick. I travel a lot and my wife doesn't like being the techie.

I replaced the WRT310N with another and within 2 weeks that too would lock up. That one was returned for a refund.

I'm now 1 week into a DIR825 and so far so good.

As Tim says, long term testing is hard to do on SNB, but with so many many folks having similar problems some reservations might be appropriate - note that Linksys is reticent to say anything in their official forums -except upgrade the firmware. I have several of those T shirts.

When I get a chance I'm gonna play with converting the brick into an AP with DD-WRT.