Linksys has expanded its line of wireless routers with several more products, adding new facilities and enhancing their speed and range. The WRT300N Linksys wireless N series router is advertised to offer up to 12 times the speed of other 802.11g routers and it is capable of sending and receiving data within a radius up to 4 times larger. However, in real world reviews, the WRT300N Linksys wireless N series router only managed to reach its maximum advertised speed, but lacked performance when it came to range. If you need a very fast and reliable wireless router for small networks, the WRT300N Linksys wireless N series router could be a viable choice. A network switch is a computer networking device that connects network segments. The term commonly refers to a Network bridge that processes and routes data at the Data link layer (layer 2) of the OSI model. Switches that additionally process data at the Network layer(layer 3 and above) are often referred to as Layer 3 switches or Multilayer switches.

The term network switch does not generally encompass unintelligent or passive network devices such as hubs and repeaters. OpenWRT is a Open Source firmware project for the WRT54GL router. It’s a very small version of Linux which runs in place of the stock Linksys firmware. The firmware is available from openwrt.org. I prefer to use another project called X-wrt (x-wrt.org) which is based on OpenWRT but has added a nice graphical front end for configuring the router. Linksys released the WRT54G router in 2002. It gained popularity for being a powerful, easily customizable router. Several third-party projects have released replacement firmware for the router which can enable it to perform functions not originally available.

            At any layer, a modern switch may implement power over Ethernet (PoE), which avoids the need for attached devices, such as an IP telephone or wireless access point, to have a separate power supply. Since switches can have redundant power circuits connected to uninterruptible power supplies, the connected device can continue operating even when regular office power fails. When it comes to routers and switches, most IT pros associate Cisco with professional-grade quality and Linksys with low-end, consumer-grade routers and wireless equipment. While there’s nothing wrong with this distinction—Linksys (a division of Cisco) addresses the consumer market very well—the comparison may be a bit basic. One reason for this is the general perception of Linksys products: Most expect Linksys to offer a good integrated router/switch/firewall/wireless AP that you buy at your local electronics store for about $40. But when you need a switch for a new remote office that has 35 PCs and printers and that needs Gb Ethernet uplinks, QoS, VLAN, 802.1x RADIUS, and a Web-based management interface, most people aren’t going to think Linksys will be in the running. Most likely, you’ll think of Cisco, Nortel, or HP ProCurve—but not Linksys.

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