Linksys E2000 Advanced Wireless N Router

Cisco Connect will also check for updates to the router's firmware and automatically install them. We had to update the firmware the first time we used the program and it took less than five minutes all up, although we did get a message at first telling us that we may have to restart the router in order for it to be recognised — we didn't have to.

The router will select a default name for the wireless network (ours was SilverOak). If you don't want to go in and manually change any settings, then you can use this default SSID and its associated password, but you will have to create an Easy Setup Key. To do this all you have to do is insert a USB key when you are prompted (you'll have to use your own — we wish Linksys supplied one in the box), and the program will copy the wireless network's details to it automatically. To complete the setup, all you have to do (in theory) is plug it in to your laptop or desktop PC with a wireless adapter and wait for it autorun before telling it to connect to your Linksys router. In practice, we had to navigate to the USB drive's root directory and manually launch the 'Connect' application.

Adding wireless clients to your network is easy, although you may have to launch the Connect program manually if it doesn't autorun.

To connect a smartphone, wireless printer or a gaming console, you'll have to type in the wireless network's credentials manually. Cisco Connect will display the SSID, password and security type (WPA, WPA2 or mixed WPA or WPA2) — don't forget the password is case sensitive so you'll need to type it in exactly as you see it on the screen. We were able to connect the disappointing Nokia N8 phone to the wireless access point without any problems. The E2000 also allows users to connect to it as guests (the Cisco Connect software shows you the password for this), which is convenient if you have visitors and want to give them Internet access but don't want them accessing the computers on your local area network.

Cisco Connect also allows you to set up parental controls for specific computers. You'll only be able to apply filters to computers that are already connected to the router, and you'll need to apply each filter to each computer (if you want to restrict more than one). This is a little cumbersome if you want to lock down the majority of your network. To block content, you'll have to enter specific URLs as the software does not support keyword filtering. If an attempt is made to access a flagged site, the router will block it. The block can be bypassed if the user knows the password. Interestingly, the parental filters are not available in the router's Web interface, only in the Cisco Connect software. We think it would be more beneficial if it also included keyword filtering.

Parental control is limited to Web site address filtering only.

Conclusion

In addition to dual-band Wi-Fi and Gigabit Ethernet, the Linksys E2000 has all the features you'd expect of a modern wireless router: a built-in firewall, QoS, port-forwarding, DynamicDNS support and VPN passthrough support. It performed very well in our tests and it was rock-solid-reliable. For $170, it's hard to go wrong with this router and we recommend it not only for sharing a broadband connection, but also for tasks such as media streaming and online gaming. The only thing that would make it better is support for simultaneous dual-band networking, but if you want that feature then you can look at the E3000 instead, which costs $80 more.