Computer Tips -Tech Info

Not long ago a customer offered me a slightly used Linksys BEFW11S4 ver. 4 wireless router for free. He had replaced it with an 802.11g router (this is only a b) shortly after purchase and said if I knew anyone that wanted it I could have it. Well, it’s hard for me to let tech pass through my hands without taking a look at it and testing it a bit. So, one of the first things I did was test out how well the wireless signal was received from a basement. (Concrete block walls, dirt, etc. blocking..) I was surprised at how well the signal did through concrete, dirt and a couple hundred feet of air.

Anyway, after that I wanted to sit down and see how it performed as a router and in my first few moments of tests, it froze up. At first I thought my network connection had flaked out, but I tried various ways and essentially the Linksys was unresponsive. In looking online, I found that this is a known problem with the Linksys BEFW11S4 ver. 4…. it doesn’t appear that there’s one good solution that works for everyone. This had firmware v. 1.50.10 and I upgraded it to the latest ( 1.52.02 ) …. the lockups are still happening.

By the way, I did find out the reset procedure for this (hard reset back to factory defaults…) It goes as follows…
1) push in and hold reset button for 60-90 seconds with power on.
2) keep reset pressed down and remove power
3) keep holding reset while without power 30 seconds
4) keep holding reset while restoring power
5) keep holding reset another 60-90 seconds with power.
6) release reset switch

For the above I used 90 seconds when given a range…. also, I unplugged and plugged back in after releasing the reset switch. The default IP is 192.168.1.1 and the password is admin (no username). It looks like the config page can be accessed from either the wired or wireless clients (http://192.168.1.1)

Basically, I can do light web browsing through the device, but anything generating heavy traffic (network scan) freezes the box up. The gateway is then not pingable and wireless association seems to be dropped. The device still sends out beacon ESSID announcements though.

My only conclusion from experience to the reading online is that the device is poorly designed. Unfortunately I don’t think I can pass this along to anyone in good conscience (free or not).

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 30th, 2006 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Computers, Hardware, Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.