Linksys RE1000 Wireless-N Range Extender

I'm changing my star rating from 5 stars to 3 solely on this products warranty. I had a problem with it, four months after purchase, and I contact the manufacturer directly. I was told that it only comes with 90 day warranty. If I wanted to speak with a technician tonight it would be $29.99, but if I upgraded, I could have a whole 6 months for $39.99. It's my own fault for not having read the fine print, but 90 day warranty seems too little. And I refuse to pay that kind of money to fix a device that's 4 months old. It shouldn't have issues so soon. I was able to continue playing with it, until I got it to work. Now, I'm really glad I didn't pay $30 for someone to walk me through a troubleshoot. I still think its a great product when it works, but I don't think it has a good warranty system. Keep that in mind when purchasing.

****Original 5 star Review*****
I'm ecstatic with this purchase. Our router is in the basement, so the rest of the house gets really poor wi-fi. I've been looking for alternatives for some time. I switched out the antennas, I tried another extender (The Cisco-Linksys WRE54G Wireless-G Range Expander - REFURBISHED), and nothing worked. This took less then 5 minutes to set up, I didn't need to plug it into the computer or go down to the basement. I was just in a section of the house that gets decent reception did my magic, and now the entire house gets at least 75% reception. These areas were working with less than 25% prior to plugging in the extender. I have to play with the location of the device, but I believe I can get my house to above 80%. Even at the current rate, it's amazing. I'm not limited to where I can work on my computer, and now, we have wifi in the living room, so we can finally stream some movies to our big screen tv. :)

The design is nice and attractive. I have it right now in my bedroom, and it doesn't create an eye soar. It's also small enough not to draw too much attention to itself. I liked the price. It wasn't the cheapest, but also not the most expensive on the list. I also picked it because it was the same brand as my router, and I thought it might ease the set up. I had no problem with that. It took about 5 minutes to program, and it works great. I recommend it to anyone else that's having similar issues.

:)

At first I thought this product was CRAP! The first 2 weeks was nothing but nightmare. the repeater was dropping in and out of service religiously. Then I found the secret. Change the ip from DHCP to static! I'd use the first 100 of the last address. This thing been working like a charm since then. Haven't dropped once. I'd give it a 5 star for its performance but minus 2 for letting me thru hell to figure out how to make it stable.

The problem (that I believe the majority are facing) is not setting up the RE1000, it's the RE1000 dropping other devices from the internet after couple of minutes.

I.e. devices connected to the RE1000 will still show you full home wifi signal strength and never loose connection to the RE1000, but they simply loose the ability to connect to the internet (i.e. browse the web, etc..).

I've used the RE1000 it to extend my Cisco Linksys E4200 signal, and this device has been nothing but pain so far, and it seems I'm not alone at this.

I'm a senior software developer, and own plenty of routers, many of which are custom dd-wrts, and rarely I find something this frustrating to use without being the manufacturer at fault.

Anyway, I'll hopefully update this review if Cisco releases a firmware upgrade that fixes this device. So until then, my advice is stay away.

p.s.
to whom it may concern, RE1000 also doesn't support mac address filter option enabled on your home router that the RE1000 is extending.

Other devices won't be able to connect to the RE1000 if mac filter option is enabled on your home router (even though those devices' mac addresses are properly listed in your home router along with the RE1000 mac address).