[NTLUG:Discuss] What happened to Linksys?? BEFSR81v3 is junk

[Chris Cox]

As some know, my BEFSR41 4port Linksys went out (apparently).
It's diag light was on and never would go off (more later on that).

So I went and bought a new BEFSR81... the 8 port version.  It's
the BEFSR81v3 the CISCO version!  Wow... figured that Cisco
would actually help Linksys out in the quality dept.

I could not have been more wrong.  I have an SB3100 Surfboard
cable modem.  Appears that the BEFSR81v3 cannot correctly
autonegotiate with the port of the SB3100.  Yes.. I get
connected, but my speed is about 100Kb... instead of the
nice 3Mb that comcast users expect.  Oddly, my uplink speed
was not affected and was actuall >200Kb which is about right.
I'm guessing it has to do with auto neg since the "Internet"
light (there are much fewer lights on the "new" Cisco v3
version of their routers) blinks with a steady pulse (not the
flickering of traffic, but a steady beat which on some
Linksys switches indicates an auto neg error).

So what happened?  I know that Cisco prides themselves on
their own understanding of auto negotiation and indeed I've
seen many Cisco devices improperly auto neg.  Figured it
was just a fluke in only a few cases, maybe Cisco is just plain
dumb.  I don't know anymore.  All I know is that the BEFSR81v3 is
a hunk of junk, unlike my original BEFSR41v1 which worked for
many years without problem.

Now... back to that red light issue.  Seems that I'm not the
only one who's BEFSR41 went red light.  I smell a remote
exploit against the BEFSR41.. shame it actually kills the unit
for good.  This is of course sheer speculation.  Just odd
that so many are reporting the same problem.

Anyone else have an SB3100 modem, comcast and can recommend
a descent cable/dsl router??  Esp. if you know it can still
be purchased.  For example, I doubt I'd have problems with
the v1 version of the BEFSR81.

For now, I've enabled the SUSE firewall and am going direct
(which works flawlessly of course!!).  I may setup a dedicated
Linux box as my router, but it's a waste of equipment IMHO.