Summary: I had two of these babies, one at home and one at work and both worked well for about a year and then there were innumerable crashes requiring the units to be powered off and reset. Two or three times a week without any consistency. I tried everything including flashing to the latest bios and spent a lot of time driving to the office to reset the system everytime it went down. Contact to support was worthless. Found an article on the web suggesting that the capacitors in the unit become deformed after a year and that is the probable cause of the problem and I suspect it is. There are many complaints on the web about these units having unexplained failures requiring power off and reboot. Switched out home router with office one and still had the same problem. At least when the home router goes I am right next to it and reboot is easy.
Bought a d-link 604 just to see if it worked better and have not had one single need to reset the unit since I switched and that is about 1 month. I depend on gotomypc to connect to my office system and my units are always on line since I switched to dlink. Now I haven't had the dlink for more than a month or so and I can't give long term results yet but so far the money I have saved on gas alone driving to the office to reboot the router has paid for the new router and a 16 port switch. From my experience I would not go near another linksys product again (even though I own stock in Cisco). Next, I will put a dlink at home and plan on taking the linksys apart to see if my capacitors are deformed as observed by others. Than I will throw the linksys units away as the cost does not warrant repair. Hope this helps others.

Summary: I just bought this firewall/router, and am not impressed, I had software that worked every bit as well, and that should never be the case. Linksys needs to get on it with the firmware upgrades to fix the bugs that the bef series of firewall/routers has. I have seen much better equipment out there, I gave this firewall/router a chance because the stores were out of the brand I was looking for, I am not impressed with the quality of this equipment.

David C. Atkin

Summary: The Linksys of old -- decent routers, frequently updated firmware, and California-based tech support -- is DEAD.

NO MATTER HOW MUCH THE TEMPTATION, DO NOT BUY FROM LINKSYS. IF YOU EVER NEED SUPPORT FOR THE ROUTER, YOU WILL BE TALKING TO IGNORANT FOREIGNERS. You might as well buy half-the-price Taiwanese routers and take your chances, because they will likely be the same or better than Linksys's, and you will have saved yourself some money.

The Linksys BEFSX41 router, BEFORE IT WAS REBRANDED BY CISCO (if you see \"Cisco Systems\" anywhere on the box or router, it's rebranded), was a different product, and it had far fewer complaints at its maturity. The version you are buying now is DIFFERENT:

(1) Front-display status lights have been reduced to a skimpy ONE ROW. If you look at former product photos (and even the small photo shown here on PriceGrabber!), you will see the rows of indicator lights now eliminated.

(2) Forget about a proper printed manual. Go print your own outdated one, from the CD.

(3) My network admins have confirmed a high number of DOAs; the DOAs include BOAs (Broken on Arrival). How does \"dropped connections every 5 minutes\" sound? How about admin screens that appear partially or do not appear at all and instead dump firmware JavaScript into your browser?

(4) The FIRMWARE on the Linksys site HAS NOT BEEN UPDATED SINCE APRIL 2004 (Go look, before you buy!!!). The firmware must be so bug- and threat-free that it does not need updating, right? BALONEY! Linksys, in just the 9 months I have been tolerating its piece of junk, has CREATED BETA FIRMWARE updates but NOT A FINAL, FINISHED FIRMWARE UPDATE. Linksys tech support has not been able to solve, among other problems, DROPPED-CONNECTION ISSUES, and their lack of posting any firmware update and telling customers to (waste time) \"trying\" an OLD firmware version or one of their BETA versions proves this.

(5) Linksys tech support is USELESS:

---(a) Annoying, multilevel menus from hell.

---(b) Call-routing via VOIP (Voice Over IP...a crap-quality call routed over the Internet) to the Philippines.

---(c) Tier 1 (Front-line reps): Wage-slave, script-reading, low-tech, poorly trained Filipinos who parrot Pidgin English and cannot comprehend American English.

---(d) Tier 2 (Top-level reps): Wage-slave, poorly trained Filipinos who parrot Pidgin English and cannot comprehend American English.

---(e) NONE OF THE FAKE-NAME REPS ARE REACHABLE AGAIN IF THE LINE DROPS (AS IT OFTEN DOES) OR YOUR ISSUE IS UNRESOLVED. YOU WILL SUFFER ON A SUBSEQUENT CALL THE SAME ASININE MENU SYSTEM, ON-HOLD WAITING, TIER-1 SCRIPT-READING, ON-HOLD TRANSFER WAITING, AND LIKELY CALL DROP (OR TIER-2 REPEAT EXPLANATION).

---(f) NONE OF THE CRAPPY TIER-1 REPS WILL FORWARD YOU TO A CRAPPY TIER-2 REP WITHOUT YOUR COMPLETE RE-READING OF YOUR ONGOING ISSUE.

---(g) The call-center Filipino PEONS are supervised by a fellow Filipino PEON CALL-CENTER MANAGER who is often UNAVAILABLE and still USELESS FOR ISSUE RESOLUTION.

---(h) YOU WILL NEVER TALK TO A TECHNICALLY COMPETENT, AMERICAN-ENGLISH-SPEAKING, CALIFORNIA-BASED EMPLOYEE OF LINKSYS/CISCO.

---(i) Linksys/Cisco DELIBERATELY SHIELDS ITS REDUCED-STAFF AMERICAN TECHS FROM CUSTOMERS. ESCALATIONS WILL NEVER HAPPEN FROM THE FILIPINO SIDE, BECAUSE IT COUNTS AGAINST THAT CALL CENTER AND THE EMPLOYEE. A California-based Linksys manager told me that my issue should have been escalated from the Philippines to California (implying that such a procedure is in place AND used -- What a heaping pile of bull droppings!).

Linksys/Cisco's CEO, John Chambers, has CHOSEN to OUTSOURCE American tech jobs to INCOMPETENT FOREIGNERS WHO DO NOT HAVE THE EXPERTISE. While this TRAITOROUS practice has become popular, IT IS ATROCIOUS that Linksys/Cisco gets away with spitting on its customers.

Avoid this BROKEN Linksys BEFSX41 router; its Filipino, Pidgin-English, clipped-VOIP, dropped-call INCOMPETENT SUPPORT, and all other such DELIBERATELY CRIPPLED PRODUCTS from Linksys/Cisco.