Over hyped using work connections?
933364
Unreadable from page one, and to add insult to injury, she did not properly acknowledge the short quote from an article I wrote about U Win Tin (a translation from his memoirs), which excuse me, were the only 3 sentences I could read.

She did not approach me directly about this, but wanted my "translation of U Win Tin"--the mutual friend said, "because she was writing about him."

I declined and I am glad I did so.

Frankly, I don't see what the glowing reviews are about.

I did not buy her book.
1286479
WHile this did work, all connections of every type should be made available. There are just too many different ways to connect our computing devices. An interchange device of connections should be created to make it easier to make connections, sometimes it is not about quality but just making the connection
4600049
This device gets one start because it is so easy to set up. After that, I have nothing but unkind words to say about it. When it is connected the speed is much better than wifi. The big caveat here is 'when connected.' I work from home and use VPN to connect to my office machine. I need a reliable connection. This device does not provide that. It is constantly dropping connection and resynching with the base unit. There are some stretches where the connection will remain solid for an hour or so. Then there are 10 minute stretches when the connection drops every 30 seconds or so. Try composing an email or meeting a work deadline when that happens. Some times it isn't just a dropped connection; all the lights will go out and then cycle back on. I am assuming this is a complete reboot. How is that possible or necessary? The power in the house didn't go out? The lights didn't flicker? I am going to try NetGear. That was the original product recommended to me and I only purchased this one because it was a great deal. My bad.
4563543
I connect the Gigabit ports with Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 desktop (with Gigabit Ethernet), but still I don't see any difference with regular LAN speed. I tested copying huge media files and media streaming (watching TV recording in HD with Windows Media Center) with both Gigabit and LAN - and I did not see any difference. I think the Gigabit ports are more appropriate for real file servers or database servers. For home use, it is too overkill.

Do you really need Gigabit ports for home use?

Another reviewer said it supports "WPA/WPA2 security". Excuse me; this is an Ethernet switch, not wireless device. It might be copy-paste text from a Wi-Fi device.

Conclusion
==========
This switch is good - maybe better than average $10-no-brand switch. But the "priority function" (high-med-low priority) is more marketing than real function. Most home use does not need such function. Still I recommend this switch.

Why 3-star Rating
=================
The switch is fine but the package contains too much cardboard. WD, are you concern about the environment and our forest?
4813896
The company I work for has upgraded to Office 2007, so I figured I'd upgrade at home to be compatible.  After reading all the reviews here, I've decided to wait and not upgrade at home until I have to - hoping maybe with all these issues, my employer will call a halt and go back to 2003!

I've used Office 2007 at the office for about 2 weeks now, and after getting used to the new Ribbon feature, I actually like the new interface.  I agree with one review here that said the ribbon is too large, though.  It would be nice to be able to resize it.

The major reason I am not upgrading at home is all the reports of Office 2007 being slow, and corrupting files created in Version 2003.  I have been having these problems at work, but thought the issues were due to a network problem.  The most annoying slow problem is pasting things from one document to another, even within the same application (Word to Word or Excel to Excel).  It's not just a little slow... it is agonizingly slow!  I have taken to moving on to other tasks while I wait for Word or Excel to paste, and then go back to the document later.  I'm relieved to know this isn't actually our company's network problem, but it has convinced me NOT to upgrade at home.

As far as the file corruption problem, I have experienced having to reformat bullets and other things due to the new interface in a few small files, but shudder at the scale of the time it will take for my larger files.  I pity my employer having to pay for my extra time wasted in this kind of clean up work.  I have also experienced the problems mentioned with Outlook not being able to recognize your email folders.  Again I thought this was a network problem at the office, and didn't realize it was the Office 2007 upgrade doing it.  I plan to back up all my email folders as soon as I get to work on Monday as I dread having a glitch and losing all my saved emails!

The other annoying thing about the new Outlook interface is something also previously mentioned here - the change in use and display of "flags" and "categories".  In 2003 I had an extensive system set up using the various flag colors, which is now completely lost due to the color system being moved from flags to categories.  ARGH!!!!!

Thanks to the reviewers here for your input and giving me the benefit of your trials and tribulations with the software.
604780
I work from home, and the router is in my office. My son likes to be plugged into the network for better pc game performance, so he setup camp in my office after he got a new computer for Christmas. After a few weeks, I was ready to KILL him because I could only take so much teenage chatter with his buddies while he was playing games. I bought the Netgear Powerline 500, and moved him and his computer out of my office into another room on the other side of the house. It must be doing what it says because I have not heard him complain about performance.
3845434
I was having terrible problems connecting to work from home over VPN.  My MS communicator (IM) and Outlook just wouldn't work right over VPN.  The help desk at work blamed by bandwidth and ISP (comcast).  This didn't make sense since everyone nearly else at work also uses comcast and has the same bandwidth.

Many folks at work were also having issues with IM and said switching to a Linksys router fixed their isses - so I took the plunge.  It did fix my IM.  And, the wireless signal strength is better than before.

But, it didn't fix Outlook.  Linksys and my IT help folks looked at it.  I spent more time rebooting my computer in the past week than I could stand.

Outlook still would not work over my wireless but I could connect with no issues over my neighbors unsecured network.  I called Comcast and they wanted to upgrade my modem's software but said the thing was soooo old it had to be replaced.  A comcast guy was at my house by later in the day and replaced my modem in less than one hour - half of that on-hold waiting for the tech guy at comcast proper to pick up the phone so they could work together.

Within minutes of the modem being set up I was happily working away over VPN using Outlook and IM and everything else.  It's nearly as fast as being in the office.  My connection over VPN and not over VPN is clearly faster than before - it's also less prone to drop outs.

Long story short.  It's a great router but don't expect it to fix everything.  Make sure your modem is the most up to date both in terms of hardware and software too.  Basically, any piece of anything between you and your internet could gum up the works and it's hard knowing where the issues is (router, modem, network card, etc.)  I can't believe the number of well trained tech people I spoke to and not one of them questioned the modem.  All of them seemed to think since I could get to the internet not over VPN that using VPN should make no difference.  Clearly it did - apparently older modems don't play well with VPN.
4054921
I am using Windows 8.1, and while it does say it is plug and play I still downloaded and installed the drivers before I plugged it in, based on suggestions from other Amazon reviewers.  This resulted in it detecting and setting up my wifi without any hassle.  However, I am getting network speeds of about 35 mbps on my home network, trying to transfer files from my NAS in the next room, ~12 feet away with a strong signal.

I bought this to avoid resorting to needing to walk back and forth with a flash drive all the time, but I was expecting performance at or near the 300 mbps claim and I am not getting anywhere near it.  I originally plugged it into a USB 2.0 port and saw improvement when I switched to a USB 3.0 port, but not nearly the improvement necessary to be satisfied with my purchase.  I have used a TP-Link 300mbps USB adapter in the past and it performed to my expectations, I should have spent the few extra bucks and gone with them instead.
409995
I get this MN-700 to replace MN-500, what a mistake!
1.  DHCP sometimes hand out IPs out of the setting range.
2.  Wireless keeps on droping and reconnecting.  That makes downloading large files almost impossible.
3.  In b/g mix mode, b mode client may not be able to connect.
I know people will argue that interferrence (from 2.4GHz appliances) is the cause of disconnection, but my MN-500 never has the same problem.  Microsoft seems slow (or not at all) release the fixes for this model.  :(
4413833
The Good - Extension cord comes with it so you can position device for best reception possible.  Ive seen pretty high transfer speeds.

the bad - overheats/overloads quite easily.  If you run a torrent program for instance and get too many connections.. it just overloads and loses connection.  I find myself unplugging the device and replugging it in to have it re-detect the wireless signal quite often....even just regular web browsing.  This happens on xp,vista and win 7 and connecting to a linksys router.  I do keep my pc on 24/7 so that may have something to do with it.

Id think maybe I just got a bad device but to be honest.. every linksys product Ive owned seems to have problems,, be it a laptop card or whatever.. Its really quite aggravating actually. I think this might be my last linksys product I buy.
1256545
Far and away better throughput than I had with Apple or TP-Link devices.  Now, of course, that's surely affected by the age of the others, but wow.  My hardwire speed is 80Mbps and when I was testing over wifi, I was getting about 20-25Mbps.  That's more loss than just overhead.  The other devices I mentioned just don't have the bandwidth.  I get 50-60Mbps via the Ubiquiti, and the signal seems to be stronger and farther than either of the others.  The setup is a little weird, but it's a product meant more for business use than home, I suspect.  Be that as it may, it's a capable device.
2221775
I'm an IT professional, so I do this stuff for a living.

I don't agree with the complaints about setup.  Admittedly, I do this for a living, but it's about as easy as most linksys devices.  It took me about 10 minutes. I didn't try the setup software as the easy thing to do is really just plug a laptop into the thing via the Ethernet cable and then point your browser to http://192.168.1.1.  You can then add the wifi network there and you're pretty much good to go. The thing even serves as a DHCP server so you don't have to assign your address manually. Quite simple.

As far as the effectiveness is concerned... it's not great.

In my testing, what I found is it will give you a significant improvement in signal strength.  At the end of my 40' driveway, I got nearly full signal, whereas before I only had 1 bar or none.  It will not, however, give you any better transfer speeds than you would if you were standing wherever you have the device plugged in.

Now I'm not a wifi hardware engineer, but when you think about this, it kind of makes sense. After all, if laptop (which has an excellent wifi radio) is only going to get 2.5 Mbps transfer rate standing in that spot, then how is another (presumably nearly capable) device going to do any better? The device is basically just relaying traffic, but it can only do it at the speed it has available.

It's an interesting idea and not without it's benefits, but not the silver bullet most people are looking for.
2680095
If you are looking for an wirelles acces point, this is not the item. The conection will drop several times a day, you will need to plug it and unplug it many times a day until you get tired of standing from your work chair. The speed will decrease a lot, like a 80%. If you wire this device the speed will be effective, but there will times where you will have "limited access" in your screen. This mean that somehow you are just recieving a empty signal. PLEASE DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY, for real.
4010282
Very basic firewall rules, very little control over advanced features. The only positive I can find is that you do get pretty colored charts and graphs on the dashboard. Over 20 years of experience with networking and devices I've never seen such a bad implementation, this felt like a beta product.
Some of the issues I had:
1) If you don't want to use the default subnet (192.168.1.1/24) it may be a struggle
2) You cannot change the default LAN segment if you have a static DHCP entry
3) You cannot delete the static mapping if that device goes offline
4) Some configurations require pulling/disconnecting the WAN connection
5) Open VPN is an option in the GUI but you end up in the CLI doing all the work instead
6) Android App has several bugs that prevent you from changing some settings (viewing is fine)
7) Some options are still beta like port mapping for the 2nd WAN interface, Routing and the Firewall
8) If you have trouble or want to fix issues, you need to know the Edgemax OS and commands

For an ENTERPRISE security solution it fails and does not feel professional at all. I would equate it to a $30 consumer product.
1556092
Never did succeed with "Quick Setup", on either of 2 networks.  Either won't connect to the uplink, or won't do DHCP to clients - or maybe both, the setup UI doesn't tell you much except "fail".  Apparently no option to change the SSID or set a password; you can enter a name but it isn't used.  Tried configuring manually in "Settings" and that's just a trip down the rabbit hole.  I've wasted too much time on this, it's now officially e-waste.
1681860
The performance of these units seems very dependent on the electrical wiring of your home. For newer homes with good wiring, I be they work great. In my home, built in 1986--not so great. I have one unit upstairs next to my router, the other in my downstairs office. Throughput is noticeably slower than wireless, which doesn't bother me; it's sufficient to stream Netflix and play games, etc. What does bother me is that the connection isn't consistent. It drops for a minute or so every few hours, or whenever the heat/AC kicks on, which is much worse than slow speeds. I work from home, and this disturbance is enough to drop my VPN connections and wreak havoc on my shared drives. I've been using them for about a year, but I've lost connection in the middle of important work operations enough times now that I've decided to switch to wireless.
2156040
I found them to be very finicky in use and did not make good connections to many new ethernet cables.  I ended up restructuring our plans and not using them due to lack of quality build.