Holy Hot Cakes Batman! …heh.
I was thinkin about getting apples airport extreme, but this might be better…

I really wanted to say thanks for this BLOG. This explained almost everything that I wanted to know about my new LINKSYS WRT350N Wireless-N Gigabit Router. Especially the LED Colors.

I do have a question. I believe the Router came with a CAT 5e wire
I have 2 computers wired to the router and 2 wireless connections in other rooms of the house. I was told that for the WIRED computers that had a 10/100/1000 Ethernet connection that I should be using CAT 6. I then purchased one. While hooking it up I noticed that the connection to the other computer was a CAT 5e. Also, between the router and the Cable Modem is Cat 5e.

Question. I was reading elsewere that you should use all CAT 6 since it is backwards compatable, and this will insure the Quality and speed of the connections. (IS THERE ANY TRUTH TO THIS?) And, if so could you explain. Also, is there a safe way to test the speed of the router/connections/ips connection? And/Or is there a safe place on the net to do this?

Khin Murray

Thanks for any help!!!

Hello Khin,

Thanks for dropping, Your question is far better answered and explained on this page,http://www.cat-5-cable-company.com/faq-cat6-v-cat5e.html. as for lan speed testing i use dumeter for pc to pc bandwidth testing(by copying a large file from one pc to another with the dumeter running), but for router to pc there’s none that i know of unless your router has bandwidth testing feature like mikrotik’s routerOS.

HTH

Hi thanks for this very informative site. I just like to ask if you could give me a list guide in a proper setting of the Wifi of WRT350N router for me to maximized my wifi in any flat form.
Thakns

Dear HTH, Batman;

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question(s) above. I was concerned when replacing my Linksys wireless “B” router with the WRT350N.
I couldn’t understand why the new computer that I purchased which has an on motherboard 10/100/1000 Ethernet port, lights up Yellow. When I called Linksys Customer support, for another problem, I asked about the colors. The lady that I was talking to, Explained that my computer only had a 10/100 or B/G. I then when back to Best buy and talked to the salesman who is actually the Manager of Geek Squad at that store.

When I purchased the computer, we covered this topic specifically, because I was upgrading my router as well. Anyway, He looked up the specs to the new computer that I bought and said that it came with a B/G wireless card and an onboard 10/100/1000 port. He thought that I needed to bring in the computer to them to check to see if something was wrong. Meanwhile (because I was unsure what cables that I had cat 5, 5e or cat 6) he talked me into buying a Cat 6 cable. After installing it, the damn light was still Amber. So, that is when I started to try to find in writing on the net what the colors meant. This is when I ran across your site. On the down side, Customer support was wrong.

I read the site that you told me to go to. And now this brings up different questions. It says that much like a chain (the weak link). I am to expect that the fastest speed that I am to get is speed of the slowest connection that I have, or so that is what I understood it to mean. Please correct me if I am wrong. Now, here in my home office, I have 2 computers with in inches of the router. For this reason I went ahead and wired them. The new computer is a Quad core, and I purchased it only because I couldn’t play a game that my brother plays and requested that I start playing it just so we could spend time together. My other computers are in single processors in the AMD Athlon era. Thus, they are 5 years old. They still work wonderfully and for what I use(d) them for they were fine. I hadn’t had a reason to upgrade them. Although this new computer is a quad and I bought it for gaming, I am sure that I will use it for other reasons.

Again, the layout is the two in my home office is one Quad core wired to the Router with Vista, and a single processor AMD Athlon wired running Windows XP. This computer has a 10/100 port.

In my Daughters room there is a computer that is single core AMD athlon with a Linksys B card, and is connected wirelessly, running Windows XP.

In my wife’s Home Office There is pretty much the same computer and set up. Both, my Daughter, and my Wife’s computers are 4 to 5 years old, but they do everything and more that they need them to do. However, I was planning to upgrade my wife’s computer Motherboard to a dual core or maybe even a Quad core.

Would it be wise to replace my second computers Ethernet card with a 10/100/1000? As well as replacing my Daughter’s and Wife’s From Linksys B cards to Linksys N cards?

I know that they are working fine for them, and a logical answer from you would be, don’t fix what isn’t broken; However, I am looking for an opinion/performance answer. Also, what I gathered from the article that you sent me to is that Cat 5e is designed for gigabit communications, and that Cat 6 is a waste of money. Again, please correct me if I am wrong.

Also, could you lead me to were I could get or purchase a copy of the Dumeter software that you use for peer to peer testing? As well, do you happen to know if the Linksys WRT350N comes with the mikrotik’s routerOS or like software? Or maybe you might know of a place that I could go/call/email for such a question? I know you said “but for router to pc there’s none that I know of unless your router has bandwidth testing feature like mikrotik’s routerOS.” However, I thought I would ask in a little bit different way.

Also, just wondering, how do you pay for your website? By this I mean; do you take donations? Or is it free. (Nothing is really free!). Again, I wanted to take the time to say thanks for even having the site, much less taking the time to answer my questions.

Khin Murray

Thanks again for any help!!!

Hello Khin,

Please see my opinion/answer below.

start of snip
“It says that much like a chain (the weak link). I am to expect that the fastest speed that I am to get is speed of the slowest connection that I have, or so that is what I understood it to mean. Please correct me if I am wrong.”

Would it be wise to replace my second computers Ethernet card with a 10/100/1000? As well as replacing my Daughter’s and Wife’s From Linksys B cards to Linksys N cards?

Also, what I gathered from the article that you sent me to is that Cat 5e is designed for gigabit communications, and that Cat 6 is a waste of money. Again, please correct me if I am wrong.

Also, just wondering, how do you pay for your website? By this I mean; do you take donations? Or is it free. (Nothing is really free!). Again, I wanted to take the time to say thanks for even having the site, much less taking the time to answer my questions.
end of snip

This is true, For you to utilize N goodness you have to use N capable adapters. In your situation where you still have Bs the fastest connection that you can get is that of Bs. So, if speed and performance is what you really after then it is advisable that you replace those Bs with Ns, and, since WRT350N is also a gigabit switch you can replace your 10/100 with 10/100/1000 NIC and have your network working entirely on 10/100/1000 and N.

In my on opinion. Practically it really is a waste of money, but technically it is not. Why? 5e(nhanced) was designed to support up to 1G while cat6 was designed to support 1G or more in fact there is new specification of cat6 which is the augmented cat6 or cat6a which supports up to 10G applications in the future.

About the Dumeter software you can download a demo in this url http://www.dumeter.com/download.php, there is hardware too which you can check it here http://www.dataaccessories.com/t3042.html (i am not recommending you to buy it unless you’re damn serious to become a network administrator)

Lastly, i maintain this weblog, all from my own pocket. I even bought hardware which i used for testing purposes just to simulate setup problems.

after all, sharing is also learning.

my linksys wireless router security led is orange its mean what

Please Help me.

Security (green) - lights up when wireless security is enabled.

Steady flashing green power light after reboot, no internet, no web interface, I didn’t not try to upgrade firmware to get this. I just powered it down to move the ting to another room.
Tried reset, I don’t know if I’m doing it right. I tried the 5 second method, tried the 30 second method and still the same results. I really need some help….
exiter@gmail.com

i have the same problem as exiter above. power and wireless light is on. power is blinking but nothing. cant connect to 192.168.1.1 either, no internet nothing. not sure if router is DOA.

My W-LAN doesn´t works with the “n” network.
How can I use this?

My laptop has W-LAN with compatibly to “n” networks. But it only works with the “g” W-LAN.

I hope you understand my bad english.

@exiter and jon
flashing power light of the router means a corrupted firmware. If you can no longer ping its IP address after a hard reset (30 seconds reset), then the router is dead. Try setting static IP address on your computer with the same range as the router’s IP address then try to ping it. Your lucky if you still can ping it because you can still try to save the router by doing a firmware upgrade. If not u may need to have the device replaced.

Re: WRT350N flashing power light, I can ping using static IP address. How do I go about upgrading the router’s firmware? I can’t get the router setup page via the web (192.168.1.1). Doi I need to connect the router to my PC using the USB cable to do firmare upgrade? Thanks for your help.

I am attempting to set up a wrt350n router, it will work fine for a little while then the security light goes from green to yellow. Once the light goes yellow the wireless is disabled. Thanks in advance