Average Rating: 
Rating: - Perfect solution for the XBox and more
When XBox Live was looming on the horizon I started wonder how in the world I was going to get my XBox online. My TV is nowhere near my broadband connection and dragging a cable around wasn't an option. When Linksys introduced the wireless bridge, all of my problems were solved. I was able to easily connect my Xbox (and any other device which happens to sit near the TV) to my home network.Think of the bridge as a device which extends your wired network, just without using a wire.. :) A wired network comes out of one side of the bridge, allowing you to connect a device that accepts a regular ethernet connection. If you need to attach multiple devices, simply put a hub or switch in the mix. During the initial setup I had some problems. My wireless access point was up and running, but I couldn't connect to the bridge. It turns out I needed to connect it to my wired network to get the initial configuration correct. Once I did this the rest of the setup was a breeze and it has been working flawlessly ever since. Again, for those people that are considering this for use with an XBox (or probably any other gaming console), I've had no problems. I regularly run game servers on my XBox and the bridge has been great.
Rating:  - Very pleased with the WET11
After reading the specs on the Linksys WET11 and downloading the user manual from their website, I decided to purchase a unit. I am very pleased with this product and it works as I had expected. Setting it up was a breeze. The antenna is screwed on to the right side of the unit (which is surprisingly small). Plug in the power supply. I then hooked it up to a PC laptop with the supplied RJ45 cable and ran the setup program. I have an SMC Barricade 7004AWBR router with a built in wireless access point. The WET11 was configured to use the same SSID and channel as the SMC and then set to DHCP. All done. The unit can then be connected to your ethernet device in one of two ways. One is directly to your desktop or laptop, for example. The other is to hook it up to a hub or switch and from there wire it up to one or more desktops or even laptops. There is a switch on the unit to select which mode will be used. While I do have a wireless card for the laptop, it's nice to have the flexibility of going wired for desktops. The icing on the cake is that I now have wireless connectivity for my Mac Beige G3. I've been looking for a solution and the WET11 solves it. Before, I had to run a long RJ45 cable to it from the router. Now I can connect it to the WET11 through either of the two options mentioned and get on the web as before, except it's now wireless. One tip - set the Mac to a manual IP address. For some reason, setting the Mac for DHCP does not work. For me a very minor issue. I have not seen any dropped connections for the few days I've had it and it sure runs cool. All in all, it has met my expectations, perhaps more so with the Mac. For the money, I see no comparable product out there. Check it out.
Rating: - Works like it should -- watch the mixing of brands, though!
I had been using a Cisco PCMCIA card to connect my laptop to the home wireless network (Linksys wireless router). When I added a few new machines, it made sense use a hub, and then connect across a bridge. Despite the "standard", it seems like vendor X 802.11b hardware doesn't want to talk to vendor Y. I had a D-Link wireless access point--that should have done bridging--and no about of grief could get it to work right. Yes, I checked the ESSID, channel, MAC addr, etc....The WET11 plugged in, turned on, and worked without any effort. I've got two Linux boxes hooked into a cheapo-hub, the hub connects to the WET11, and that gets me to the nearby wireless router. So -- general recommendation -- don't mix 802.11b vendors if you can avoid it. The Linksys stuff has worked for me (using both
Linux and Windoze) without too much hassle. I'm happy with the performance, and the price is OK. I'm only giving 4 out of 5 because Linksys is probably at least partially behind the inter-vendor problems.
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