Wireless computers and networking are very common today in the computing world. Most of the time, a household has many laptop units, each for every working family member. The laptops became indispensable to any working person. To maximize the use of the DSL connection, all laptops in a house of office are networked. The Linksys WRT350N is one choice of routers – whether at home or in the office. If you were to create your own network, is the Linksys WRT350N is a good choice?
The Linksys WRT 350N has a remarkable speed because it uses the 802.11n technology. This router was a follow-up version for the WRT 300N router of the same company. It is from Draft N family having 802.11n specs and has a four port gigabit Ethernet router. The Ethernet is also designed for the purpose of serving as USB port. The value of this port lies on its ability to share all contents of the USB hard drive to all devices connected to the network.
WRT350N vs WRT300N – They are similar in many aspects.
They have the same body. The difference is on the color. The WRT 350N has a silver and black body whereas the WRT 300N is a combination of blue and black. Both have three antennas. The two antennas are standard antenna and the third antenna is a paddle type located at the center. All the three antennas are swivel type that can rotate in order to catch the wireless signal better.
At the back of both models, you will find seven port slots – one WAN port, four LAN ports, one USB port and the power port. All ports are gigabit Ethernet. The front of the router has status lights that show the following: internet connected, wireless broadcasting enabled and wireless security status.
Setting up the Linksys 350N is easy. A CD is provided and this will give you the step by step manner of setting up the router. Are you keen on instructions? The CD is instruction on cable connection and driver installation. The CD introduces you to a wizard but if you are already familiar with router setting-up just skip this wizard and proceed to the next step.
To set-up, connect the router then finding the arrow, you just point the browser to the default IP address. At this point, you will be instructed to configure the router and the security settings. The following should be accounted – WEP, WPA, WPA2. MAC address filtering, the firewalls (NAT and SPI) and the web and internet filters. You can also set your access restrictions, allowing only the specific network members. You can set up restrictions, block specific URLs if you want.
As part of the Draft-N family of Linksys, the WRT 350N has the inherent features except that in this model, there is a USB port to function for the connection of storage devices. These devices can be controlled through the configuration interface so that maximum security and restrictions can be implemented. Your storage device can be empty or can have content. For the empty drive, just make partitions. For the drive with existing contents, you can draw data. Examples are partitions, file system and total available space. If you find the data invaluable, you can erase at this point the contents of the disk. Since you are the administrator of the system, you can apportion the storage devices to the members of the network – as to who can access and what type. The two types are either “read only” or “read/write”. The wireless 350N router also has a built-in UPnP media server that will enable multimedia data. It has FTP server so that you can get data files for channeling to outside of the network.
The detailed analysis of the Linksys WRT350N will enable any prospective router buyer to decide. To get full information on this, you can browse further, especially on the forums for feedbacks.