Short Review of the Linksys WAG120 ADSL 2+ Router

Cost: R699 (Makro)
Presentation: 5/5
Performance: 5/5
Features: Built-in ADSL 2+ modem, router, and wireless access point.


What you get for your money
If you are looking to replace the crappy, Chinese router that your Internet Service Provider gave you "for free" when you signed up with them, then this is the router for you. I was using the African Access ADSL 2+ router that Cybersmart supplies to its clients. Everything was fine, almost, until my line got upgraded to 4MBit ADSL, and that's when the router began to seriously give trouble, it would reset frequently, especially when going from idle, to full bandwidth and today when we discovered that packets were being dropped which led to my holiday accommodation booking going missing , I decided to get a new router. And I could never understand why FTP was so bothersome (I had to keep resuming the uploads of this very site's files), well, today I have the answer to that, the crappy router was to blame. What you get for your R700, is a sleek, nice looking box that has no flash and bling and just works.

Now, the only thing to be careful of here is that, while the ADSL modem does all the thinking for you and fills in all the VPI and VCI parameters for you, the router side is very much more secure than the old Linksys WRT54's you might be used to. Getting internet access running was a tad bit difficult, and I had to play around with settings to get it to work. It could be that my setup, of using two routers for maximum security, was to blame, but I suspect that it will be difficult regardless, the port forwarding is not the problem, the settings for the ethernet ports and the firewall need to be adjusted to taste to get anything to work. So on that key point it doesn't work out the box, but you can't have it both ways, especially with technologically challenged members of the general public.

However, on the plus side, the ADSL part is very solid, I had gone as far as to try and replace the indoor wiring to try and get the old modem to stop disconnecting, here, I am pleased to say, I get steady 23mS pings to a local website, and the overall speed seems much better, no blasted email timeouts

Technical Issues Uncovered 05/01/2012

This modem has ABSOLUTELY NO internal protection against high line voltage. Clearly a cost-cutting measure!
As you know I've had major hassles with my ADSL, and Telkom neglected to tell me to unplug the router, and their testing blew a 3mm hole into the modem chip. Fortunately it was exchanged for a new router.

When you buy this, please spend a little extra money and buy a lightning/surge protector for the phone line and put that behind the modem.