Linksys Ultra RangePlus Wireless-N Router (WRT160N)

You'd be hard-pressed to find a true draft-n router for less than you can buy the Linksys Ultra RangePlus Wireless-N Router (WRT160N). Linksys's own RangePlus Wireless Router (WRT110) may be $20 cheaper on the mean streets of Techtown, but it's not a true draft-n machine (it employs Linksys's RangePlus "n" emulation technology). Nor does it take advantage of Linksys's free LELA 3.0 network management software. The WRT160N does. Those differences aside, however, the WRT160N is fairly similar to its less-expensive sibling in features and, unfortunately, throughput.
Externally, the RangePlus and Ultra RangePlus are exactly the same. Five Ethernet ports adorn the rear of the router: one WAN/Internet and four wired Ethernet ports, although none are Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) capable. There's also no USB port for Linksys Storage Link technology or printer sharing. You will, however, like the new Linksys case design—the sleek, black and gray case with no external antennas visible has real Dark Knight flair.

I found setup to be a muddled affair, and starkly different from the easy process I sped through with our vintage 2007 Editors' Choice–winning Linksys WRT600N. First, there's the dual-LELA (Linksys EasyLink Advisor) software issue. LELA has been the name of the company's installation wizard for several product generations. Now Linksys has released LELA version 3.0, which acts as a home network management system. Although only a version number distinguishes the two applications, they're very different products. Straight LELA is the wizard that kicks off when you click on Install Router after the installation CD starts during Autorun. LELA 3.0 is the network management software, and that's a separate install (or download) that shouldn't run until after the wizard completes.

That "after the wizard completes" part was a bit of an issue for me, because it hung both times I configured the WRT160N: once with my Comcast cable modem at home and again with the DSL line here in PC Magazine Labs. The same wizard hiccupped at the same place when I tested the Linksys WRT110, but it did eventually complete. With the WRT160N, however, it never recovered. The setup process runs fine until it asks you to connect the DSL line to the router and power everything up. But after I did that, the installation utility failed to find the router. The router, however, sees the broadband Internet connection, gets an external address, and hands out an internal address to the machine running the installation CD—so you can actually surf the Internet while the installation wizard is still looking for the router.

The fact that I couldn't get to LELA 3.0 from the wizard didn't bug me very much because I had a press release telling me where to find the network management package. Regular customers, on the other hand, will need to remember to kill the install wizard after it fails, eject the CD, and then reinsert it to kick off Autorun again. That will bring up the CD's menu, from which you can select Install LELA 3.0. Perhaps by the time you read this, Linksys will have fixed the issue.