disecting the Linksys POS

[donald_k]

I decided to open my Linky up before I went to bed this morning (6:30AM.... I got up at 2PM).
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,457028;root=equip,16;mode=flat

Linksys owners might be interested to here that the WAN port uses a realtek 8019AS NIC (the cip is soldered on the router board). Realtek NICs are junk...especially the ISA ones which I had nothing but problems with and Linksys decides to go use them in their routers.....no wonder why my pings and speeds go to the craps behind it. I'll crack it open again later and make an ASCII diagram off the switch and router boards in it.

[ZenOps]

The Realtek would explain a lot. I also heard that there was also a 256K buffer in there somewhere, either integrated onto the Linksys switched ethernet chip or on a seperate memory chip.

The Realtek may be doing nothing more than converting the signal for the Linksys 10/100 switched chip to use. Anyhow the Linksys has been a stellar performer for me for the last year (got it in Feb 2000).

It has served as 8 player Unreal tournament flawlessly, FTP, HTTP, and even Microsoft MMS video media. Right now it is being used to serve a live video stream mms://24.66.197.11:8080 (If anyone is interested, has MS media player and 128kbits of download bandwidth)

*Ode to Linksys you have served me well* but it is time to move on...

I'm going to email 3com for the hardware specs on their ethernet gateway 3C510. It has finally showed up in town, so I'm gonna try it out, I hear it only uses a few watts of power.