Linksys / Cisco e4200 problems & Customer Support FAIL
Linksys / Cisco e4200
I went out and grabbed a Cisco e4200, supposedly the flagship router offered by Linksys/Cisco for home/small business use. I had done some rudimentary reviews online before grabbing it and looking at it from it’s fancy product shots, I thought the router looked damn sexy.
I picked it up at Fry’s, and if you’ve read my other blog post about my experiences with Fry’s and there orange labeled “Reduced Price” items, you should know to steer clear of them. Well to my surprise there was 5 e4200 that were on the shelf at Fry’s and all of them were reduced price, meaning that ALL of them had been returned…not a good sign right?
I convinced myself that the reason they had been returned was most likely because:
- It’s much pricier than other router’s from a “Average Joe” perspective
- The purchaser expected higher INTERNET speeds from a pricier router
- It was bought as a gift and someone returned it
Bringing it to the office I plugged it in, set it up, and quickly went back to working on taking over the world some projects that I should have been working on instead of putzing around at Fry’s. As I set off into my “zone” and started typing away I get a call from the break room… “Hey David…umm..Netflix isn’t working in the break room, know what’s up with it, I’ve tried restarting but it can’t connect?” At first I didn’t put one and one together, so I spewed out some random things to try to keep the guy busy and went back to work.
About ten minutes pass and I finish an article and hit PUBLISH, and whatdyaknow… I have no connectivity. Luckily I had saved a draft because simply hitting the “back” button wasn’t going to bring my work back in the correct fields.
I went to the horrible Linksys / Cisco support website and looked for a firmware upgrade, thinking along the same thoughts that the other “average Joe’s” were probably just not smart enough to attempt or know of a firmware upgrade. Looking at the comments that populate the page where you can navigate to different sections of Linksys support for your product I notice a Forum post about the exact same problem, so instead of going directly to the Firmware download page, I decided to continue reading what this user had said. I’ll spare you the whole back and forth comments but you can read the comments yourself HERE.
So obviously it’s a known problem, or to be technically correct, we can assume that it’s not an isolated incident. With something like this, a failing router, this works it’s evil in two ways. One… Typically when you replace a router it’s because your old one was going bad and giving you problems, so when someone goes out and buys this piece of shit (the e4200), and continues to have problems, they are going to naturally assume that it was something other than their old failing router…and most definitely NOT think it was the brand new e4200. Two… Most individuals are not aware of the steps and small variables to consider when diagnosing a loss of connectivity, they would call their ISP support and simply say “my internet isn’t working”.
I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and thought “ok maybe they released this prematurely before thorough testing and the firmware update to 1.0.02 will fix this for sure”. Again…I was wrong. It made the problem WORSE, now dropping connectivity several times within just a couple minutes. The what-was-supposed-to-be nice white LED Cisco logo flashing in a slow fading fashion as if dying then re-animating back to life but without bringing life back to my f*******g internet, the entire reason for it’s existence.
The customer support is obviously pretty bad as well and as of today (7/21/2011) have not made a single comment in the forums regarding a possible upcoming fix or solution, instead you have a bunch of “newbies” chatting about shit like old women at a book club. This isn’t helping Cisco.
So if you’ve purchased this uber piece of fancy advertising piece of shit e4200, and are experiencing internet connectivity problems, and you are able to actually get here to read this… Take it back, or throw it away and go buy yourself a nice new Asus Router, or Netgear…(stay away from Belkin)
***Minor Update…
I thought I should mention that I tried both static and dynamic IP addresses, and was using DHCP, typically though I run STATIC ip addys to the computers, however I had absolutely NO luck getting this to work with the router from the get go…
Update…
This issue has been duplicated several times, with both version of the firmware. Steer clear of this router, it tends to drop signal regularly and randomly.
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This is my second router. Both had the same issue to which there are several
1 It overheats and stops routing
2 irrespective of setting the router stops serving dhcp requests as well as routing. It ssems dependant on traffic ans is consistant with a memory leak
3 the later version of firmware (2nd release) is worse. This indicates cisco knows what the issue is and had a failed attempt at fixing it
4 If u bought one of these u have screwd because the policy is to keep replaciing it with another defective unit
Ripped off
fargin corksucker. 3 days after the warranty ended i started hitting these connectivity issues. sooo angry.
I can not reset this e4200 piece of crap back to its factory setting to get into the router. I have done all the known fixes, hold down 60sec unplug 10 sec, and many other offered solutions. Tech support had me to pay them for there East Indian support experts to tell me “Yep, it’s not working” give me more money and I will work with you for another 15 mins and then tell you Yep, it’s not working. What a fu*king piece of crap
My God ! what a piece of junk !!!
All this money on the toilet, and looking for a solution, the fn warranty ran out.
Customer service doesn’t say is a known issue, they keep you on the phone doing some stupid crap and make you feel it has some type of solution.
In this economy when you are looking for value they are robbing people blind.
THIEVES !!!!
I’m still trying to find a solution… the solution below seems to be making a difference so far:
1] Open the software and go to the option which says “Router Settings”
2] Then click on the option which says “Advanced Settings” which will take you to the router’s configuration page.
3] On that same setup page reduce the MTU value to 1400 from Auto
4] Then go to the Wireless tab, keep network mode as mixed,
For Channel Settings of 2.4 GHz you can make Channel Width to 20 MHz only and Channel to 6, 9, 11..
For Channel Settings of 5 GHz you can make Channel Width to 20 MHz only and Channel to 40 or 161…
Pasted from
Other things to try:
The fix was to change the 5GHz and 2.4GHz networks to use different network names (SSIDs). I then connected to the 2.4GHz flavor and the connection is now solid.
I guess the problem was that by sharing the SSID devices would keep switching between the networks whenever they got the chance to connect to the juicy 5GHz flavor. The 5GHz network is flakier (higher frequencies having less range) and so the constant dropouts.
Pasted from
Although this router was and iz pricey, I bought it in hopes of integrating the Dual Band capability. I had no trouble setting it up. It is running splendidly. I must have gotten one of their good ones. So far so good
I bought a Linksys E4200 and after 2 days, i asked for a refund. The Wireless signal was worst that my WRT54G. My phone wasn’t able to connect to my wireless and the transfer speed was hoorrible.
For a 170$ router, these things sould not happen.
I am still using my WRT54G and it’s one of the best router i had in my life.
Well I have to say after installing the update 5 days ago I have not had one problem with the home E4200 V1. The shop E4200 V2 is as it was, flawless.
I have two E4200 routers,one V2 at our business that our tech’s connect to flash automotive PCM’s that has worked without a glitch. The other is at home V1 and after 3 months has been a pain in the A**. I did a update tonight and all seems good for now. Hopefully Cisco got their head out of their clavin and sent a real fix.
I have found power cycling the E4200 is the only way to establish an IP address with my ISP. Are any of you able to reboot the E4200 from the control pannel to reset?
I no longer use the router, however I was able to restart the router successfully remotely as well as when logged into the administrative panel
Same problem, but I thought my first one was a dud… what do you know, I got another one from Amazon instead of Best Buy… also had the same problems… dropped packets like mad. STEER AWAY YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
I agree I’ve seen this happen at least 5 more times to people I know that have purchased it!
[...] found many similar reports, like here. I’ve searched online for anyone who has solved this. It appears that nobody has, worldwide! [...]
I sure glad you guys take the time to provide us with these comments, I was about to buy an e4200 or the 3400, but after reading this, I think i will just stay away from linksys. I have 4 or 5 of their routers put away in a bin, they are trash. So, To whomever wrote the main comment: are Asus or netgera routers better?
Asus is a relatively newcomer to US based consumer routers, however they are a exceptional/ great company known for their electronics, so far people seem to like their routers. Netgear has been making routers for years and their equipment is reliable as well as affordable.
My experience exactly. Plugged this piece of crap in, and promptly lost all internet connectivity. The only way this junk gives internet is to just put it into bridge mode. Anyway, I’m returning this thing ASAP, going back to my trusty old (but slowly dying) WRT310N until I find a new router that doesn’t complete suck ass.
I’ve had 4 other friends / associates that have had issues with this same router as well as lower end of the same series, really disappointing of Cisco/Linksys
My experience to a T. It’s a crap piece of equipment. Cisco support offers a bunch of stalling tactics and suggestions hoping people will give up. Factory reset, reconfig, upgrade firmware, call your ISP,. Everything but sprinkle fairy dust on it. Because somewhere in Iowa somebody has one that works fine, they refuse to believe it’s a problem.
lol this is by far the best comment of the week, I love it!
your noob this wont gives better internet speed lol
You would be surprised the things people think a router will do for them. LOL