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My ultimate review (Final update to "Free at last") showed my experience with the latest edition of this access point, the infamous V2. It's NOT good. The V2 has problems with WEP, that is, wireless encryption.

I found the latest Linksys product is crippled (I tried 2 of them) and the SMC product is the better alternative (I'm using it now).

So, for all you who chose to purchase based on my old review (of an obsolete model) - I apologise.

I gotta admit, my favourite thing about the WAP-11 is the cool stylish look. With the cute little antennae sticking it up it sort of looks like a blue version of the Great Gazoo.

Bought the WAP-11, a WPC-11 PC card, and a WUSB-11 to attach a laptop and a Windows PC to my home lan. No real problems setting things up, including configuring wep encryption. Things don't always match up with the documentation and other linksys products 100%, but close enough that it isn't too tough to figure things out. For example, the wap-11 and wpc-11 let you enter the encryption key using a pass phrase, but the wusb-11 makes you type in the actual keys in hex.

I find the range to be perfectly reasonable - at least I can work all over my house. Even when the link quality and signal strength meters drop down to below 20% I get fine performance.

The install and configuration is Windows centric - this can be an issue if you are (like me) mostly linux. You need a windows box with a usb port to do initial configuration - fortunately I have one (whew). Once you have this done, you can use snmp for subsequent configuration, though even then by far the easiest approach is to use the provided windows based client software. It would be nice if the unit picked up an IP via dhcp and had a linux client for lan access - thus dispensing with the need for the usb/windows hokiness. From their site, it seems that this may be coming.

All in all, the blue gazoo has me writing this review from the comfort of my living room where I get to hang out with my wife - instead of trapped by a wire in the office. What could be better than that?

Linksys WAP11 worked flawlessly for about 6 month, then it started to drop communication about every couple of days, then it just gradually gotten worse. Before it went completely dead on me, it was dropping communication with my PC about 1 minute after I reset the Access Point. All I could say is that I am not pleased with Linksys products since it is my second Linksys product that went out of commission shortly after the 1 year warranty. I am not sure if I'll buy another Linksys product, but I really like the fact that WRT54G has lots of third party support to add features to the factory build firmware. Naah...I won't give Linksys another chance.