Buffalo Technology Wireless-G High Power Router and Access Point with High Gain Antenna WHR-HP-G54

I just got high-speed internet at my house recently and I did a lot of research on the web before buying my first router. Every other router had about an equal number of negative and positive reviews. This one had an overwhelming number of positive reviews. The setup was very simple: just put the enclosed CD into the drive and set up your encryption if you desire and that was pretty much it. It worked from the get-go to 2 hardwired desktops and my wife's new laptop. I didn't have to use the second included CD to set up the laptop, just configured the encryption with our password, etc. It recognized the signal immediately. I didn't do any other confirguring with the router as I am not very well versed in that sort of thing. As far as range goes: The router is on my desk in the basement and I walked around our 2000 SF ranch with no less than 2 bars (the speed said 18Mbps) in the room farthest away which is about 45' away. Almost everywhere else inside I had full strength signal. I also walked outside and had usuable signal out to about 15' away from the structure everywhere. Past that distance, it depended on where you were and what was between you and the router. The furthest I got was about 30' away from the house which was about 50' from the router. So far so good.

I bought this to replace a Linksys WRT54G2 router, which worked for a month and then started giving me incredibly slow internet speeds, requiring me to power cycle the modem and router numerous times each day. This Buffalo router was not the easiest thing in the world to set up, however I know very little about routers and I was able to get it up and running in an hour and a half, so I guess it's not too bad. The automatic setup wizard was not able to establish an internet connection, however when I went to the router's home page, there was an option to connect to the internet, and choosing that solved the problem. Some of the wording in the setup wizard is a bit confusing, for instance, when entering a user name and password, it told me to check with my internet service provider, making me think that I should enter some name and password that I had arranged with them. Like I say, it's a bit confusing. As far as a comparison to the Linksys WRT54G2, here we go: Linksys: 70% - 75% signal strength at my Playstation 3. Buffalo: 85% signal strength. Linksys: 1 - 5 Mbps download speed at PS3. Buffalo - 6 - 9 Mbps download speed. Linksys - big reduction in internet speed with a wired connection to my PC. Buffalo - no noticeable reduction in speed over wired connection to PC. Linksys - a regular hotplate. I moved it once and the desk underneath it was downright hot. Buffalo - only slightly warm to the touch. The AOSS (AirStation OneTouch Secure System) worked well with the PS3 - I originally set up the router with no security and went through the automatic network connection setup on the PS3. Once that was done and a connection established, I went into the custom internet connection settings on the PS3, paged through it until I got to AOSS, then chose it and went and pushed the button on the top of the router. All the security was set up automatically. Pretty cool! So far I'm extremely satisfied with this Buffalo router. Other than the fact that setting it up took a bit of head scratching (and one rather loud profanity), it seems to be working perfectly. Now if it only lasts! You can be sure that if I start having problems with it in the future, I'll most certainly be back to edit this review.

I bought this router for my new apartment thinking I'd use something better in the future. I'm sure the turbo g works fine because the computers I had on the network were able to communicate within the LAN, but this item is not compatible with my cable company's setup and WAN is unaccessible. I subscribe to Comcast in the SF bay area and new service comes with an Arris telephony modem. Apparently, with Comcast and this modem, Comcast requires you to use the MAC address associated with the modem they lease to you. After hooking this unit up, you realize that the unit knows only to report the MAC address associated with this router. The conflict lies in that Comcast does not recognize this new MAC address. Calling Comcast will get you confused customer service reps that won't change the MAC address associated with the account. Calling Buffalo will get you a knowledgable rep, but can only tell you to ask Comcast to change their MAC address on file. Now, since I had to get wireless set up for this place immediately, I went to Circuit City to buy a standard D-Link g router. The D-Link router knows how to clone the MAC address of the modem for the router so that Comcast does not get confused. Before buying this unit, check with your cable internet ISP to make sure they can change MAC addresses if you want to be able to use it for world wide web. It seems to have special features for logging onto DSL, but I personally have not tried. This compatibility issue made me conclude that it's definitely a 1-star modem, especially since D-Link recognizes the same problem and has a built in feature to accomodate. Aside from that, the 1-star rating also reflects the 3 hrs wasted on tech support and another hour wasted on going to Circuit City to buy the new router and to go to UPS to return this thing to Amazon.

I bought this to replace a long line of Linksys routers. Cisco/Linksys routers seem to last up to 3 years before errors start to show up. This last time I was replacing their new, Star Trek looking Cisco-Linksys WRT54G2 Wireless-G Broadband Router that was less then 2 years old. In all fairness, this last router maybe wasn't going bad. I was having issues with my DSL service, probably related to the phone line in my house. But when it was suggested to buy a new router, by the ISP, I did not want to go with Linksys. I have been using them for a decade and they did seem to go belly up within 3 years. The geek at the ISP suggested Buffalo. Price seemed right and lots of good reviews. Now its a little different to set up then a Linksys, obviously, the IP address is different. But anyone who can set up a router manually will have no problems. I don't know about increased range. I am sitting downstairs, almost underneath it and have 4/5 bars on my Dell Inspiron Mini 10 10.1-Inch Obsidian Black Netbook with Integrated TV Tuner - Up to 6 Hours 20 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Starter) . I know I can't pick it up 4 houses down at the bus stop. But that may be due to the channel it is on. Anyway, throughput speed, at least at higher speeds seems to be higher on the Buffalo by 1-2mb/sec compared to the Linksys. I was getting 13mb/sec vs 12 on the Linksys. The only time I had an issue was after I flashed the bios. I thought I broke it. I tried several times to both manually and automatically connect to my cable modem without success. I also reset it a couple of times. Finally, I got it to connect. So, the moral of the story is, if its not broken, don't fix it. About the only thing I liked better with the Linksys was the cool software they had were you can see your network on a map and check the status of everything. I have a large network, 5 laptops, a wireless printer, 2 PS3s, and 3 Dish receivers (one wireless). The Buffalo is doing fine handling all that data. IMPORTANT: It seems to ship with the firewall OFF. It can do stealth mode, which is its High setting and most recommended by security experts. I think they are wrong to do this, Linksys and Belkin don't. UPDATE: After flashing to the newest firmware it has an intermittent problem with dropping packets (6-10%) and high jitter (stability of ping)of around 100ms (should be 1-3ms on a stable line). It happened every couple of days and would last for a about an hour or so. Recycling the power did not fix it. I confirmed this by testing directly connected to the cable modem when this was happening and it went away. I don't know if flashing did it or not, especially since its intermittent. Since switching back to my old Linksys router I have had no issues. Shame. Anyway. Contacted support and they want me to send in all the info which I will do sometime soon, to get a RTA. Anyway, you might want to not flash to the latest bios if yours is working fine.

I just received this router today. I ordered it with Amazon 1 day express shipping to these back woods. Arrived on schedule! Kul. I have had two routers, one for the main house with the cable modem (Motorola, bought at Amazon) and one for the cabin where I live. A 100 foot cable from Radio Shack connects across the creek. The main router is/was a Linksys with phone ports for CallVantage service. Callvantage cut me off due to lack of E911 service here. Immediately after cancelling the VOIP service the router started crashing and re-setting it's name, etc. After frantically searching for something to replace the Linksys (already have a netgear, tired of re-booting that thing) I discovered this Buffalo. An excellent feature which is not mentioned is that one can set it to be a wireless bridge; you set a switch and it receives wifi, transmitting it over the ethernet cables. A dedicated box which does this costs more than this router. The radio signal is indeed much stronger than the Linksys WRT; I can receive it in the cabin on my iBook and Tivo. The Mac Mini will not take as it has no external antenna. I have an extended antenna coming tomorrow. It does do 802.11b as well as G, by the way. This is not mentioned anywhere. Your PDA units do B, not G. One oddity is that the DC input has no label for what voltage is required. Be careful here, as it is 5 volt, not 12 volt like everyone else. The supplied DC converter lists its' output, the box does not list the required input. I consider this a defective design as leaving old DC converters in place and putting the new electronic piece in is my usual practice. Luckily I checked the supplied converter first. There is no printed documentation included, just two windows install disks. One of these disks has the manual in a sub-directory as a PDF. There I learned that the router sits at address 192.168.11.1 and the admin login stuff. It did come online automatically and grab an address from the cable modem. If you require PPOE you'll have to configure it to get online. I subtract a star for the unlabeled 5 volt input and documentation.

If you're with Clearwire, you'll find the first few days kind of mind numbing. It took a lot of trial and error with my providor to change my settings, but we eventually got it. (Had to unclick my TCP/IPv6 and leave it on 4TCP/IPv4 because I run Vista on Clearwire Wireless Internet) As for this router, the instructions were confusing. It was a little unclear on identifying your setup procedures, which disks to use first, then proceeding on which set of steps to follow. It took a little trial and error but I eventually figured it out. This is not my first time to set-up a wireless router. However, once you iron out all the confusion, this router is actually not too bad.

I bought this router knowing I was immediately going to flash it with the free DD-WRT firmware. It's built in high powered (that what the HP stands for) signal amplifier can be adjusted quite generously with DD-WRT for unbelievable range, making it the absolute best solution for anyone. While not as simple to flash with third party firmware as other routers, it still only took seconds to do with no special jtag or other cables needed. From the DD-WRT Wiki: ********************* Out-of-the-box: First-time-flashing for 'store-bought' Buffalo models The web interface on a Buffalo-router cannot be used the very first time to convert the Buffalo router from factory firmware to DD-WRT. It is very easy though to bypass this on most models (see specific models below for exceptions): 1.Google 'tftp2.exe', and download a copy from a website. 2.From the DD-WRT website, download dd-wrt.v24_std_generic.bin from the v2.4 SP1 folder, or the latest release. 3.Plug your ethernet cable (not wireless!) into a LAN port on the Buffalo. 4.Your IP address auto-assigned is usually 192.168.11.2, but you must manually set it to flash this time only. 5.Assign the IP of 192.168.11.2 to your network adapter. In most Microsoft Windows this is Start, Control Panel, Network Connections, find the LAN connection and right-click, find TCPIP and click Properties, and set the IP to 192.168.11.2 and the Subnet to 255.255.255.0. Do not change any other settings! 6.Open TFTP2.EXE. Put in 192.168.11.1 for the Server, and select the .bin firmware image from step 2. 7.Unplug the Buffalo. Get your mouse ready to click on the Upgrade button in TFTP2. 8.Plug in the Buffalo. The diag light with all the other lights may come on very quickly and go out. A few seconds later when the diag light blinks, immediately press the Upgrade button in TFTP2. The diag light flashes for awhile, the router restarts, and you are done! Don't forget now to change your LAN TCPIP back to DHCP (Automatic). Misc. Notes: The procedure above is necessary the first time flashing from the factory Buffalo firmware to DD-WRT firmware, because, normally, most companies let you upload firmware directly from the user interface. Buffalo, unfortunately, encrypts their firmware, meaning their routers from the Web interface will accept only their encrypted firmware. The first time you flash, the TFTP method can be used to bypass the 'encrypted' firmware requirement. Afterwards, the router firmware can be changed through the Web interface normally. All the Broadcom routers normally enter a special mode in the first few seconds after power is applied that allows a TFTP transfer to directly program the flash ROM with new firmware. So what you do is get everything ready to go. 1. power up the router, and then 2. send the router the new firmware, quickly. WHR-G54S, WHR-HP-G54, WZR-HP-G54 Specifics Once you flash to DD-WRT on the Buffalo WHR-G54S/WHR-HP-G54/WZR-RS-G54 and you want to flash back to the Buffalo firmware, look in the downloads section of [...] in the "buffalo factory revert" folder for unencrypted firmware that will load from the DD-WRT GUI. The WHR-HP-G54 image is the German version. Download the English version from Buffalo's site. Flash the German version and use that to flash the English version. A hidden LED behind the front panel may blink on older models. It slightly lights up the bridge icon. This LED is not used in the Buffalo firmware, but in DD-WRT it will flash on for 2 seconds, then off for 2 seconds. WARNING: One person reports: I had problems using the mini version of DD-WRT v23SP2 on my WHR-G54S. When using the (standard, full) generic version, everything worked fine.

Finally - a router that has good distance/range. I have recently bought a D-link DIR-655 and an ASUS WL-520gU trying to increase my range. The D-link DIR-655 had the worst range out of the group. Best speed when in range - but what good is the speed of the connection if you can't get a connection? I did have to call Buffalo support. The software CDs that come with the router are not supported under Windows 7. I couldn't figure out the router address since it is a little different. Their tech support is excellent though. Received a real person quickly and he knew his stuff. I wish their N router received as good reviews as this router - I would have liked to have the speed. But the range/distance was my #1 item I was after and this router meets them. This router is also rock stable - many less re-boots than the other routers. Wish there was a way to see what clients were connected to the router - that is something I miss. Also doesn't have WPA2 security, but that just lowers the range & speed anyway. Sounds like upgrading the firmware to DD-WRT will give the router additional features, but it will also void the warranty - so I am not willing to do that. Besides it is working great for my needs the way it is. Not the absolute perfect router - but the best I have used for range/distance and finally one I am happy with and will keep using. By the way - I have also tried many wireless antennas trying to increase my range and it has been hit and miss. I am just using the antenna that came with this router and seems to do just as good of a job as the separate antennas I have bought and tried. My wife has been tired of me buying so many different routers and antennas trying to boost the distance & range - trying to get a stable connection. This router makes a difference and I can finally stop my expensive search. If you have a PC that is a long way away from your router I would also suggest buying a directional antenna - either the Hawking HAI15SC or HA12W.