Linksys EtherFast® BEFSR41 Router

Pros

Unbeatable low cost
Real 10/100 switch for the LAN side (4 ports)
Lots of indicators for easy troubleshooting
Very easy to set up using web based admin interface
Good quality manufacturing

Cons

Very rudimentary firewall (static packet filter)
No PPTP, L2TP & IPSEC tunneling for VPN (*)
Can only use one IP address on the WAN side

Who needs it?

If you want to share a cable modem connection between up to 4 computers, and the ISP gives you only one IP address, you need to have some sort of gateway. As described in great detail in some of the internet sharing articles, this can be done with software running on a PC also, but it is a lot more convenient to do it with a small stand-alone box. All the standard stuff like DHCP client for the WAN side, DHCP server for the LAN side, NAT (Network Address Translation) is all handled by this box, so there is no need for setting any of the computers up in any special way to make this work. And if you are using an ISP that charges you extra for additional IP addresses, you can save that money and buy this box instead.

Hooking Up

I spent less than 15 minutes hooking this thing up, which is really good. Obviously I know what this thing does, so there was no learning curve involved. And it does all the simple things you would expect it to do in exactly the way I expected, so no big surprises.
The WAN connection is limited to 10 Mbps Ethernet, and that is plenty enough as most broadband connections never gets over about 1.5 Mbps for any periods of time. The 4 LAN side connections are 10/100 and operate as a switch, which is better than a hub. With a switch, two computers can exchange data at 100 Mbps, even if a third computer is connected at 10 Mbps only. With a 10/100 hub, all computers in this example would have been operating at 10 Mbps only.

Conclusion

All in all thumbs up for a good product. I will recommend this product to any small and simple home Ethernet LAN with a shared broadband connection, be it cable modem or DSL. It just needs to be a 10 BaseT Ethernet connection.