Cisco-Valet Wireless Router

10 Review to this product

• 

  M. Lowe
  December 31st, 2010 on 11:15 pm

  Rating

  Recently, I introduced my dad the joys of wireless internet. However, the router that I gave him decided not to play nice with his internet provider. I decided it would be a good idea to get him a new router, but I wanted to get one that it would be easy for someone like himself that could be able to set it up. Most routers out of the box are not easy to set up since you have to actually look at the directions included to determine what type of setting you need. And heaven forbid if you want to set up a secured internet connection. Well, I installed for my dad the absolute easiest wireless router on the market to setup. It was so easy, he could have set it up and my dad is by no means technically inclined.

  The setup is extremely easy. First, you attach a USB setup key into an available USB slot on your computer. Then, click on the Cisco easy setup and an onscreen window will guide you through the next steps. You then attach the ethernet cable from the modem to the router, another cable to your computer that you are using, then plug in the power adapter. After completing that, hit the next button on the screen and within 5 minutes, the router is ready for use.

  Now for your laptop computers, setting up a wireless connection can be a royal pain. With the Valet, it also is easy. You take the USB setup key and place it into an available slot on the laptop. During the first step, the settings for the wireless network were being copied onto the setup key. Again, within 5 minutes, the laptop is ready for use wirelessly.

  The range for this device is quite adequate for his place, however, you should identify how much range you would like to have covered before purchasing.

  This is the easiest router out of the box to set up. I highly recommend it.
• 

  J. Tessier
  January 1st, 2011 on 3:31 am

  Rating

  I had to replace my Linksys router of 2 years in order to connect my new Blu-Ray wireless player. Tried a Belkin and couldn’t get all the features to work. I tried customer support twice and each time blown off blaming first Samasung and then Micrsoft. No solutions were offered or suggested.

  I then tried the Valet+ and got it to work perfectly with my wired desktop PC (XP), my Samsung Blu-Ray wireless player, and my Gateway wireless laptop (Vista). All was well until I tried to file share laptop/desktop. The laptop could not “see” the wired desktop. After trying my best to get it to work, I called support and got the help I needed. The tech was determined to get it right and worked on the problem for approx. 4 hours. I’m still not 100% sure why it didn’t work or how it was fixed other than some settings on the desktop and a firmware upgrade along with settings on the Valet. But, the bottom line is a person from Cisco support made it right.

  The Valet gives me my best signal strength ever throughout my house (3 floors). It does not run any apps in the background robbing me of resources.

  Yes, most folks don’t have an issue setting up right out of the box – however, it is good to have support when/if you need it.

  June 27
  
  I’ve had no problems whatever since the initial setup. I power off my PC, modem, and the Valet every night and they all perform together flawlessly the next morning.
• 

  val
  January 1st, 2011 on 7:46 am

  Rating

  I had a very old Airport base station and was having trouble connecting my DirecTv wireless adapter to it. I figured it was time to upgrade. I did a lot of research online and was worried about not being able to set up a new router using my Mac. I bought this router with high hopes of a quick set up. I was not disappointed. I had 2 Macbooks, a Wii, my TiVo DVR and the DirecTv system all working within 15 minutes. So far signal is great throughout my three story home. The router is in the basement and my husband is on the third floor Skyping away. I highy recommend this for anyone that wants a quick and easy setup with little hassles!
• 

  Janboricua
  January 2nd, 2011 on 6:28 am

  Rating

  I try to find a product like this long time ago and finally is here. At first i have my doubt to spend this amount in a
  
  router because i tried 3 different brands in the past and was very complicated for me to connect all my stuff (laptop, xbox, etc)
  
  but I said one more try cant kill me anyway, after read all the description here and go directly to the cisco website i went today
  
  and grab the box at store W and bought it. The package is very simple in details about the product but clearly in the requirements and i read work with window 7. Like one review here said inside is very well presented (i love it) and the installation process was super easy and fast with the usb key, cd and instructions are in the past. Now i have my laptop,xbox,regular computer,itouch and even my nintendo ds xl easily use this router. Everything is running fine with my installation but i choose my own password because you can use one the machine assign to you. I don’t know how much time i spend to install this but I know was less than 10 minutes. one thing i noticed is the router need to be flat in your desk or you can hang on the wall but not vertical not a big deal but for people with a lot of space in the desk, the router have a decent size, slim and a cool futuristic look that i like. Final thought is a good product maybe a little pricey like all new things at the beginning but If you want wireless connection with frustration free this is the product for you.
• 

  W. Brown
  January 2nd, 2011 on 10:20 am

  Rating

  I had the old, classic blue and black linksys model before this one (b/g connectivity; probably 4 years old). It had proved a bit unreliable (for whatever reason, I don’t know) with streaming music to my Sonos speakers, so I decided to upgrade.

  Being every marketer’s dream, I talked myself into buying the Valet version. It’s been about three months, and I’m glad I did. Here’s what it does/does better:

  1.) The Valet worked right out of the box. As promised. Every single time I have moved in the past, I have had to call customer support after 1-2 hours fiddling with powering off the router and modem and computer. I always found Linksys’ call support guys nice, patient, and, I suppose it has to be said, they speak and understand English well. It took another 30-60 minutes on the phone with them, and then I’d be up and running. (Everything always lined up in the cmd prompt screen, but it seemed after we confirmed that and turned everything on and off again a few times, it just magically worked).

  2.) The Valet puts itself back online after a power outage, which are twice or thrice monthly events. The Linksys never did this. You had to unplug the router, unplug the modem, plug the modem back in, wait for the right lights to come on, and plug the router back in. Though the Valet is lovelier to behold than the Linksys ever thought about being, the router has simply not kept up and so I prefer to keep this bundle (and the Sonos Zone Bridge with its middling attractiveness) out of sight, which coincides with inconvenience to reset.

  3.) The Valet handles the cool stuff. I enjoy the Sonos system now. I even use it as a backup alarm clock/get ready music. I almost never turned on the wireless setting for my iPhone because 3G was faster. (I didn’t expect to ever use the guest setting, but it’s been a nice feature for friends’ mobiles).

  4.) The Valet successfully downloads things the Linksys had trouble with. I’m looking at you, iPhone software updates.

  5.) The Valet has better range. I even had an apparent driveby wifi thief, about forty or fifty feet (and a brick wall) away from the router. I guess I’m going to have break down some of this simplification and use the advanced settings to set up a WPA key, because while unplugging the router and waiting five minutes sent the car trolling elsewhere, it kind of defeated the purpose. But, at least everything came back online when I plugged it back in
• 

  M. Mortimer
  January 3rd, 2011 on 12:43 pm

  Rating

  OK, firstly, I should point out I am somewhat an expert on computers, being able to take them apart, replace parts and put them back together (notebooks, desktops, and now even cell phones).

  Despite this, one area I have NEVER bothered to learn about or competently manage is anything to do with network cards, routers or wireless for the home. I guess it’s like math. I was turned off to math (but love history, English and politics) because when in high school I did not like the algebra teacher and things went downhill from there. Matter of fact I got my first D in high school in algebra. I digress.

  Anyway, setting up a wireless or router on computers never went well for me so I just avoided dealing with it. As Windows progressed through versions I was able to pretty much connect a network cable (that’s the one where the ends look like a fatter phone cable that you are used to) and fire things up. But if there were any problems I was stuck. I would simply have to do all kinds of research in an attempt to get things running.

  And setting up a wireless router? Forget that. I was lucky if the router worked and was nevertheless always frustrated with those long passkey phrases and codes one had to enter. Before getting this Cisco Valet I was using a NetGear router that worked pretty well, but I still had to find help on the Net and was always ticked off because there would be a new device I wanted to work off the desktop router connection, but it would not (a notebook for example).

  Enter the beauty of television advertising. I saw Cisco’s ad for the Valet and thought “that makes sense, this USB dongle thing.” As coincidence would have it, a local TV channel, KRON 4 in San Francisco, had its tech guy review and test a Cisco Valet. He was going to see if the Valet really did what the TV ads said, plug in the USB dongle, get connected. Well it worked, it got his recommendation, and the rest is history, as the saying goes.

  What Is This Thing For:

  First, a little history. Before wireless “internet connections” became common on notebooks, netbooks, and now smartphones (via WiFi), people had to “hard wire” their computers to a network router if they wanted to share a single net connection with other computers (even the Nintendo Wii has the option of connecting through a hard wire or wirelessly).

  All that meant was that you were setting up your computer to act as a router or hub by which any other computers connected to it with cables could share the router’s net connection. This was no different in concept than your house having a main power cable running to your residence and your plugging in devices in the home’s various electrical outlets.

  Wireless eliminates the need for those wire and cables connected to a router. But the issue with wireless is that while you enjoy its benefits, so too can anyone passing by in a car using “sniffer” program or more likely, a neighbor. (Ever notice when you tell a computer to “detect wireless connections” all kinds of strange-named items pop up. Those are wireless routers that your neighbors have set up.)

  So security has always been a concern with wireless setups. Enter fancy and confusing terms like encryption, keys, WPA, and WEP. It’s wireless security measures that have made the entire process confusing and frustrating for consumers. The Valet promises to eliminate our having to deal with all that security mumbo jumbo (that usually prevented us from ever getting a connection).

  Sidenote: Do you have a desktop computer like mine, where it does not contain a wireless network card (usually attached to the computer’s motherboard)? No worry, with the Cisco Valet (or any router really), you can simply connect (hard wire) the computer to any one of the four physical ports on the back of the Valet to share your cable or land line connection. Yes, this is how it was done in the old days and how most offices still network the computers, by running cable through the ceiling to all the offices and cubicles.

  Which Model To Buy:

  Cisco offers the Valet in various “grades,” the lowest being the “consumer model” (the M10). After a little research that’s the one I ended up getting.

  After seeing the stuff on TV I went to Cisco’s website and saw they made different versions, with the more expensive model supposedly being able to do more. Since I really did not know what Cisco was talking about, truth be told all I wanted was a wireless connection in my condo. So I kept that in mind when deciding which model to purchase. (I tend to buy the highest grade model of most electronics, but I figured for the router I should not do that since my needs were simple. Also, I saw that the basic model (again, the Cisco Valet M10) did not suffer in performance/speed, so I was fine with getting the base unit.)

  I ended up getting it for $70 instead of the retail $99. I was loving this thing already.

  Easy To Set Up?

  I was skeptical about this thing, so much so that I was ready to return t for a full refund if things did not happen the same as to that tech guy on TV. When I got home a sat down in front of my computer, my command center, if you will, ready to be disappointed by yet another exaggerated TV ad.

  First thing I did was open the Valet box. To emphasize how easy this is to set up, Cisco puts the USB dongle/thumb drive on the inside of the top half of the box and the blue/white router in the lower half of the box. That certainly implied to me that this was going to work as advertised.

  To make things even more clear how easy a time I was going to have setting up my Cisco Valet, outside the box flap it says:

  “Welcome to the new home wireless experience”

  Inside above the USB dongle it says:

  “Your key to simple setup”

  And below the key are abbreviated install instructions (for people like me who never read directions and always screw things up):

  “1. Insert the Easy Setup Key into a USB port on your computer.

  2. Click ‘Connect to your Cisco Valet.’

  3. Follow the on-screen instructions to install your Cisco Valet.”

  Before anything I wanted to see what else was in the box. There was a small pamphlet, a power adapter and one network cable.

  Fishing around I noticed THERE WAS NO CD OR DVD CONTAINING DRIVERS OR INSTALL FILES! That was promising to me because an install CD or DVD usually means for me that things are going to get messed up. “Heck this actually might work” I thought. (Note: while there was not a CD or DVD containing the drivers and install files, what Cisco did was simply put those on to the USB dongle, that looks like a typical USB thumb drive. In fact, a check of the dongle in Windows Explorer indicated the Cisco Valet “thumb drive” is 1GB in size and Cisco put about 45 MB of files on it.)

  So with great curiosity and anticipation the four of us continued with the install. (Me, the dog and two cats).

  Cisco included a little pamphlet that had big illustrations and very little printing on it. It was simply a puff piece “ad” telling us how easy this would all be.

  The Install:

  As mentioned above, the “key” (pun intended) to all this is to simply connect the USB Key (a dongle or thumb drive) to any computer in which you want to establish a wired or wireless internet connection. (While most people want a wireless connection, there’s still millions of desktop computers in the U.S. that do not have a wireless card inside.)

  So I did as instructed, I plugged the USB Key into one of my desktop’s USB ports.

  EUREKA! The USB Key detected I did not have a wireless card on the desktop. It said something like “Looks like this computer does not have wireless hardware. Please click ‘Next’ and follow the directions.”

  It then said which cables to connect. One cable from the broadband modem (my net connection coming from the wall, so to speak) to back of the Valet, into yellow-labeled port that says “Internet.” Then I was told to connect a cable from the back of my computer’s network port (a hard wire connection) to any of the Valet’s ports numbered 1 to 4. (Note that this is how all routers have worked since the eighties.)

  After that is says to click next, next and then it SILENTLY detects the computer, what it is, type of network card, which OS it was running, etc. About three minutes later it said “Sorry, cannot find a connection.” But it said to fix this, turn off the cable modem for two minutes then turn back on.

  (Note: this is an important step because typically any time you connect a new or different router to a Comcast cable modem, you need to turn off the modem so it can reset itself and set itself up to connect to the new router. Don’t hit the reset button if your modem has one. To be absolutely certain your old settings are cleared from the modem, power it off.)

  When I turned the modem back on, the Cisco Valet gave me a Net connection and everything is running fine.

  Wow… that was easy!

  Second Install:

  I then grabbed my HP notebook that I bought recently. Now it does have a wireless card. So even though it also has an RJ45 network port, for hard wire connections, I was going to see how the Valet did with that.

  As above, I simply connected the USB dongle to one of the notebook’s USB ports. The same “setup” menu appeared. This time, however, it detected the notebook had a wireless card. So all I did was click a bunch of confirmation “next” buttons. Within about two minutes my notebook was connected to the Cisco Valet’s broadband output (net connection)!

  Note: After an install you remove the USB Key, as its work is done. You do NOT ever have to use it again on a computer that has successfully installed or connected to the Valet.

  So yeah, this thing worked exactly as advertised, for both wired and wireless connections!

  I can safely recommend this to anyone. Yes, there will be those people who have problems, no matter what. But if this worked for someone like me (who is “wireless challenged”) it should work for most anyone.

  Bonus Tip: Make sure to temporally turn off any anti-virus or security software BEFORE starting an install.

  Bonus Tip: Each dongle gives you a user name and password. While you can change it in the Advanced Settings, unless you don’t trust your family members, I would leave it alone. If you do try to change the user name and password an ominous warning pops up that doing so may prevent the USB Key working the way it does (it probably always pauses to ask for your name and PW. Whereas if you don’t change it then the Key will always bypass that step, asking you to log on, so to speak).

  Bonus Tip: Cisco says to not lose your USB Key (dongle) because it is only through the Key that you can “one click” connect to new devices. To keep track of mine I taped a lanyard to it. (There’s no lanyard or strap hole on the dongle, hence my using 3M clear strapping tape on it.

  Bonus Tip: Again, if you have no problems with your family members or roommates, you can write your user name and password on the dongle (it’s white) using a Sharpie laundry marker.
• 

  A. F. Colbert
  January 3rd, 2011 on 10:17 pm

  Rating

  This solved my home network and gaming problems. I owned a netgear VPN824 v3 that I was very happy with until I wanted to connect my WII and Nintendo DSi. I had to make a lot of adjustments to my old router, manually enter my IP address and many other quirks to no avail.
  
  The setup was just as stated, and I was online with my WII to wstch Netflix movies online as well as gaming with my DSi.
  
  I love this and it’s worth EVERY penny. I live in a 3000+ square foot home, and my router is upstairs on one end of the house, and I still received great reception downstairs on the other end of my house.
  
  Thank you VALET!
• 

  Peter
  January 4th, 2011 on 8:33 pm

  Rating

  I had been using a 7 year old Linksys router that was impossible to lock. Not wanting to share my wireless connection with my neighbors I saw a review of the Cisco Valet and knew right away this was for me. The packaging is very impressive….reminds me of when I opened my iPhone box, but much bigger. Set up was a breeze, although I read conflicting instructions on how to do it. But I have a hunch it doesn’t matter whether you insert the USB key first or connect the router to your modem before inserting the key.

  The Valet recognized my iPhone immediately and all I had to do was type my Valet password (supplied by the Valet) into my iPhone.

  Then I put the USB key into my wireless computer and that was a piece of cake. Took about 1 minute to connect to the router.

  I guess each router gets its own fancy name….mine is “fancy dolphin”, which I decided to keep. The setup does give you the option to change the name or password, but the instructions said something about having to reset the router manually. And I think you would have to update the USB key if you make changes. I decided not to change anything.

  My only issue was trying to register the product with Cisco. On the registration screen it asks for a user name and password. Since I did not have either, it took several tries before I figured it out. You need to go the the Cisco homepage and register a username and password and then come back to the registration page.

  One other issue was trying to figure out what the center button does. Our of curiosity I pressed it and it started flashing. Not knowing what was going on I unplugged the power and then back in and it reset it self to normal.

  Instruction are all there on the Cisco web site…just in different places.

  The router is sleek and easy on the eyes.

  I would definitely recommend this product.
• 

  Blish
  January 5th, 2011 on 11:12 am

  Rating

  Setting up a home network comprised of two laptops, a netbook, two desktops, and multiple iPhones was effortless. The setup was as easy as the advertisements said and resulted in a friendly – but secure – environment. The router can be easily modified through an interface to anyone who’s owned any other Cisco router, and there are some helpful options regarding content control as well. Overall, a well designed unit that I would recommend.
• 

  TJ
  January 5th, 2011 on 2:26 pm

  Rating

  Wonderful product; true happiness. I needed a new router immediately so paid a little more at our local electronics store vs. Amazon. Set up home network with three PC’s and wireless printer in 20 minutes. Cisco walks the talk when advertising simple setup. The Easy Settup Key goes into the UBS port on every computer. The Setup Key does everything; even gives you the wireless name and password (you can easily change at anytime). A Guest account is also created and you have option of assigning 1-7 guests and access can be turnned on or off at anytime. Questions – Cisco invites you to call them 24/7 and they will solve any problems.

  Results – We have 100% strength eveywhere in our two-story home and confident that our neighbors can’t borrow our wireless connection. Definitely recommend the Cisco Valet if you want to easily set up a home wireless network.

  Update! When a company provides exceptional customer service, it speaks volumes about their product. After placing a call to Cisco Valet technical support, I was connect within one minute. No being directed to website or being stuck in the “press options” vortex. Technical support spent time explaining all the features and the steps I needed to setup my Canon Wireless Printer (MP560). If a device has wireless capability, it can easily be added to your home network. I know have three laptops and a printer all connected to my network. I learned my son’s Xbox 360 just needs an adapter or bridge to be added to the network. Will be expanding my home entertainment wish list now that I finally understand how to easily bring wireless technology into all aspects of my home. The Valet is a product I highly recommend.