The Steamboat Forum

I bought it to replace my older Linksys that died. Once installed, surfing the net was noticeably slower. The bigger issue is the Cisco/Linksys "Home Network Defender" firewall. Do you visit your friends’ Facebook/MySpace pages? Not anymore! One of the political sites I visit often includes frivolous links to more light-hearted items. For example: "14 Ill-advised tattoo trends." Cisco/Linksys has decreed those trends are best left to my imagination. Tattoos=Porn, evidently. While researching a project, I googled "Founding Fathers and Alcohol." Tried to access one of the sites, and got bitch-slapped by: "You are blocked from websites in this category: Alcohol/Tobacco/Illegal Drug."

This wouldn't be an issue if the firewall could be adjusted/disabled/removed.

It can’t.

Home Network Defender does not appear in the "Add/Remove Programs" roster – it’s hard wired into the router itself. The owner’s manual provides no instructions for changing the settings. I spent 6 freaking hours on the phone with Linksys/Cisco inept Indian tech support (who immediately tried to sell me some software to address the problem), to absolutely no avail. Ditto for my own online efforts to locate a solution. All I found was horror story after horror story. My fault for not doing any research before I bought the goddamned thing. If you’re fond of bogged-down internet navigation, and an arrogant corporation dictating where you can and cannot go online, getcherself a Linksys WRT!

Me, I'm going with Netgear.

Wow

I have always found Lynksys routers to be quite good. I did a bit of googling and it looks like other folks are having the same trouble as you. Misery loves company, right?

Anyway, I found a site where the person was able to turn off the Home Network Defender thingy by going thru Management -> Advanced Features on the router.

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"Reports of my assimilation are greatly exaggerated."

Depending on the revision you have, you might be able to flash it with dd-wrt (v1 and v3 of the 160N seem supported, just not v2). I use dd-wrt on my own linksys routers, and on family/friend installs, and it's a lot nicer than the stuff Linksys ships. See dd-wrt.com...