Linksys says it put a considerable amount of customer consultation into the look of its brand-new WRT310N wireless gateway router, and it shows. Instead of a featureless cube, the company opted for the slightly "winged" look to give at least a hint of the 310N's internal antenna array. The result is a sleek, petite look that's a far cry from our most recently reviewed Linksys router, the Editors' Choice–winning WRT600N, which fairly bristles with external antenna gear. You'll have to decide for yourself whether you like the new look; we think it's fine, and the latest Linksys software update is even better. Still, can a pretty face and slick outsides make up for the fact that this router operates only at 2.4 GHz, instead of the more n-friendly 5 GHz?

Aside from looks, the 310N also sports considerable new software smarts with a new version of its Linksys EasyLink Advisor software. The new LELA sports a more Vista-like look and turns installation into an easy, wizard-based process that has your hardware installation finished in four steps and full network config done in another five. These take you from the very beginning, after you've unboxed the 310N but before you've plugged anything in. I thought the slide showing me how to plug into the electrical socket was a little much, but it serves to demonstrate how easy the wizard aims to be—nine total steps sounds pretty good, especially when one of them is plugging the thing in.

I had a small hiccup when the wizard refused to see the 310N router from my Vista test machine—even though the router was working perfectly and allowed the same machine Internet access. But when I ran the wizard again off a Windows XP Pro machine, it worked fine. Remember that for this review I was using preproduction hardware and software, so hopefully you won't see these glitches when the 310N ships.

Your 310N will allow connected PCs Internet access after the hardware install, but don't stop the process there. Router configuration is required to secure your router's password and enable the wireless network with an SSID and a security key. That's all you need to get started, and Linksys has notably improved setup from its earlier versions with the new LELA—the whole process took less than 10 minutes.

Another important update to the new LELA is the addition of an auto-update feature. This is an agent you have the option to download during the router's setup. Once installed, the agent's sole job is to scan the Linksys support sites for new software updates to LELA and firmware updates for your router. These will be downloaded and installed automatically—a good thing for LELA but when it comes to auto-updating firmware on the router, a bit worrisome to me: It's not a given that everyone will want to install every firmware update. Still, if you don't want to install the agent, you can simply opt out at setup.

Although it wasn't ready in time for our early look, the LELA will also change the look and feel of the 310N's day-to-day Web-based management screens. These will be accessible from the desktop LELA client and will sport the look and feel of the installation process, including updated features like a local interactive network diagram. Our early-version 310N still worked with the old-style Linksys Web management interface, however.

Once the 310N was configured, its performance was a mixed bag. On the upside, it performed about as well as the Editors' Choice WRT600N at 2.4 GHz, putting up numbers of about 108 megabits per second with simultaneous bidirectional streams and an average of 72 Mbps in a single direction—this in the router's 40-MHz "Auto" mode. The downside is that the 310N isn't dual-band: It offers no 5-GHz operation at all. Hence even though the 310N has the ability to lock out all traffic other than 802.11n, it's still subject to the signal weakness that all 11n routers suffer at 2.4 GHz. And using the router in mixed mode—permitting 11b and 11g traffic—means defaulting to throughput well below 54 Mbps. Even with a sexy new LELA interface, that hurts. Linksys feels that 5 GHz isn't necessary for a strictly home-oriented router, but after completing our last wireless roundup, I disagree. Wireless-n at anything other than 5 GHz is simply too weak no matter where you're running the router unless "home" is in the middle of an open prairie.

You also won't see a StorageLink USB interface for attaching a USB hard disk and turning it into a networked share, as I found on the WRT600N. Then again, the 310N will list at $129, which is about half the cost of the WRT600N—that seems like a fair trade-off. One feature on the cheaper 310N that the WRT600N doesn't have is Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS). This is a relatively new industry standard that we'll be seeing a lot more of in 2008: It takes the form of a sync button on the 310N. Any WPS-compliant client will have a similar sync button. Enabling WPS on the 310N by simply pressing the two sync buttons will take care of wirelessly configuring your client. There will be some notebooks bearing WPS in the near future, but you'll see this mostly on home-oriented network peripherals, including new home NAS units, media extenders, and similar equipment. Linksys says it's upgrading most of its home product lines to WPS in the near future, but at test time even the brand-new DMA2200 media extender didn't support it yet.

Overall, the Linksys Wireless-N Gigabit Router (WRT310) (including the new EasyLink Advisor) comes at a good price and is a stylish addition to the Linksys home router lineup. The WPS support will be a boon to home users, and most folks won't miss the StorageLink feature—a straight network-connected NAS is a better bet anyway. I just hope we'll see a hardware upgrade sometime this year that adds the 5-GHz radio—and that could make the 310N, with its stylish looks and improved software, a serious contender.

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