It makes USB flash memory and hard disks accessible over a network using the SMB protocol (also known as Windows file sharing or CIFS).

The device has a web interface from which the various advanced features can be configured, including user and group permissions and networking options.

The device has two USB 2.0 ports for connecting hard disks and uses an ARM-compatible Intel XScale IXP420 CPU.

In models manufactured prior to around April 2006, Linksys had underclocked the processor to 133 MHz, though a simple hardware modification to remove this restriction is possible.

Once installed, the operating system had to be moved to an attached hard disk due to the lack of space available on the flash memory.