The Router Recommendations Thread (Consumer)

Hi all. I need a bit of advice for my future network. I have two wireless G notebooks in the house and a wireless-N-capable msi wind as well. I also have a 360 (currently using wireless adapter), PS3 (wireless) and another desktop which uses a wireless G at the moment. My current setup does not allow for adequate media streaming (720p mkvs to ps3 via Tversity). For what its worth, I also have an iphone I use regularly when I am in the house. Here is what I am thinking for my new and improved setup....

-DLink DIR-825 placed in my living room with PS3 and 360 wired via gigabit connection.

-Wireless N card in my desktop computer which is approximately 30 ft away from the DIR-825.

Since the 825 is simultaneous dual-band, will I be able to place the desktop and wind on the 5ghz band and get proper streaming from the desktop to the PS3 or other media streaming device? I have my eye on one of the new internet-ready lcds from samsung that decode .mkv files. So basically... I game, I stream large video files, I do bit torrent, and I have plenty of devices that will still need to use wireless G. Is the 825 the right pick for all of my needs? Thanks for reading. Please let me know if I've left something out. Thanks in advance.

I
 
Could someone recommend me a good router in which will work in a 3 story house. The house is about 60 years old, I think I will plan on putting the router on the middle floor to give out the best coverage, but I was wondering should going with repeaters help as well??
 
AthlonXP said:
Could someone recommend me a good router in which will work in a 3 story house. The house is about 60 years old, I think I will plan on putting the router on the middle floor to give out the best coverage, but I was wondering should going with repeaters help as well??
Click to expand...

Linksys wrt610n is working for me. I can hit my basement, and 2nd floor pretty well.

They were on sale at Best buy recently too.
 
I am thinking of picking up this:

TRENDnet TEW-633GR 300Mbps Wireless N Gigabit Router
 
I'm looking for a bit of switch advice...

16 ports, gigabit, rackmountable, not Netgear's god-awful blue colour. That's basically it. It'll be running my home network so it's gotta work well, but I don't need a whole bunch of advanced features. Any models worth recommending?
 
djBon2112 said:
I'm looking for a bit of switch advice...

16 ports, gigabit, rackmountable, not Netgear's god-awful blue colour. That's basically it. It'll be running my home network so it's gotta work well, but I don't need a whole bunch of advanced features. Any models worth recommending?
Click to expand...
Budget?

Sorry to hear you dislike blue but that's got to be the worst reason I've ever heard for avoiding a brand. :) Netgear's ProSafe series of unmanaged switches are great - robust, speedy and efficient. Further, Netgear's managed switches (such as the GS724T) are nice for the money.

But I digress - the Dell PowerConnect 2716 may be just what you are looking for. It's presently $188 in the Small Business section of http://www.dell.com . While I have not used that particular model, I've used many PowerConnect switches in the past and found them to be decent for the money.

If you're not into Dell or don't want/need any management capabilities, the D-Link DGS-1016D gets good reviews.

And finally -- if money is no object, look at the HP 1400 or 1800-24G.
 
Orinthical said:
Budget?

Sorry to hear you dislike blue but that's got to be the worst reason I've ever heard for avoiding a brand. :) Netgear's ProSafe series of unmanaged switches are great - robust, speedy and efficient. Further, Netgear's managed switches (such as the GS724T) are nice for the money.

But I digress - the Dell PowerConnect 2716 may be just what you are looking for. It's presently $188 in the Small Business section of http://www.dell.com . While I have not used that particular model, I've used many PowerConnect switches in the past and found them to be decent for the money.

If you're not into Dell or don't want/need any management capabilities, the D-Link DGS-1016D gets good reviews.

And finally -- if money is no object, look at the HP 1400 or 1800-24G.
Click to expand...

Haha I won't actively reject it if it's the best choice, but god I hate that colour lol!

Budget is ~$200 CAD, so about ~$170 US, but I'm going to primarily look used if I can. I'm basically going on the cheap here as I am a poor college student :(
 
AMD_RULES said:
Is 802.11N worth the cost over 802.11G?
I'm comparing the WRT54GL vs. WRT600N...
Click to expand...
Fixed.

Is it worth the cost alone? Not necessarily if the devices you are comparing are apples to apples but in this case they are definitely not apples to apples. Even if you were to put the WRT600N in G-only mode, it would kick the crap out of the age-old WRT54GL. So a better question would be - which router is worth the money? In that case, out of those two, the WRT600N. There is also the WRT610N to consider if you're looking specifically for a linksys product.
 
Orinthical said:
Fixed.

Is it worth the cost alone? Not necessarily if the devices you are comparing are apples to apples but in this case they are definitely not apples to apples. Even if you were to put the WRT600N in G-only mode, it would kick the crap out of the age-old WRT54GL. So a better question would be - which router is worth the money? In that case, out of those two, the WRT600N. There is also the WRT610N to consider if you're looking specifically for a linksys product.
Click to expand...

I've used both the WRT600Nand the WRT610N. From my experience the 610N is by and far the better router. It runs cooler, and in my house anyways hold the connections better when getting far away. I design is also pretty sleek.
 
I would be looking to run DD-WRT like I do on my Buffalo WHR-HP-G54. I'm looking to get two routers and run bridge mode; have one router connected to a linux firewall and a "wired lan" connected to another router which connects to the primary router wirelessly...
 
Silly question but I just got a DIR-655 and was wondering if I should even bother using the cd that came with it or if it's even recommended. Should I just plug 'er up and just update the firmware?
 
K3Fallout said:
Silly question but I just got a DIR-655 and was wondering if I should even bother using the cd that came with it or if it's even recommended. Should I just plug 'er up and just update the firmware?
Click to expand...
Unless you want a pretty map of your network that you will eventually have to pay for... you may as well use the CD as a coaster. :)
 
Oh lord, another question. So the DIR-655 was successfully setup for wired/wireless connections. I game wirelessly and I seem to be getting lag spikes in an interval that I can't figure out. I ran Ping Tester and I never got 'requests timed out' when I pinged my router's IP address(unless I'm supposed to ping another IP). I read around and it seems that I'm not the only one having this problem with this router and I saw some suggestion of disabling QoS. Any other suggestions?
 
K3Fallout said:
Oh lord, another question. So the DIR-655 was successfully setup for wired/wireless connections. I game wirelessly and I seem to be getting lag spikes in an interval that I can't figure out. I ran Ping Tester and I never got 'requests timed out' when I pinged my router's IP address(unless I'm supposed to ping another IP). I read around and it seems that I'm not the only one having this problem with this router and I saw some suggestion of disabling QoS. Any other suggestions?
Click to expand...

You're not on Vista are you?

*and while we're on this topic, this shit better be fixed in Win7 :D
 
K3Fallout said:
Oh lord, another question. So the DIR-655 was successfully setup for wired/wireless connections. I game wirelessly and I seem to be getting lag spikes in an interval that I can't figure out. I ran Ping Tester and I never got 'requests timed out' when I pinged my router's IP address(unless I'm supposed to ping another IP). I read around and it seems that I'm not the only one having this problem with this router and I saw some suggestion of disabling QoS. Any other suggestions?
Click to expand...

Hey.., have you try to disable QoS yet? Does it improve your gaming performance?

I think QoS plays a role regarding with your lag spike if someone in your household is using the Internet while you're playing games because the D-Link router QoS will put Internet traffic such as web browsing to be higher priority than gaming.
 
Update, turning off QoS did indeed help with those damn dirty lag spikes but they are still there. Not as annoying and much more easier to deal with, but still there.
 
I have the DGL-4300 which seems to be misbehaving. I switched over a Linksys WRT56GC (compact unit) and the flakiness seems to ahve stopped.

Is it thought a reset would cure this? Is there a solid f/w to use with this unit?
 
SBMongoos said:
NO??
Click to expand...
When I had mine, I believe I was running the 1.6 firmware and that was very stable - didn't have to touch the thing for months at a time and even then it was usually because I wanted to fiddle with it or test a different router.

If you're not running the latest firmware right now, I'd recommend you throw the latest on there and reset the router to factory defaults when you do to make sure you get all of the cobwebs out of the corners.

If you're still having trouble, describe exactly what's going on in a little more detail.
 
Orinthical said:
When I had mine, I believe I was running the 1.6 firmware and that was very stable - didn't have to touch the thing for months at a time and even then it was usually because I wanted to fiddle with it or test a different router.

If you're not running the latest firmware right now, I'd recommend you throw the latest on there and reset the router to factory defaults when you do to make sure you get all of the cobwebs out of the corners.

If you're still having trouble, describe exactly what's going on in a little more detail.
Click to expand...

1.8 was pulled and I see they have 1.9. v1.9 removes a feature I didn't want to lose.

See: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1033721316#post1033721316

******
edit
******

I grabbed 1.8 and held onto it from some time back. I read somewhere they pulled it due to an issue. I loaded this f/w and reset a couple of times and loaded a config file I have. All seem okay for now. Concerned it will flake out again. Will see. It's interesting how people can have similar setups but get different results with f/w. One person it works fine and another it's an issue, etc.
 
So for a good home model with Gigabit ethernet, would the DIR-655 be a good solid choice? Or the DIR-4500?
 
hity645 said:
So for a good home model with Gigabit ethernet, would the DIR-655 be a good solid choice? Or the DIR-4500?
Click to expand...

I think those are both good. Another one that looks good DIR-825. I went to the DLink site and you can access the emulators for their routers. It's like logging into the router. Then you can see what options you can configure, etc. The DIR-628 looks interesting to. I'm thinking about moving over to 802.11a again because of all the WiFi around here.
 
-(Xyphox)- said:
Ok there is a new King in town of Wireless Router
Feast your eyes on this
400MW Beast- Yeah thats a 400mw radio, also can use many different antenna's on it
http://www.highgainantennas.com/product_p/8186hpi.htm
And if thats not enough for you
630mw Monster!
http://www.highgainantennas.com/product_p/8186maxx indoor.htm
Click to expand...
While those are certainly powerful, they are B/G and no-name. Any info on what's inside or how it holds up under load? Thus far I've seen some DSLR threads that seem to suggest it's awesome for long-range AP use but IF it's powered by the Realtek RTL8186 SoC (up to 180MHz), as was suggested by a post on DD-WRT Forums, I don't really see it competing with a higher end consumer product in many homes where the number of concurrent connections is more important than having a 19Km range. :)
 
Looking to replace my WRT54GL running DD-WRT.

What is the latest gold standard in 802.11n/Gigabit Ethernet 4+ port routers?
 
Hey guys i'm gonna be replacing my D-link 624 this weekend.

My current choices are the 4500 or the 825 and possibly the 655.

Any suggestions on which is better.

The only wireless devices will be 1 Xbox360 and a laptop everything else is wired.

My price range is $100-$200.

From some of the info i've seen it looks like the 825 is alittle faster than the 4500 and it offers both G/N at the same time correct me if i'm wrong.
 
Really torn between these two choices, on the one hand I really want the Guest Wifi the 825 offers, but the gamefuel tech in the 4500 is another bonus hmmmmmmm.........

Another question also, with the new firmware on the 4500 are you able to use the USB port with an external hard drive or is it still only for the WCN crap.
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
Really torn between these two choices, on the one hand I really want the Guest Wifi the 825 offers, but the gamefuel tech in the 4500 is another bonus hmmmmmmm.........

Another question also, with the new firmware on the 4500 are you able to use the USB port with an external hard drive or is it still only for the WCN crap.
Click to expand...

you can use a external hard drive with the 4500
 
I just looked into that and you are correct with the newest firmware. So currently the only outstanding difference for me is the Guest Wifi that the 825 offers.

And that router chart on smallnetBuilder shows the 825 having a higher WAN to LAN Throughput.
 
Orinthical said:
While those are certainly powerful, they are B/G and no-name. Any info on what's inside or how it holds up under load? Thus far I've seen some DSLR threads that seem to suggest it's awesome for long-range AP use but IF it's powered by the Realtek RTL8186 SoC (up to 180MHz), as was suggested by a post on DD-WRT Forums, I don't really see it competing with a higher end consumer product in many homes where the number of concurrent connections is more important than having a 19Km range. :)
Click to expand...

Highgain is a huge company in the wireless ISP market. They dont really market for home users is why. I just like recommending their gear because its rock solid. We have over 200 of the 400mw model in the field and the up time on them is 99.9%. Very great
 
Hey guys looking for advice on a gigabit switch with 6 or more ports. I have Fios running off a D-Link Di-604, their supplied router, where I also have two wired PCs and one port connected to a drop that feeds my family room. Here I have a Linksys WRT54g connected for wireless when I need but also to give me additional ports since I have the 360 and wii with USB ethernet adaptor there. I need to add about 4 more drops. One will be for the HP EX485 as a media/file server in a spare bedroom, second one for another desktop, and the other two for future use. I have zero networking knowledge.

Are the D-Link DGS-2208 and NETGEAR GS108 still the best cheap options or is their another switch I should look at?

Also any reason I should look at upgrading the Di-604? I do some gaming and fairly regularly torrenting. I just didn't know now with having multiple PCs using it at the same time combined with the above if I would notice a decrease in performance.
 
Hi All, I just got a DIR-655 to replace my old WRT54GS that wasn't capable of giving my wife's laptop a good enough signal at the opposite end of our house.

The DIR-655 is amazingly fast...I even notice a big increase in the wired desktop it's connected to.

I have one problem in that the cable modem gets knocked off and the Router Log shows that: It "lost it's lease to the IP address". So, every 30 minutes or so I had to reset my cable modem.

I have the current 1.21 firmware installed, XP and comcast is my service provider.

I did one thing which seems to help which is manually setting the uplink speed in the Advanced - QOS Engine page. It showed my uplink speed as 28XX Kbps so using the drop down box the max I could set it to was 2048.

Update: I upgraded my 9 yr old comcast modem and have no more issues

The other part of this may be the ancient adapter in my desktop - don't laugh..I'm using the onboard adapter on an old ASUS P4B533V circa 2002. I know.. I need an upgrade but may pickup a cheap PCI adapter to make this workable for now.

Also, I notice that my wife's laptop gets a stronger signal if I uncheck "Enable Traffic Shaping" ..We only have one or two laptops along with a Roku connected at any one time.


Update: I finally got rid of my old comcast modem and replaced it with a Motorola SB5101 and have no more problems loosing the connection.
 
First time in this forum!
I currently have a D-Link DI-624 that has worked well. However, I need more wired ports and would like to improve wireless strength (and speed). Here is what I want to connect to the network:

2 Desktops (wired)
2 PS3s (wired) - mainly RockBand
2 Network printers (wired)
2 Laptops (wireless 1 g; 1n capable)
1 Desktop (wireless - out in the detached garage probably 100ft from router) :eek:

I haven't gone VoIP yet, but that could be a possibility in the future...

Provider is Shaw.ca. Just ran speedtest and got 25 Mbps download and 454Kbps upload (wired).

I'm considering the 655 or 825 and adding a switch to give me the extra wired ports. Price is not as important as functionality. Looking for recommendations.

Anyone with suggestions for this networking neophyte?

 
Celerator said:
First time in this forum!
I currently have a D-Link DI-624 that has worked well. However, I need more wired ports and would like to improve wireless strength (and speed). Here is what I want to connect to the network:

2 Desktops (wired)
2 PS3s (wired) - mainly RockBand
2 Network printers (wired)
2 Laptops (wireless 1 g; 1n capable)
1 Desktop (wireless - out in the detached garage probably 100ft from router) :eek:

I haven't gone VoIP yet, but that could be a possibility in the future...

Provider is Shaw.ca. Just ran speedtest and got 25 Mbps download and 454Kbps upload (wired).

I'm considering the 655 or 825 and adding a switch to give me the extra wired ports. Price is not as important as functionality. Looking for recommendations.

Anyone with suggestions for this networking neophyte?

Click to expand...

I had a 624 at one time and liked it. Have had a few since then. I've been using D-Link primarily as I've thought I get the best bang for the buck. I'm now going from the DGL-4300 to the DIR-825. Something D-Link allowed me to do on an upgrade warranty exchange that did cost me a small amount out of pocket. The 825 has a lot of features. I have read some mixed reviews however.

Here are the things that I like about the 825:

  • you can run 802.11g with 802.11a (and n) or just one of them. Can help in areas of a lot of WiFi signals giving you more connectivity options
  • you can set up a Guest Zone that runs on the same channel but you can keep the Guest Zone off of your machine
  • you can set up security on the Guest Zone as well, independently using a different pass phrase for access
  • all gigabit ports (this could be beneficial if the PCs on your LAN have gigabit ports but can't see it helping on the WAN side)
  • a lot of statistic and log info that can be helpful
  • have read good things about D-Link's QOS
  • there is a USB connection on the back that can be used for external drives, scanner, printers and such that can be shared over the network through this connection. Plus some other nice USB features like WCN and USB 3G (check the D-Link site: http://dlink.com/products/?pid=681) - this will land you right on the 825 page
  • this link should take you to Newegg.com and do a side by side comparison between the 655 and the 825. Don't see anything to exciting here though: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...mpareItemList=N82E16833127258,N82E16833127215

The only con I see, more so in comparison to the 4300, is the signal strength. In my testing I did better with the 4300 (by at least 10db or better) and it's single antenna (it is bigger) I did not do any throughput tests to compare between the two however.
 
Celerator said:
First time in this forum! Here is what I want to connect to the network:

2 Desktops (wired)
2 PS3s (wired) - mainly RockBand
2 Network printers (wired)
2 Laptops (wireless 1 g; 1n capable)
1 Desktop (wireless - out in the detached garage probably 100ft from router) :eek:

I haven't gone VoIP yet, but that could be a possibility in the future...

Provider is Shaw.ca. Just ran speedtest and got 25 Mbps download and 454Kbps upload (wired).

I'm considering the 655 or 825 and adding a switch to give me the extra wired ports. Price is not as important as functionality. Looking for recommendations.

Anyone with suggestions for this networking neophyte?
Click to expand...
Welcome to the Networking sub-forum. ;)

If you are considering the 655 or the 825, you're already on the right track. Both score very well (in the top five typically) on the router charts at smallnetbuilder.com but the DIR-825 does place higher due to having updated internals; the same base hardware as the DGL-4500 and DIR-855 actually, just with newer radios and gigabit switch components. The DIR-655 Upicom IP5160U runs at 275MHz while the DIR-825's Ubicom IP5170U is clocked at 350MHz, giving it a little more horsepower under the hood.

If simultaneous dual-band operation is a must-have for your environment, the DIR-825 is your router. If budget trumps all here, I'd still argue that the DIR-825 may be worth the extra $30 (on Newegg) but the truth is you're not going to go wrong with either model. Of course, once you get to $129, I'd argue that an extra $30 will get you the DGL-4500 but I suppose that's the way of all things these days. "Just $XX more!"

So what does the DGL-4500 have that the DIR-XXX does not? Well, it has an OLED screen with some neat options and GameFuel (pre-set QoS optimization for gaming) but you'll lose simultaneous dual-band operation (either one or the other, just like the DIR-655.) Both the DIR and DGL series feature QoS - the key difference in the feature is that the DGL series has presets available for most games whereas you must manually enter settings on the DIR series to take full advantage.

As far as switches are concerned, I typically recommend that you plug everything into the switch you intend to buy and then run one cable back to he router instead of having some plugged into a smaller switch and some plugged into the router.

With that in mind, I'd look at an eight or sixteen port gigabit switch such as these below:

D-Link DGS-2208 10/100/1000Mbps 8-Port Switch
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833127082

NETGEAR GS108 10/100/1000Mbps ProSafe 8-Port Switch
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122111

I love the Netgear ProSafe series of switches with the metal body. Super-reliable switches, from my experience, and I'd wager it's worth the extra few pennies over the D-Link but each to his own. :)

NETGEAR GS116 10/100/1000Mbps ProSafe 16-Port Switch
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122139

D-Link DGS-1024D 10/100/1000Mbps 24-Port Green Switch
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817111031

The two switches above basically cost the same -- the difference is the NetGear has a $25 rebate which makes it a little cheaper in the end.

If you're looking for something with more room to grow, want web management or full management, or just price is no object - I'd recommend you pick up an HP ProCurve or a Dell PowerConnect.

Hope that helps. :)
 
Thanks to both of you for the detailed advice and suggestions. I new this would be the place to ask!

I am curious about this:
As far as switches are concerned, I typically recommend that you plug everything into the switch you intend to buy and then run one cable back to he router instead of having some plugged into a smaller switch and some plugged into the router.
Click to expand...

Can you explain why this configuration is your preference?

Also, just to clarify, by "simultaneous dual-band operation" do you mean the situation where one laptop is using g and another using n at the same time? I presumed that this would happen automagically...

And one more question that arose when I looked at the comments on the suggested sites: If one connects (to a switch or router) one computer with a 1000mps nic, and another with a 100mps nic, is there a problem with the speed being reduced to the slowest speed? Any ideas (keywords) I can use to investigate this issue?

Best to you!
 
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