Buying a router

[vinnie]

Buying a router
Tired of ICS and confusion, going for a router.

Choices are limited as I'm on Bigpond Cable- one of very few I believe that use a 'heartbeat' system that gets fu><0red with most setups, ie will drop out every 5-7 minutes under most setups. Special router required.

Decision I've come down to is a Linksys BEFSR41 Cable/DSL IP Router w/ 4-Port.

Firstly- anyone know of any reason why it's not a good choice? Motorola surfboard cable modem, my comp has a realtek 10/100 and is running XP, other comp has an antique 3M 10mbps card and is running win95.

A third computer is likely to be connected with an as yet undecided card, running windows 98. A fourth running an undecided OS with an undecided card is a distinct possibility at some point too.


Second- any basic do's/don'ts I should know about with routers? I'm running around reading and printing stuff now before I start fiddling. I figure I'm relatively competent and have no problems with reading manuals, but anything anyone thinks is relevant I'd be happy to know I'll hit up the FAQ here, anything else people think I should know would be great though.


Cliff Notes
1) Buying a router- Linksys BEFSR41
2) Anything negative I should know about it or Linksys in general?
3) Anything absolutely essential for router installation not covered in FAQ that I should know?

Cheers.

 

[Leb_CRX]

I have that same router, the first week I had it I had to powercycle it about 5 times, other then that it's been running strong since, the odd time it'll crap out and a powercycle is needed, but other then that it's great

if I had to buy a router again i'd go with it...was plug and play (which is not fun, but sure makes life easy)

I think linksys.com has a descent amount of information, and the manual it comes with is fairly straight forward...if your into that sort of thing

 

[Excavator]

Linksys BEFSR41 Cable/DSL IP Router w/ 4-Port has been working great for me.
The only problem I ever had with it was a firmware flash that was not really an upgrade. That was a few versions ago though, and the latest ver. is working fine.