help me pick a wireless router

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SkyyNet

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 24, 2006
Messages
393
hello everyone

i am new to networking and need some help choosing a wireless router. i just moved and got high speed internet in my house. i have a pc, notebook and xbox 360. the pc will be hooked up directly to the router while the 360 and notebook will be wireless. the notebook is a centrino notebook and the 360 will be using microsoft's wireless adapter.

i will probably be uploading/downloading torrents from time to time and possibly streaming media from my notebook to my 360. i would assume that i would need atleast a 54g router. ive read a little bit about the new pre-n/mimo routers but like i said i am new to all of this.

i also read that microsoft recommends the linksys wrt55ag router but read on these forums that some people were having problems with that setup. with all of this being said which router would you recommend? ive read about being able to upgrade some router's firmware with better ones with more options but i dont think i will need that. i just need something with descent range and can handle the transfers of torrents and streaming media.

thanks in advance
 
I'm a big fan of the wrt54gl from linksys, but that could be because of the third-party firmward options available.
 
The current WRT54G and WRT54GS are cheapened versions of a trusty old line.

http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2006/06/08/linksys_wrt54g_v5_really_is_a_lousy_router/

You can load them with DD-WRT with some effort and risk to improve matters somewhat, but you're probably better off starting with some other wireless routers. DD-WRT themselves recommend some Buffalo products, as do some others (I've never used one though).

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/DD-WRT_Docu_(EN)

WRT54GL is a safe recommendation in this context, and you can up its transmit power with DD-WRT/etc.

Some of the Airgo pre-N MIMO products such as the Linksys SRX are reported to be better than others in reach / difficult circumstances. There's some controversy about interference and compatibility, and no 3rd-party firmware flexibility that I know of at present, but these might be good current solutions in some difficult cases.

http://www.airgonetworks.com/

(But I like gigabit wire myself, and so far don't have much personal experience with difficult wireless circumstances.)

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1082007
 
Anyone know if theres a place you can pick up an old rev of the WRT54G?...for the OP's sake that is ( i have one and i love it, rev 2.2)...anyway, thatd be cool.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrt54g
Maybe try craigslist or ebay or something, they've gotta be around someplace.
Also, a friend of mine has this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833127158
and it seems pretty reliable...plus it has the gigabit lan interface.

Or you could always go high class...get a server/firewall box, gigabit switch, and a cisco WAP
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833120311
:)
 
i was able to grab a wrt54g v1 router from someone off these forums for $35. do you think it would be better to get a brand new wrt54gl instead?

i read that those gaming routers are more hype then anything else.

so aside from the 54g and 54gl is there anything better?
 
SkyyNet said:
i was able to grab a wrt54g v1 router from someone off these forums for $35. do you think it would be better to get a brand new wrt54gl instead?

i read that those gaming routers are more hype then anything else.

so aside from the 54g and 54gl is there anything better?
Click to expand...
Anything better and i think you start paying too much for. But i guess it all depends on your needs. If i had a million dollars and a big house to cover, id get a giant cisco wap or two with seperate everything else. As far as consumer wireless routers, i think those are your best options im afraid to say. Someone else may have another opinion, but my wrt54g is holding strong and doesnt cut out on signal.
 
Octave said:
Anything better and i think you start paying too much for. But i guess it all depends on your needs. If i had a million dollars and a big house to cover, id get a giant cisco wap or two with seperate everything else. As far as consumer wireless routers, i think those are your best options im afraid to say. Someone else may have another opinion, but my wrt54g is holding strong and doesnt cut out on signal.
Click to expand...

thanks for ur help....ill stick with the wrt54g
 
wrt54gx4 (SRX400)
Need to save a little money? wrt54gx2 (SRX200)

Run circles around the old G/GS/GL series. MIMO is where it's at. ;)
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
wrt54gx4 (SRX400)
Need to save a little money? wrt54gx2 (SRX200)

Run circles around the old G/GS/GL series. MIMO is where it's at. ;)
Click to expand...

i have a one story home so there really isnt a big need for range
 
Well if its not that much space that needs to be covered....start running cat5 in the walls :)...at least for the desktop/xbox360.
 
SkyyNet said:
i have a one story home so there really isnt a big need for range
Click to expand...

Can never tell. I've seen some wireless setups in small ranch houses....where the user can't connect from just a couple of rooms over. A friend of mine has a ranch house...she'd like to take her laptop into the sun room. Just 3 rooms over...and two rooms in between are big..like a wide open kitchen. I can see the doorway of the room her router is in. Yet...barely strong enough in the florida sunroom she has.

Way I look at it..why try to skimp a little pocket change to get old school technology..why not get something that is SO much more likely to not give complaints. //shrug. Long as I don't have to use it, or support it..
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Can never tell. I've seen some wireless setups in small ranch houses....where the user can't connect from just a couple of rooms over. A friend of mine has a ranch house...she'd like to take her laptop into the sun room. Just 3 rooms over...and two rooms in between are big..like a wide open kitchen. I can see the doorway of the room her router is in. Yet...barely strong enough in the florida sunroom she has.

Way I look at it..why try to skimp a little pocket change to get old school technology..why not get something that is SO much more likely to not give complaints. //shrug. Long as I don't have to use it, or support it..
Click to expand...

youre completely right. what are the differences between the srx200 and 400? will both be compatible with the xbox 360 adapter? what band does it support - a/b/g?

as for the guy that suggested running the cat5 in the walls.....that would be ideal but it is not an option at this time.
 
hello again

i was able to pickup a linksys g router (wrt54g v2) and its been working pretty well with my setup - 1 PC - hardwired, 1 notebook - wireless, a x360 - wireless, and a VoIP phone connected to it.

i am able to stream music from the notebook to the 360 with no problems with the router and I get really good reception (upgraded the antennas). is it worth it for me to upgrade to a wireless n router for future-proofing or should I just stick with the g until it no longer works. am i just being paranoid about it?

if you guys do decided that I should go with a n router - which would you suggest? i saw the linksys router and it looks terrible. the netgear router looks pretty sweet but havent seen any reviews for it....thanks in advance.
 
Wireless n is not ready and is far from "future proof". It's actually draft-n right now. I'd recommend waiting until it's finalized and actual test results are out; if you have no urgency to upgrade, stick with g -- it's a real standard, and will probably out-live draft-n.
 
cool, thanks alot!

is the wrt54g the best wireless g router out there?

i had a wrt54gs and i would lose the signal constantly....the wrt54g is fine. just wondering if there is another brand/router that is better recommended.

i also read about people having problems with the Linksys A+G router and the xbox 360....any truth to that?
 
SkyyNet said:
hello again

i was able to pickup a linksys g router (wrt54g v2) and its been working pretty well with my setup - 1 PC - hardwired, 1 notebook - wireless, a x360 - wireless, and a VoIP phone connected to it.

i am able to stream music from the notebook to the 360 with no problems with the router and I get really good reception (upgraded the antennas). is it worth it for me to upgrade to a wireless n router for future-proofing or should I just stick with the g until it no longer works. am i just being paranoid about it?

if you guys do decided that I should go with a n router - which would you suggest? i saw the linksys router and it looks terrible. the netgear router looks pretty sweet but havent seen any reviews for it....thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
To answer your question, i have no idea about n routers at the moment....no experience so anything i said would be speculation off of other peoples research. That being said....for your WRT54G.....put DD-WRT on that bad boy :)
 
Octave said:
To answer your question, i have no idea about n routers at the moment....no experience so anything i said would be speculation off of other peoples research. That being said....for your WRT54G.....put DD-WRT on that bad boy :)
Click to expand...

yeah, i got dd-wrt on my 54g and 54gs
 
One future proofing thing you might wanna consider though is gigabit ethernet. I for one have run into several situations where 10/100 takes too long.....but then again im a media whore.
 
Octave said:
One future proofing thing you might wanna consider though is gigabit ethernet. I for one have run into several situations where 10/100 takes too long.....but then again im a media whore.
Click to expand...

by gigabit ethernet you mean its built into the router, correct?
 
SkyyNet said:
by gigabit ethernet you mean its built into the router, correct?
Click to expand...
No...not necessarily.
Wireless by its current nature (a/b/g) is not exactly fast compared to 10/100 or 10/100/1000. However, 802.11n) at 540 Mbit/s typical of 200 Mbit/s......and current 10/100 base t of 100 Mbit/s. You can see that when you do finally upgrade to anything beyond 802.11g you are going to hit a slow point in your switch. Now...when you BUY a new n router, your probably going to get a gigabit switch on it...but the point is why wait? If you already have several devices that are wired connections or you someday when you are in a house you can tear up the walls MAKE wired connections, then you may as well get a gigabit switch with full duplex if you just have the bank laying around. A side note to this is that it doesnt really affect a whole lot if its just you and maybe one other person using your network. Me, however, i have 3 roomates, and a total of 7 computers, 2 xbox's on the network. Of these, two are wireless. Now you hit a bottleneck pretty quickly when one roomate is transfering files to another roomate over wired connection, im transfering files to my xbox, and the other xbox is pulling movies off another computer to watch on tv. I know this is probably worst case senario...but trust me it happens and your 10/100 will die. So what i do is seperate the router from the switch. Gigabit switch uplinked to my 54G (well....at least for the purposes of this discussion...its actually the other way around as i have my 54G acting as a WAP, and i have a monowall box doing the routing and traffic shaping...but thats another discussion).

What was my point again?
Oh ya, if you are going to have more than like 4 devices wired, or you use a lot of bandwidth by transfering files back and forth...then a gigabit switch uplinked to your router would make it more robust and future proof. But if not, then dont worry about it, stick with the wrt54g and when you get an N router just make sure to get a gigabit switch on the back of it if its not manditory.
/end
 
i'm in a similar but slightly more complicated situation.

I currently have a normal 4port netgear router connected to 2 computers on the third floor of my house with hardwiring down to a third computer on the first floor. I would like to upgrade this system to have wireless on both the 1st and 3rd floors. I was thinking that i should get a WAP or wireless router for the third floor and then another WAP for hte first floor. I dont want to lose my hard connection of hte first floor by adding the WAP, however, and am not sure how ot best go about doing this. I'm inexperienced in the wireless area and so don't really have any any idea wht kind of equipment i should be looking for. A wireless router and an access point? two acess points and a gigbit switch? (i would like to run gigabit hard connections if possible) a signal strengthener?
 
homIcIde said:
i'm in a similar but slightly more complicated situation.

I currently have a normal 4port netgear router connected to 2 computers on the third floor of my house with hardwiring down to a third computer on the first floor. I would like to upgrade this system to have wireless on both the 1st and 3rd floors. I was thinking that i should get a WAP or wireless router for the third floor and then another WAP for hte first floor. I dont want to lose my hard connection of hte first floor by adding the WAP, however, and am not sure how ot best go about doing this. I'm inexperienced in the wireless area and so don't really have any any idea wht kind of equipment i should be looking for. A wireless router and an access point? two acess points and a gigbit switch? (i would like to run gigabit hard connections if possible) a signal strengthener?
Click to expand...
There are a few routes you could take on this actually. Is that netgear router wireless at all?...also..is it gigabit?.....Here's what i would do given the situation depending on the size of the house.
-
netgear as router - uplinked to gigabit switch. Run your cables on 3rd and 1st floors connected to gigabit switch (i honestly cant find mine on newegg, but its an SMC with 8 ports). Then off of that gigabit switch also run a WAP to 1st and 3rd floors (that is unless your router is wireless also). Once again, i would recommend the WRT54G (vrs 2.2 is what i have) and put DD-WRT on it. Put the WAP upstairs (or down...wherever your more likely to use wireless), and see if you can get decent coverage with decent signal strength downstairs. If you cant do it with a WRT54G with the signal boosted in DD-WRT firmware, then i wouldnt mess with a signal booster, id go for another WAP.
 
thanks for the response.

two things - I think I want to ditch the netgear. It isn't gigabit or wireless and it has caused a lot of problems dropping connections (maybe it just needs a firmware update, but its been a pain in the ass).

also - if i add another WAP on the first floor (probably necessary - thick floors and plenty of walls), how would you recommend connecting both a pc and the WAP to the one hardwired port i have available on that floor right now
 
homIcIde said:
thanks for the response.

two things - I think I want to ditch the netgear. It isn't gigabit or wireless and it has caused a lot of problems dropping connections (maybe it just needs a firmware update, but its been a pain in the ass).

also - if i add another WAP on the first floor (probably necessary - thick floors and plenty of walls), how would you recommend connecting both a pc and the WAP to the one hardwired port i have available on that floor right now
Click to expand...
Awe Snap...you only have 1 wired port going downstairs eh.....hmm....well the simple solution is for the computer downstairs to only be connected to 10/100...unless its a gigabit/wap..ect. So i guess id just take the speed hit and go
wall --> wap --> computer
I dont think you'll notice the slowdown that much though, unless you are using both the computer downstairs and a wireless device or several and going full bore...
I suppose if running another jack is out of the question then thats what id do.
 
sorry for the noobish question but this gigabit stuff you are talking about is an actual piece of hardware that can plug into the existing router? so basically all hardwired components should be run through the gigabit and then thru the router...basically keeping all the wireless stuff together thru the router. am i understanding that correctly?
 
SkyyNet said:
sorry for the noobish question but this gigabit stuff you are talking about is an actual piece of hardware that can plug into the existing router? so basically all hardwired components should be run through the gigabit and then thru the router...basically keeping all the wireless stuff together thru the router. am i understanding that correctly?
Click to expand...
First off : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000Base-T
Your cables running around in your house im guessing are CAT-5E...at least hopefully..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_5_cable
Usually....when you buy a router(wireless or not)...you have the plug for where your cable modem or dsl modem plugs into. Then you usually have at least 2 (usualy 4) other ports where you can plug computers in. This is called a switch or a hub...depending ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_switch#Hubs_vs_switches ). Switch is better....trust me. This switch is likely going to be 10/100 because that is the cheaper normal standard right now. Any comunications that are passed from one computer to another within this switch are going to be running at 10/100 speeds (well...depending on how fast your computer can read/write also). By getting a gigabit switch, your getting a 10/100/1000 highway between these wired computers. So to answer your question, no it is not simply an upgrade, you have to buy a gigabit switch in order to have gigabit ethernet.
That being said, you do NOT need a new router if your still using 802.11g or below. Reason being, when you get a gigabit switch, you would usually use a crossover cable and plug one end into your router's switch, and one end into your gigabit's switch. Nowadays you dont usually need the crossover cable because most good switches have autosensing and can adjust on the fly (like mine) so you can do it with just a regular patch cable.
I believe you are understanding it correctly...all wired components should be connected to the gigabit switch...which is then connected to the router's 10/100 switch...which is connected to your router handing out IP addresses.

Now if you want a WAP downstairs...you can plug it into any port really on either the gigabit switch or the router's switch...but id still plug it into gigabit because technically there will be a bottleneck if you run more than a couple wireless devices on that WAP at full data rate. The way a WAP works is just like the way a gigabit switch works in that its just extending the link of the origonal router/switch combo.
 
hey guys....another question

i have both a wrt54g and wrt54gs....like I had said earlier the GS seems to drop the connection from time to time so I picked up the 54G v2.2 router off these forums.

i currently have HyperWRT installed on the GS and was wondering what the best firmware would be for both routers. I did flash dd-wrt on the 54G but I didnt like the user interface as compared to Hyper's. It just looked more like the original firmware.

thanks again!
 
I would also recommend one that is upgradable to DD-WRT. DD-WRT may not be the best in user interface, but it definatly wins when it comes to features and stability. Id stick with it....i mean how often do you actually hang out in your router's settings?
 
There are also different "skins" for DD-WRT -- Administration / Router GUI Style. I'm using "BrainSlayer" atm; seems a little more user-friendly to me, despite the name ;)
 
I bought a WRT54GL 1.1 from the Dell 14 days of deals for like 25 shipped. Its a great router and know I can use my other router for my gaming systems down staires.

I had some issues with my router droping my signal and IE and FireFox would not work, but my Azurues and other stuff would still be downloading. I used the Thibor firmware (thanks to this page for the help with that) and it seems to be working just perfectly.

+1 for the WRT54GL
 
sdk said:
I bought a WRT54GL 1.1 from the Dell 14 days of deals for like 25 shipped. Its a great router and know I can use my other router for my gaming systems down staires.

I had some issues with my router droping my signal and IE and FireFox would not work, but my Azurues and other stuff would still be downloading. I used the Thibor firmware (thanks to this page for the help with that) and it seems to be working just perfectly.

+1 for the WRT54GL
Click to expand...
Interesting...fortunatly for me i have an 800mhz p3 with 512 ram dedicated to my internet connection thanks to monowall.
 
Madwand said:
There are also different "skins" for DD-WRT -- Administration / Router GUI Style. I'm using "BrainSlayer" atm; seems a little more user-friendly to me, despite the name ;)
Click to expand...

where did you get the skins?

also which is the best firmware to date from dd-wrt? v23? v23SP?
can I flash the firmware from my current (hyper) straight to dd-wrt or should I go back with Linksys' firmware and do factory defaults?
 
The "skins" are built-in, and can be changed in Administration. Most of them are just colour changes.

I'm running v23 SP1 here now; couldn't say what's best or how to upgrade from something else. Try the DD-WRT forums perhaps.
 
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