Going in circles trying to decide on N router

[PcGuy]

I made the mistake of trying to help a friend decide on which N router he should get. Looking for a N wireless router that will serve a primarily wired network in a 2 story newer house. The wireless is for visitors as well as my friend's wireless RIM tablet. The wireless devices are used on both floors of the house.

I had narrowed them down to Netgear WNR3500L (which appears to fail after a year), WNDR3700, Linksys E2500. It seems that when I find what I think is a suitable router there are long term problems with the router i.e. failing outside of warranty period. House is approximately 1600 sq ft. Will be using WPA2 and there is no need for USB ports. WAN port is sub 30Mbs.

 

[Mark Uhde]

I made the mistake of trying to help a friend decide on which N router he should get. Looking for a N wireless router that will serve a primarily wired network in a 2 story newer house. The wireless is for visitors as well as my friend's wireless RIM tablet. The wireless devices are used on both floors of the house.

I had narrowed them down to Netgear WNR3500L (which appears to fail after a year), WNDR3700, Linksys E2500. It seems that when I find what I think is a suitable router there are long term problems with the router i.e. failing outside of warranty period. House is approximately 1600 sq ft. Will be using WPA2 and there is no need for USB ports. WAN port is sub 30Mbs.

Does he want a separate guest network? They all have/had fairly high failure rates, it's the nature of the equipment, though with that said I do not like Netgear or Linksys. I do link TrendNET (yes, they're cheap junk but oddly, I've had good luck!), Buffalo (some are VERY unstable due to the old drivers in DD-WRT versions they shipped with, but I've found them quite reliable), Apple, and EnGenius.

With such limited wireless use, your primary concern should be routing performance. Look at the router charts on here, and see what ones have the performance you need. I'd especially look at state table size/maximum connections. This one can prove a huge "gotcha" if there's a lot of P2P traffic.

 

[PcGuy]

Does he want a separate guest network? They all have/had fairly high failure rates, it's the nature of the equipment, though with that said I do not like Netgear or Linksys. I do link TrendNET (yes, they're cheap junk but oddly, I've had good luck!), Buffalo (some are VERY unstable due to the old drivers in DD-WRT versions they shipped with, but I've found them quite reliable), Apple, and EnGenius.

I had to configure an Engenius 9850 at lately and there was a frustrating quirk in that one had to re-enter the port forwarding from scratch if one particular setting was changed. Can not remember which one.

With such limited wireless use, your primary concern should be routing performance. Look at the router charts on here, and see what ones have the performance you need. I'd especially look at state table size/maximum connections. This one can prove a huge "gotcha" if there's a lot of P2P traffic.

I looked at the charts here a week ago but was overwhelmed with the information. I am in Canada and I would prefer to buy the router locally so it can be returned easily in case there are problems so Buffalo routers are out. I doubt that there is very little P2P traffic there.

 

[thiggins]

I agree with your approach of buying locally from a place that has a good return policy. (I use Amazon.)

Consumer router manufacturers focus on cramming in as many features as possible and getting manufacturing cost as low as possible, not reliability.

There are plenty of decent routers for $100 or under (especially if you buy factory refurbs). At that cost, who cares if they fail in a year? At that point, the technology has moved onto the next fad (or standard) anyway.

Use the charts to make sure that the router's wired throughput is at least as high as your ISP provides. If you don't have any dual-band devices and don't plan to get any, look at "N300" / "300 Mbps" routers.

If you have dual-band devices, look at "N600" simultaneous dual-band routers.

Both are mainstream and pretty far down the maturity and price curve. Keep in mind that paying more doesn't necessarily buy you better performance.

Gigabit ports aren't important. You can always add an outboard switch. This also keeps additional heat generators in a separate cabinet.

 

[PcGuy]

Use the charts to make sure that the router's wired throughput is at least as high as your ISP provides. If you don't have any dual-band devices and don't plan to get any, look at "N300" / "300 Mbps" routers.

I must be blind but I looked at the Router Charts and Router Finder pages and could not see where to put the N300/300Mbps filter on.

 

[thiggins]

Sorry, you are not blind. Use the Router Finder. Scroll down to the Wireless section. Set the Type filter to N2. (That means dual-stream N).

 

[PcGuy]

Ok thanks for all the help. Appreciate it. Is N1 single stream then?

 

[thiggins]

Yep. N3 is three stream N. AC2 is dual-stream draft 802.11ac. AC3 is three-stream draft 11ac.