RamGuy
Senior Member
Greetings,
I’m in the market for a new router. I’ve already got two access points, one broadcasting our 2.4GHz 802.11n (300mbit) wireless (D-Link DAP-2553) and one broadcasting our 5.0GHz 802.11n (450mbit) wireless (Apple TimeCapsule) so it doesn’t need to feature any wireless capabilities. But it doesn’t matter if it does as we would simply disable them.
The keyword is stability, stability and more stability and bug-free, yet very capable firmware. We are running about ten LAN (mostly gigabit capable) connected systems connecting through a HP ProCurve 1410-16G dumb gigabit switch, two wired printers and about ten wireless systems.
So the router has to be capable to handle all these clients at once without any hiccups or slowdowns.
We have an optical fibre connection sporting 25mbit download and upload speeds and will soon be upgraded to 100mbit download and upload speeds. So the router must be capable to utilize such routing speeds both LAN to WAN and WAN to LAN.
You can describe our network as a home office / home business / home enterprise setup as it goes beyond a regular home network. All our systems are a part of an Active Directory domain hosted by a Windows Server 2008 R2 server, but we do not require any sort of VPN nor additional VLAN capabilities within the router. What we do need is stability and reliability, and a router capable of utilizing our upcoming 100mbit WAN connection that can handle twenty our so clients simultaneously.
Several of our systems run heavy loads of torrent usage, resulting in lots and lots of simultaneous connections going everywhere all the time and the router must be able to keep up with the heavy load without losing connection or dropping speed.
Our Windows Server 2008 R2 will also be hosting both a website and a FTP-site, therefore stability and reliability is a keyword as the website must stay up at all times and be able to handle whatever load the site might be faced with at peak hours.
I’ve been through a few different routers the past years, but sadly none have proven to provide a perfect experience. They either come with unstable and or buggy firmware, or simply lack features. That or the hardware is simply not up to the task with all our simultaneous clients and connections coming from both the LAN and the WAN side.
We do not require much from the routers firmware, other than it being rock solid and stable without any noticeable bugs. But sadly most consumer routers seems to lack in firmware development making them haunted with bugs or simply lack depth and capability. The key features we need in the firmware is DHCP, dynamic DNS, DHCP / IP-reservations, port forwarding, upnp and preferably working DMZ and support for IPv6.
The ones we have tried the past years have been:
D-Link DIR-655 rev2, but it featured unstable firmware and seemed to slowdown during heavy load. The DMZ didn’t seem to do anything as port forwarding was still required even after DMZ-hosting a system and there was no upnp support. It became gradually worse with every new firmware update and some wouldn’t even let you return to older firmware.
D-Link DIR-855 rev1, performed and behaved almost identical with DIR-655 only with less reliable firmware and we didn’t see much improvement with the first couple of firmware updates.
Linksys WRT600N rev1, performed and behaved better than the two D-Link routers but neither this one had a working DMZ-feature and there was no upnp and the hardware still seemed to slowdown during heavy load and there seemed to never be much firmware development and patching from Linksys?
Netgear WNDR3700v1, the first router that seemed to not slowdown during heavy load, at least not nearly as much as the above ones. But I didn’t like the firmware layout and there were some dreadful DNS bugs and other things going on that made us replace it. But it might seem like Netgear has fixed these issues by now, but as they have released quite a few never models since the WNDR3700v1 the support and development seems to have gone down the drain and it has been replaced with both a v2 and v3 preforming worse than v1. Neither here did the DMZ seem to do anything.
Netgear SRX5308, the first enterprise / business router we tried and the first one to really shine when it comes to both firmware capabilities and raw performance. Sadly there is an existing firmware bug that makes the WAN performance cripple without any noticeable reason forcing us to restart it quite often to get the speeds back up. After reading our at the Netgear support forum several people has noticed this issue and Netgear is still trying to solve them. Crippled WAN performance is simply a no go.
Cisco RV220W, almost identical hardware to the SRX5308, but less RAM. Seems to be able to handle our heavy load but the firmware did not impress. Firstly it seems to lack DHCP / IP-reservations and Cisco has confirmed that the DMZ doesn’t do anything at the moment and there isn’t much firmware development and Cisco have started to actually remove features with the latest firmware updates.
And so our hunt for the “perfect” router that will suit our needs continues and I hoped for some guidance and recommendations from you all. Price-range is uncertain, we are ready to pay what it may cost.
I’m in the market for a new router. I’ve already got two access points, one broadcasting our 2.4GHz 802.11n (300mbit) wireless (D-Link DAP-2553) and one broadcasting our 5.0GHz 802.11n (450mbit) wireless (Apple TimeCapsule) so it doesn’t need to feature any wireless capabilities. But it doesn’t matter if it does as we would simply disable them.
The keyword is stability, stability and more stability and bug-free, yet very capable firmware. We are running about ten LAN (mostly gigabit capable) connected systems connecting through a HP ProCurve 1410-16G dumb gigabit switch, two wired printers and about ten wireless systems.
So the router has to be capable to handle all these clients at once without any hiccups or slowdowns.
We have an optical fibre connection sporting 25mbit download and upload speeds and will soon be upgraded to 100mbit download and upload speeds. So the router must be capable to utilize such routing speeds both LAN to WAN and WAN to LAN.
You can describe our network as a home office / home business / home enterprise setup as it goes beyond a regular home network. All our systems are a part of an Active Directory domain hosted by a Windows Server 2008 R2 server, but we do not require any sort of VPN nor additional VLAN capabilities within the router. What we do need is stability and reliability, and a router capable of utilizing our upcoming 100mbit WAN connection that can handle twenty our so clients simultaneously.
Several of our systems run heavy loads of torrent usage, resulting in lots and lots of simultaneous connections going everywhere all the time and the router must be able to keep up with the heavy load without losing connection or dropping speed.
Our Windows Server 2008 R2 will also be hosting both a website and a FTP-site, therefore stability and reliability is a keyword as the website must stay up at all times and be able to handle whatever load the site might be faced with at peak hours.
I’ve been through a few different routers the past years, but sadly none have proven to provide a perfect experience. They either come with unstable and or buggy firmware, or simply lack features. That or the hardware is simply not up to the task with all our simultaneous clients and connections coming from both the LAN and the WAN side.
We do not require much from the routers firmware, other than it being rock solid and stable without any noticeable bugs. But sadly most consumer routers seems to lack in firmware development making them haunted with bugs or simply lack depth and capability. The key features we need in the firmware is DHCP, dynamic DNS, DHCP / IP-reservations, port forwarding, upnp and preferably working DMZ and support for IPv6.
The ones we have tried the past years have been:
D-Link DIR-655 rev2, but it featured unstable firmware and seemed to slowdown during heavy load. The DMZ didn’t seem to do anything as port forwarding was still required even after DMZ-hosting a system and there was no upnp support. It became gradually worse with every new firmware update and some wouldn’t even let you return to older firmware.
D-Link DIR-855 rev1, performed and behaved almost identical with DIR-655 only with less reliable firmware and we didn’t see much improvement with the first couple of firmware updates.
Linksys WRT600N rev1, performed and behaved better than the two D-Link routers but neither this one had a working DMZ-feature and there was no upnp and the hardware still seemed to slowdown during heavy load and there seemed to never be much firmware development and patching from Linksys?
Netgear WNDR3700v1, the first router that seemed to not slowdown during heavy load, at least not nearly as much as the above ones. But I didn’t like the firmware layout and there were some dreadful DNS bugs and other things going on that made us replace it. But it might seem like Netgear has fixed these issues by now, but as they have released quite a few never models since the WNDR3700v1 the support and development seems to have gone down the drain and it has been replaced with both a v2 and v3 preforming worse than v1. Neither here did the DMZ seem to do anything.
Netgear SRX5308, the first enterprise / business router we tried and the first one to really shine when it comes to both firmware capabilities and raw performance. Sadly there is an existing firmware bug that makes the WAN performance cripple without any noticeable reason forcing us to restart it quite often to get the speeds back up. After reading our at the Netgear support forum several people has noticed this issue and Netgear is still trying to solve them. Crippled WAN performance is simply a no go.
Cisco RV220W, almost identical hardware to the SRX5308, but less RAM. Seems to be able to handle our heavy load but the firmware did not impress. Firstly it seems to lack DHCP / IP-reservations and Cisco has confirmed that the DMZ doesn’t do anything at the moment and there isn’t much firmware development and Cisco have started to actually remove features with the latest firmware updates.
And so our hunt for the “perfect” router that will suit our needs continues and I hoped for some guidance and recommendations from you all. Price-range is uncertain, we are ready to pay what it may cost.
