What's a good router these days?

[scotty]

I'm a network admin during the day, and haven't really kept up on networking products in the home space. Back a couple of years ago, the WRT54's set the standard, but now it seems not so much. I think I've gone through about 3 of them in the past year, and my current one is flaky as hell.

That said, I know there's probably tons of people out there who have never had problems with them, and maybe have had problems with different brands, but perhaps the folks at SNB might be able to recommend a solid product?

I'm a fairly minimal user at home, but I do use wireless, I would like to have a router that offers good wireless coverage and reliability. I'm moving into a new house and I'm looking for a standard 4 port jobby, but I cringe at the idea of getting 'another' WRT54. I know the L's are lauded as a solid product, but I think it's time for me to try something else.

 

[Brandon]

Good really depends on what you want. I like overkill.. so I use a Cisco ASA 5505 as my router/firewall.

D-link is the brand I try to stick with, I've tried to avoid Linksys from dislike of the old WRT54's. I use a "Trendnet 300Mbps Wireless N Home Router (TEW-632BRP)". I juse recently set up a WRT54G2 for my girlfriend, which is better than I expected. I normally don't look at TrendNet for top of the line stuff, however I was rather impressed by the TEW-632BRP.

Check out this link for the cheap roundup. Tim has a good eye when it comes to finding things that are often looked over by most people. I would start there, and work my way up. Figure out what you want, then find a router that has what you want.

-Brandon

 

[W!reT@p]

Dlink DIR-655 its the best home router I have ever used, great feature set, fast, great wifi coverage and 802.11n for a lil future proofing.

 

[somms]

Got a pair of WRT160N's flashed with DD-WRT V24 that work great and support OpenVPN.

 

[Foggy_UK]

Firstly... Hello to you all ! I like the Draytek range of routers, they are very high end home routers and even SME business class and at a good price. Lots of nice extras you don't tend to get on the average home dsl /cable router. Currently I'm using a 2800VG, which is their ADSL2+ router with VPN, VoIP and wireless. When the 3G mobile networks can get high speed data coverage in my area I'll be looking to add a 3G USB dongle to the router to back up my DSL if it ever goes down, not too meny home routers do this currently. At work we tend to use 2wire routers for SME's and some home users, they are okay and the parental control is easy for the average joe to setup.

 

[Spock83]

Dlink DIR-655 its the best home router I have ever used, great feature set, fast, great wifi coverage and 802.11n for a lil future proofing.

I have this one. I'm happy user

 

[Bart]

Two choices:

-either the more expensive D-Link range like D-Link DIR-655, or DGL-4500 OR
- (if it may be a bit more expensive) anything by Draytek.

Draytek routers are hands down THE best routers I've ever had the pleasure to work with. Extremely configurable and stable. Their helpdesk is also very helpful. You actually get a meaningful response to your question within hours, which is not really the case with DLink.

 

[scotty]

Thanks for your help guys. I've been doing some research on the DIR655 and it seems as though everyone has nothing but good things to say about it. Looks like I'll go pick up one of those puppies.

 

[matthi]

Hey scotty,

I never really liked D-Link, but I always bought the cheap ones, I don't know much about their higher end models.

As for me, I'm standardizing all my equipment to Netgear (have a look at their business series) (switches/router/SSL VPN/..). Personally I feel they have a pretty good quality-price ratio; they offer features found in higher level routers who will cost much more. I'm just a happy customer overall. The only thing a lot of people suffer from is their lack of good support (which I needed once and it takes indeed some time).

Although I never used any of their products, I think Zyxell has some pretty good firewall/ssl solutions.

 

[thiggins]

I never really liked D-Link, but I always bought the cheap ones, I don't know much about their higher end models.

I seem to hear the "don't like D-Link" a lot. Why was your experience with the ones you bought?

 

[Bart]

I seem to hear the "don't like D-Link" a lot. Why was your experience with the ones you bought?

I can's speak for Matthi, but my experience with cheaper D-Link routers is they tend to fail quite often and easy, and also need to be rebooted a lot because they seem to loose their connection sometimes (ok, this might have been fixed with firmware updates in the last couple of months/years)

The first D-Link I tried which didn't show these downsides was my DGL-4300 gamerlounge router, a router which was clearly a few steps up the ladder compared to the more regular D-Link routers. I'm still using it today and it's one of my favourite routers ever. IMO it only lacks VPN and jumbo frames support.

For this reason I would have bought the DGL-4500 instantly if it were available in Europe...

 

[scotty]

You know what though...

I've heard "I don't seem to like XYZ brand" about pretty much every brand. I know lots of people who hate D-link, I know lots who love it and die by it. I personally have always been a bit of a Linksys fan, but now not so much. Netgear for me has always kinda been the cheap alternative, but never really offering anything substantially cheaper and better the Dlink or Linksys. So especially when it comes to Dlink and Linksys, I consider them pretty close. In general, one doesn't really have a substantially better record than the other, which is also indicative that they're pretty close. Basically, I'll buy the particular model the fits the bill and has a solid track record.

 

[Mythokia]

I've been building my own using open source distributions ever since I went through a whole series of "home" routers from the major vendors that each model all seem to have unique problems of it owns.

I've been using IPCop for about two years but recently switched over to m0n0wall. IPCop seems to be lacking in development and lacks QoS implementation among other features which m0n0wall just does better. The computer is an old P3 450 MHz with 128 MB of RAM and just two 3COM 100 Mbit PCI ethernet cards.

As far as unmanaged switches go, D-Link has been my personal favorite.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Favorite wired router...rock solid stability, fast, Linksys RV0 series. Granted a tad above the average budget for the home user...but it's solid.

I've never found a solid "wireless" router using stock firmware, I've done a ton of the wrt54g series with DD-WRT or Tomato firmware...but they're getting long in the tooth, and barely able to handle some of todays burstable fast cable connections. Luckily DD-WRT is increasing compatibility with newer chipsets.

Never been a fan of DLink in the past..but since their initial DGL series (the 4100/4300)..they've hit some home runs. The DIR-625 and the higher end DIR-655, as well as the DGL4500 series..are doing very well.

As a network consultant myself...I often change out stuff at home frequently....for the past few weeks...I've been running PFSense distro on an old IBM Thinkpad as my primary router...PFSense being top notch in QoS and traffic shaping.

 

[matthi]

I seem to hear the "don't like D-Link" a lot. Why was your experience with the ones you bought?

Well, I agree with what Bart said. I just don't have any good experience with them; all of a sudden the box fails, so it needs rebooting, and the biggest problem of all (but this is very personal), they have the most ugly/crappy admin/user interface I've ever seen in my life I'm not trying to get some people all winded up by saying this but sometimes, the eye wants something too right?

And I have to agree with YeOldeStonecat about the pfsense (and m0n0wall) open source distro's, they are very capable.

 

[thiggins]

I've never found a solid "wireless" router using stock firmware...

What problems do you have that are fixed by alternative firmware?

 

[thiggins]

Scotty you're right that all the vendors take their turn in the barrel. Typically where they screw up is in product / chipset transitions. Case in point is Linksys' transition to Vmware in the WRT54G V5 and later.

Another possible problem source that I keep meaning to do an article on is thermal design. Faster usually means hotter which usually means heatsinking of some sort. But trying to maintain some sort of profit pushes vendors in the direction of saving every penny they can. But hot parts can be a source of unreliability and certainly early failure.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What problems do you have that are fixed by alternative firmware?

"Uptime".

I guess I should backup and take that back....I have had solid wireless units with stock firmware....Sonicwall TZ units, HP ProCurve 420 units, etc.

But from the entry level home grade...spending years deploying many different brands...I can't think of one that hasn't required a "reboot" at some point. Looking to my left at the current Netgear 614 wireless unit I have hanging off of my PFSense unit...about once every 2 weeks it needs a bounce..the wifes workstation downstairs loses its signal..that yellow exclamation mark we all love on the network connection icon. "renew/repair" doesn't do it..have to power cycle the unit. The various Belkins and Linksys (many diff Linksys models) and 3COM units I've had in my house over the years.

I have found the DD-WRT and Tomato have improved them (those models it supports) quite a bit....stability wise. Performance wise? Eh..a whisker...and range can be pushed a bit more (crank up from default 29 to something like 75). But it's stability/uptime that I believe is the biggest improvement.

 

[scotty]

Well, I just picked up the DIR-655 and have been playing with it for the past hour. Overall, it seems like a nice unit. A few observations:

On the negative side (non of them are strong negatives, barely worth mentioning)
- Slightly less intuitive interface that I would like, but only slightly. Overall it's nicely done. A few nice things here for users that might not be familiar with routers or networking
- Seems as though each and every little settings change needs a reboot.
- Hands DHCP addresses out from the top of the pool (i.e. 192.168.1.199). Somewhat counter-intuitive.
- USB Port only does 1 thing (saves wireless network settings to USB key for use with XP's set-up wizards). Nice if you're a new user, but useless otherwise. No support for any sort of attached storage or printer. No big deal, but seems like a waste of a USB port.

What I've liked
- Good logging support, ability to email logs
- Lots of QoS options
- Admin and User modes in the web interface. Nice if you want to let someone see settings without changing them
- Overall fairly well thought out product.

Looks like it should be a pretty solid router. I'm only using G thus far (supports N), but signal strength seems a bit better already (haven't done much testing here).

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

and the biggest problem of all (but this is very personal), they have the most ugly/crappy admin/user interface I've ever seen in my life

Haven't seen "2Wire" brand units yet eh?