What's a good router these days?

[Brandon]

2wire makes awful awful products..

We currently have a DSL through AT&T that came with a modem built into a 2wire router. For DAYS I beat my head on the desk trying to figure out why it wouldn't allow connections using Citrix Metaframe. I finally set up an ad-hoc network useing a laptop and an AT&T aircard to do our testing for a week or so.

For internet connections they work great, but otherwise they're more of a pain than it's worth.. Was replaced very quickly with a Cisco ADSL.

Mind you, we use this for testing VPN connections before sending out work at home PC's for VPN users, so when you can't connect, it's rather useless. I beat my head on the desk for a week thinking it was something in the OS build/Windows firewall/Trend Software, so on.

In the words of an old friend "AT&T 2wire makes me want to Spork my eyes out".

 

[scotty]

Another vote for 2Wire's suckage.

Crappy options, odd user interface, and could never get a Mitel phone to authenticate to the office through it.

TELUS here in Canada gives them out with their accounts.

 

[dichael]

Also Looking for a New Router!

"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.

I'm new to the forums myself. Like the site -- great info!

Like the op, I'm also looking for a new wireless router. Stonecat's comments about DD-WRT are something a neophyte like myself gets recommended... often! I was quite surprised that Tim wasn't recommending the same thing too, and would like to hear his opinion on DD-WRT.

As background, I built my house a few years ago and installed cat5 everywhere (~ 25 points) to a home run, but didn't buy any networking components. Now I'm in a situation where I must buy a wireless router (maybe two), a switch, and maybe break down and buy a cable modem (stop renting!). I plan to stream to my hdtv. Based on prior suggestions, I was told to get a Netgear JGS524 10/100/1000Mbps Gigabit Ethernet Switch 24, and load DD-WRT to a couple Asus WL-520GU routers (one with DHCP & Firewall off).

I've been told & read that newer N routers won't accept DD-WRT, often fail, and the firmware will likely have poor documentation (or have undocumented features)... in ya'all's opinion, is that generally true, or am I just being overly cautious?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I've been told & read that newer N routers won't accept DD-WRT, often fail, and the firmware will likely have poor documentation (or have undocumented features)... in ya'all's opinion, is that generally true, or am I just being overly cautious?

The compatibility is on the rise....v23 started with a few..it increased with v24. Just something that takes time.

 

[mpoliver]

Linksys

Call me a linksys snob, but they've worked just fine for my needs (which I guess would really drive what you need -- recommendations should be based on what you are trying to achieve in your network setup). I've got a WRT54G in a box, a WRT54GX that I am using as an access point (thanks to Tim) to a linksys WRT600N. I haven't had a single one fail in the last 6-7 years (to include my older linksys router that I can't remember the model number to).

I'll never bad-mouth another name brand (and was very tempted to buy the D-Link 4500 instead of the WRT600N) as I haven't tried them, but I think I'm going to stick with what I know...and that is Linksys for now. For what it's worth...

Mike

 

[thiggins]

Welcome dichael,

I don't have much to say about DD-WRT since I've never had time or need to explore it or any other alternative firmware. My needs and router speed requirements are simple since I have only a 3MB / 512KB ADSL connection and don't use wireless much around my home since it's new construction and has gigabit Ethernet to everywhere that I need it.

So a Linksys BEFSR41 served me well until I decided to put up a WLAN to make it more convenient to use a kitchen notebook that my wife likes to move around. I'm currently using a D-Link DGL-4300, which is working nicely.

Guess I've been lucky, but I've never had a reliability problem with any router that I have used. On the other hand, I don't game or P2P, so I don't stress the router much. Now that I'm using a Roku Netflix box, maybe my experience might change. But so far, no problems at all with the Netflix streaming.

Sounds like you're pretty set with a wired network. What are you going to use wireless for?

 

[dichael]

Sounds like you're pretty set with a wired network. What are you going to use wireless for?

First, thanks to everybody for the replies

I was going to use wireless for two reasons. First, my wife/daughter have laptops (one's a mac) and they want to surf the internet on the couch. Second, I'm thinking about streaming content to my hdtv. From what I understand, this second issue almost requires me to go to 802.11n.

I liked the idea of hooking up the wired connections to a switch for gaming, nas, etc.

 

[thiggins]

Second, I'm thinking about streaming content to my hdtv. From what I understand, this second issue almost requires me to go to 802.11n.

Do yourself a favor and just use your wired network for HD streaming. Too many ways for things to go wrong to use it over wired if you don't have to.

 

[Bart]

Do yourself a favor and just use your wired network for HD streaming. Too many ways for things to go wrong to use it over wired if you don't have to.

Agreed. Regular DVD quality wireless streaming works pretty well on most hardware, but HD streaming can be a serious pain.

 

[scotty]

Agreed. I personally know a few people now who'd tried doing a lot of streaming over HD, and none of them had really great experiences. Video, especially HD, is one of those things that you'll notice every single blip in connectivity. And it's not really that hard to run some new Cat5 anyway, if needed. Short of particular types of buildings that expressly forbid it, you'd be surprised how easy it can be with a few simple tools. Most TV locations would presumably already have Coax, which can make life even easier as you can piggy-back some cat5 by re-running the coax. A friend of mine who's an electrician showed me a few tricks and it's really not that hard. Just a small digression.

 

[Brandon]

I've never really used HD movies and streaming, so I'm not to sure about all of that. I tend to Xvid for most of my movies when I can just for it's small size. With a loss of 25% quality (You can't see anything differnt with Xvid and 25%) and removing all off the "extras" (DVD sceens, captions, other random junk) reduces most to 1-1.6 gb a movie. This is what I've found to work very well for me.

If you do the rough math, that's still quite a bit for streaming with no extra compression. With a normal stream, on a 1.6 movie (1,600/120), that whittles it down to 222kb/s. Not much, but then it starts to cram buffering in for rewind and fast forward.

Take an HD movie: BluRay compresses to 25Gb, that's a 22Gb movie with no compression, 44-46gb with a duel layer. That (45,000/120) turns into 6.25 Mb/Second (That's megaBYTE, not bits). Perfect wireless does on average 10Mb/second, add in distance, noise, microwave, pull of the earth's.. well, you get the idea.

Take an HDMI cable now, which offers 4.95 Gbps (roughly) bandwith. Really not a good matchup, but you get the idea.

For something of that size, you really want to add a bit more umph to your connection, which in it's current state, wireless doesn't offer.

P.S. Don't flame me for my numbers, just guessing, not real tests!

 

[Bob]

Router recommendation

Brandon,

Since you mentioned you have the "Cisco ASA 5505 as my router/firewall" I have been looking around for something to replace my Netgear FVS318. My question is in regards to the Cisco 5505, on Cisco website it is listed as a security appliance and not under routers. Will the 5505 work as a router also? Can I do away with my current router and just use the Cisco 5505 as a router/firewall as I seem to gather you're doing?

Thanks for your advice in advance.

Bob.

 

[Zirian]

Hi all,

I thought I won't creat another thread as question I have is simillar: best possible router.

Network: home, mixed (PC's, Mac, NAS)
Purpose: web browsing, P2P, sometimes games online (C&C, Warcraft
etc.)

I think 3 things are important for me: gigabit LAN, ADSL mocem and wireless n. I've searched for long time for such a device and recently Belkin showed his new model for UK market only (where I am): Belkin Vision N1 modem ruoter. Nice looking device, however from administrator point of view - worse then I thought.
After another search I found 2 possible options:

1. buy ADSL modem like Draytek Vigor 110, specification: http://www.broadbandstuff.co.uk/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=49sku=Draytek_Vigor_110_ADSL_Ethernet_Modem&products_id=1339&osCsid=56765c3cb1f6dc19ddc93564e5730bc8 and router like Apple Extreme Base Station (for here down side is lack of web interface, DynamicDNS, no simultanous working for 2,4 Ghz and 5Ghz radio) or D-Link DIR-655 (only 2.4 Ghz Radio). I thought also about Linksys WRT600N, however it looks like this device is still no in the UK (but prbably will be).

2. try with Draytek Vigor 2820Vn http://www.draytek.co.uk/products/vigor2820.html: seems to be good device, loots options, integrated ADSL modem, wireless n (however I don't know if with 5Ghz radio as well), great stability etc. Only one think I don't like in this device - only one Gigabit Lan port. I thought that maybe, to achive Gigabit connections (to transfer all high capacity data) I will buy Gigabit switch, attached it to Gigabit port on router, and then other devices to switch. Should work if I'm right.

What is your opinion? Do you think is worth to go with one of these devices? I will survive the price of Draytek for perfomamce and stability...

Thanks for any advice!

 

[thiggins]

Zirian,

I suggest you separate out the integrated ADSL and gigabit LAN requirements to widen your options.

Why is draft 11n important? What sort of wireless performance do you need and what are the applications?

 

[Zirian]

Zirian,

I suggest you separate out the integrated ADSL and gigabit LAN requirements to widen your options.

Why is draft 11n important? What sort of wireless performance do you need and what are the applications?

Currently I use LAN mostly on my MacBook Pro. This is all right, however somethimes could be better to copy largerdata across on Gigabit connection to my NAS. I use samba protocol with it (Synology DS-207 +) which is not so fast. because I will move in the next 3 months, to place where my probabl only option wil be wifi connection, I thought about wireless n as this should give me better performace, range and could let e use my MBP capability.

All my photos, music,multimedia is stored on NAS, as I want to save space on disc and also give chance for other PC users to read my data.

By separate out the integrated ADSL and gigabit LAN - how can I achieve that? Will be right here to go on with separete ADSL modem and router? Or will be ok to go on with Draytek Vigor 2820vn Dual Wan ADSL2/2+ with additional gigabit switch connected to existing one gigabit port in Dratek device?

Than you for any advice!

 

[thiggins]

If you are currently using gigabit Ethernet to back up large files to your NAS, you are going to be very unhappy substituting any wireless connection. Depending on your home's layout, the distance between the wireless router and media playback device and the bitrate needed, draft 11n can support hi-def video where 802.11g probably won't.

Many people, including myself, have a separate ADSL modem and primary router. I also have a few switches uplinked into the router. These days you don't have to worry about equipment having dedicated "uplink" ports. Ethernet ports are auto MDI/X which means they automatically adjust to the connection that is needed.

Your router doesn't have to have a gigabit LAN, since your Internet connection doesn't support those speeds. Connnect your devices with gigabit Ethernet ports to a gigabit switch, then connect the switch into a LAN port.

 

[Zirian]

Thank you Tim for help and advice!

Currently I use only Megabit LAN, as I have NETGEAR DG834G, which doesn't support wireless n or gigabit connection.

After my move mostly I will on wireless connection, however sometimes - to copy larger data, gigabit speed would be nice.

I heard also that's better to separate ADSL modem from router. Your advice confirms that. Summarize: I should crate network in order - modem ADLS --> router (with wireless) --> gigabit switch connected to router. The only, one and last question will be - which adls modem, router, switch it's worth to buy? Those I have found or another one?

Thank you once again

 

[Zirian]

Any suggestion?
I thought about D-Link DIR655 with Dratek Vigor 110 ADSL modem router. Any suggestions are welcome

Thanks

 

[thiggins]

I have no suggestion on ADSL modems or routers. The DIR-655 is pretty popular and has decent draft 11n performance. Just don't expect draft 11n to be like gigabit (or even 100 Mbps) Ethernet!
Draft 11n ≠ 100 Mbps Ethernet

 

[Brandon]

Brandon,

Since you mentioned you have the "Cisco ASA 5505 as my router/firewall" I have been looking around for something to replace my Netgear FVS318. My question is in regards to the Cisco 5505, on Cisco website it is listed as a security appliance and not under routers. Will the 5505 work as a router also? Can I do away with my current router and just use the Cisco 5505 as a router/firewall as I seem to gather you're doing?

Thanks for your advice in advance.

Bob.

Sorry it's taken me a while to respond to this.

Yes, it will do all of the standard routing protocols and then some. I wouldn't expect it to be an "amazing" router, as it is a security device, but it will do everything a home user would want, and then some. The only thing it lacks, that kind of urks me, is the option for DHCP reservations.

Aside from that, it can handle more connections/packet routs than a standard Cisco Router. Most cisco routers are "Routers with Firewall options" this is a "Firewall with Router options" meaning it won't do a lot of the big stuff, but it's more than suited for small network routing.

Most routing these days is handled by Layer2 and up switches, the ASA has a built in Layer3. With that said, I wouldn't reccomend it to the faint of heart, as it is a complicated device. It took me several days to get it to a point at which I wanted to use it. Six months later, I'm still tweaking.