Warning! Wall of text!
So here's the deal. I had been using a WNDR-3700 since they were new and hated it from the start. The wireless range was good, but not quite good enough to work on the opposite side of the house. The routing was OK, but not being able to do Port Redirection was always a sticking point with me. I adapted and moved things to where they could all be accessible on different ports, but Netgears decision to withhold this really basic feature my WRT54G v2 had to their "non-consumer" routers really irks me and so I've kind of sworn off buying Netgear in the future.
But finally, my 3700 died and so it's time to move on to a new router.
Over the past month, I've used a n65r, n66r, EA3500 and EA4500. Not a huge DLink fan either so haven't really paid attention to their offerings and the last Belkin I used didn't support NAT Loopback so they're out.
But the one thing from each of the routers I've tried out is that they lock up on me after some usage. Sometimes a couple of days, sometimes a week.
What I eventually settled on is using an Atom Ubuntu box as a router and grabbing a n66r, putting it in my bedroom, which is more central in the house, and using it as an AP only. That was about two weeks ago.
Everything was working well, and I was pretty happy, but today my Internet slowed to a crawl. Pulled up speed test on the iPad and was only hitting about 1.5Mbps on a 50Mbit connection.
I reset the Ubuntu box. It still persisted. I called my ISP, they weren't experiencing any problems. I fired up my ancient HTPC that I hadn't used since I'd given up on MCE, and it hit about 30Mbps on a speed test.
Logged in to the n66r on my network, reboot it, and a minute later everything was humming along fine.
See, I had always thought I was choking the router part of the boxes. That maybe if I just used them as WAP's, everything would be fine. That is apparently not the case. I must be overwhelming the CPU with connections.
Just about everything in my house is wireless. We will always have, at a minimum, 9 devices connected by wireless, and that's if nobody is doing anything. If people start turning laptops on instead of using their iPads, the number is going to go up. In need to at least be able to constantly connect up to 19 wireless devices at one time on a mix of
2.4 and 5ghz. If something supports 5ghz, it's on that band. I've also set the channel width for my network at 20mhz. I don't need the extra speed for most devices in the house.
So I know I've kind of gone on and rambled for a bit, but I've really reached the end of my patience dealing with this stuff. All I want is a router that I can put in to AP mode and forget about it. Any suggestions?
So here's the deal. I had been using a WNDR-3700 since they were new and hated it from the start. The wireless range was good, but not quite good enough to work on the opposite side of the house. The routing was OK, but not being able to do Port Redirection was always a sticking point with me. I adapted and moved things to where they could all be accessible on different ports, but Netgears decision to withhold this really basic feature my WRT54G v2 had to their "non-consumer" routers really irks me and so I've kind of sworn off buying Netgear in the future.
But finally, my 3700 died and so it's time to move on to a new router.
Over the past month, I've used a n65r, n66r, EA3500 and EA4500. Not a huge DLink fan either so haven't really paid attention to their offerings and the last Belkin I used didn't support NAT Loopback so they're out.
But the one thing from each of the routers I've tried out is that they lock up on me after some usage. Sometimes a couple of days, sometimes a week.
What I eventually settled on is using an Atom Ubuntu box as a router and grabbing a n66r, putting it in my bedroom, which is more central in the house, and using it as an AP only. That was about two weeks ago.
Everything was working well, and I was pretty happy, but today my Internet slowed to a crawl. Pulled up speed test on the iPad and was only hitting about 1.5Mbps on a 50Mbit connection.
I reset the Ubuntu box. It still persisted. I called my ISP, they weren't experiencing any problems. I fired up my ancient HTPC that I hadn't used since I'd given up on MCE, and it hit about 30Mbps on a speed test.
Logged in to the n66r on my network, reboot it, and a minute later everything was humming along fine.
See, I had always thought I was choking the router part of the boxes. That maybe if I just used them as WAP's, everything would be fine. That is apparently not the case. I must be overwhelming the CPU with connections.
Just about everything in my house is wireless. We will always have, at a minimum, 9 devices connected by wireless, and that's if nobody is doing anything. If people start turning laptops on instead of using their iPads, the number is going to go up. In need to at least be able to constantly connect up to 19 wireless devices at one time on a mix of
2.4 and 5ghz. If something supports 5ghz, it's on that band. I've also set the channel width for my network at 20mhz. I don't need the extra speed for most devices in the house.
So I know I've kind of gone on and rambled for a bit, but I've really reached the end of my patience dealing with this stuff. All I want is a router that I can put in to AP mode and forget about it. Any suggestions?
