What's the best wireless router these days?

[timwhit]

I need to buy a wireless router in the next couple weeks and would like to hear some opinions about people's favorites. I'd like to spend around $50-60 if at all possible.

Are Linksys routers still highly unreliable?
Which has the lowest performance degradation when I'm have 10 torrents going?

 

[Mercutio]

I built my own and it works great for, um, $350 or so...

My advice is that you find a thing that can run dd-WRT or Tomato firmware. Whatever Tomato does, it seems to stand up very well to torrenting, or better than dd-WRT, in any case. On the other side, you can do a lot more stuff with dd-WRT if you have more serious networking needs.

I think pre-N is important, particularly in a high density environment like an apartment building. I've got my wireless router using a 5.8GHz "N" network and it's really been the smoothest wireless connection I've ever had, but even if you're stuck on 2.4GHz "N", you're going to override anything else on 2.4GHz that's not another "N" broadcast, for whatever channel you're on.

I haven't bought a consumer router in a while. I did finally get enough 'stable' Linksys routers that I haven't had to replace one in about five months.

Netgear has an open router now. that's probably cheaper and more obtainable than the Linksys ones.

 

[timwhit]

I think I'll stick with something I can order rather than building my own for now. Though I'm sure your $350 self built router is much nicer than what I'll end up with.

It looks like the Linksys WRT54GL is easily hackable if the OEM firmware can't handle my load. I'm really not doing too much with it. Four boxes, two wired and two wireless. I just don't want to have terrible performance with torrents and don't want to have to mess around with resetting it when it overheats. Or RMAing it when it breaks in 6 months like I have seen countless Linksys routers do. Maybe they have gotten better in the last 2 years, but somehow I doubt it.

The open Netgear stuff looks interesting, but the reviews on Newegg aren't too good at this point. I haven't used a Netgear router in years so I have no idea if they are any good or not.

My 4 year old Linksys BEFSX41 still works relatively well, but it doesn't have wireless. I think I paid close to $100 for it new. It was the only router that could handle a high P2P load that I could afford at the time. Everything else would crap out or overheat incessantly.

What's a good router that is 5.8Ghz?

 

[ddrueding]

I'm using a Linksys WRT350N with the dd-WRT firmware and am very happy with it. It does torrenting much better than the stock firmware, and has Gigabit and 802.11N.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm using a Linksys WRT350N with the dd-WRT firmware and am very happy with it. It does torrenting much better than the stock firmware, and has Gigabit and 802.11N.

 

[timwhit]

I'm using a Linksys WRT350N with the dd-WRT firmware and am very happy with it. It does torrenting much better than the stock firmware, and has Gigabit and 802.11N.

That's a pricey router. The Linksys WRT150N has wireless-N and is $70. I don't think I really have a huge need for gigabit ethernet right now. It seems to support dd-WRT but not Tomato.

 

[ddrueding]

Seems fine to me, just passing on my experiences. I also have countless WRT54Gs in the field running dd-wrt with very few failures.

 

[Stereodude]

I used the DD-WRT firmware for a while on my Linksys, but found Tomato to be a much better firmware.

 

[timwhit]

I'd like the option to run either dd-wrt or tomato, but are there any draft 802.11N routers that support tomato?

 

[Mercutio]

As a rule, anything that runs dd-WRT will run Tomato as well.
Linksys has some draft-N hardware that does, but as I recall it was all over $100.

 

[adriel]

No D-Link

D-Link suck. They all died within warranty period. 2nd product just died today after 2.5 weeks. I'm going with Actiontec now for modem and Linksys for wireless routers. Never had a Linksys dead whether it was modem, router, or wireless.

 

[Mercutio]

D-Link mostly has the most retarded firmware I've ever had to used, but I recently had to configure a 3Com AP, so there might be a challenger to the crown.

I miss Buffalo hardware. Range was usually pretty good, and if they were hard to configure, at least the damned things didn't break all the time.

 

[mubs]

Why do you "miss" them? Has Buffalo stopped making routers?

I have a Buffalo router and 2 clients (the Ethernet hubs), and it has been working flawlessly for me for the last 2 years.

 

[Mercutio]

Buffalo got sued out of the 802.11 business a while back.

 

[mubs]

Sh*t. That's too bad. Thanks for telling me; I don't know how I missed the news.

 

[timwhit]

I ordered the Linksys WRT150N. Hopefully, it doesn't break.

 

[Gilbo]

I just started upgrading my WRT54GL's to DD-WRT v24-SP1, which was just released.

It's a very good upgrade. The vast majority of settings can now be changed without rebooting the router, which is a convenience I already miss when I have connect to the routers I haven't upgraded yet.

 

[ddrueding]

Thanks for the heads-up Gilbo, I'll be getting on that upgrade as well...

 

[ddrueding]

I'm getting pretty desperate looking for some semblance of reliability from WRT54GLs these days. DD-WRT adds some reliability, under clocking it gets you some more. I'm now stripping the cases and mounting a heatsink on the main chip, and I'm considering using more reliable power bricks if I can find them. After that would be a power conditioner or an on-line UPS.

One in three I can identify as unstable just sitting on my bench for a few days pinging it, but once they go into the field it would be nice if they would stay up for more than a few days without needing a hard-reboot.

 

[Stereodude]

I use Tomato on my WRT-54G and haven't had any issues. It's gotta be pushing ~6 years old by now.

 

[ddrueding]

I suspect that I am pushing these harder than most. They are running both ends of a PPTP tunnel that is handling a very large number of relatively small transactions. The aggregate throughput averages 300KB/s but spikes to 6MB/s, but that is a lot of connections.

Now that I've thermal-epoxied heatsinks to all the major chips, swapped out some caps, and re-soldered some connections, I'm hoping it will hold together better.

 

[Handruin]

Would it be more reliable to setup a VM running smoothwall using PPTP and add an access point to it or do you absolutely need a WRT-54G?

 

[ddrueding]

Would it be more reliable to setup a VM running smoothwall using PPTP and add an access point to it or do you absolutely need a WRT-54G?

I'm not even using the wireless bits. I could use a computer, but there are no machines in these locations, so it would have to be dedicated hardware. These are also industrial sites, so fanless low-heat solutions are favored.

I do feel like I'm playing whack-a-mole; as soon as I fixed that issue, another popped up.

 

[time]

Sounds like you need to chuck them and put in something decent. A PC is a lousy solution, typical power consumption 50W and poor ability to survive a hostile environment.

Cisco RVS4000 is cheap enough, but specs state maximum operating temp of only 40C.

D-Link DIR-130 is rated to 55C, but you'd really want to test one first (not that you wouldn't anyway, it's just that it's ancient predecessor had crap firmware).

DrayTek 2200E+ is rated to 45C. It's a bit dated and I'm unsure about availability, but I'd still have every confidence in one. DrayTek stuff always runs cool.[/url]

 

[time]

Linksys BEFVP41 is also rated to 55C. I can't find the specs for the cheaper BEFSX41.

BTW, the WRT54G is only rated to 40C ...

 

[ddrueding]

I appreciate you doing the homework, but I just don't trust those stated specs very much. That Cisco looks interested (though it is likely just a Linksys underneath). I hear great things about DrayTek, but I recall them being difficult to source here.

 

[time]

If I'm reading you right, you've lost a bit of confidence in Linksys/Cisco. Fair enough, you're not the first and you won't be the last.

But there are only so many credible low-cost VPN options - Netgear isn't one as far as I'm concerned.

If it was my neck on the line, I'd probably pass on the D-Link unless the wider availability is a deal-maker for you. To put it another way, I'd be heat-soaking and benchmarking it before deployment.

I don't know what mail-order is like for you, in the backwater we call Oz it's usually overnight unless the package is too big for airfreight. At the risk of sounding like an evangelist, I'd have to suggest you buy a DrayTek and see if it meets your requirements. They're far from perfect and too expensive in many countries, but I like them because for me they've been extremely reliable, including operating uptime.

Vigor 2110 would be my first choice (you can buy from that link). Expensive at $140 and limited to 2 VPN tunnels (with Dead Peer Detection), but probably about right for your application. Looks like it might even support WAN failover, although you'd want to check that.

 

[Mercutio]

I was able to get two refurb'd Linksys WRT600Ns yesterday for $90, total. I'll be using them for a low-impact PPTP tunnel with dd-WRT. Mine won't be as heavily used as ddrueding's. They're about the nicest consumer-grade routers I've used; the one in my office, for example, has an uptime of almost five months.

time's draytek actually looks like it has a similar feature set, though.

 

[Tannin]

I've used cheap, nasty TP-Link routers, and not-so-cheap, supposed-to-be-good Linksys ones. The linksys crap gives nothing but trouble, notably with FTP applications. The cheap, "crappy" TP-Link ones just work as designed.

Guess which brand I'm using now?

 

[Stereodude]

Any updates on everyone's favorite suggestions for a Wireless N router? My dad is going to want one so he can use his new Thinkpad with Intel 6200N wireless card. Currently he only has an old basic D-link wired router.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm thoroughly unimpressed with the Linksys E3000, which is the current "expensive" model.

 

[ddrueding]

I like Ubiquiti, and plan on getting one of these soon.

 

[LiamC]

100Mb (wired) in this day? GigE or nothing...

 

[ddrueding]

I have a managed GigE switch that will stay behind this.

 

[Stereodude]

In the other thread on this there was a suggestion for the D-Link DIR-655. Is that still a recommended model?

 

[timwhit]

I like Ubiquiti, and plan on getting one of these soon.

Looks interesting. Maybe this would solve my crappy network issues. When you get it can you let us know how it works?

 

[ddrueding]

You got it. I really like this company; their products are amazingly cheap and perform well. The downside is their supply really sucks. It has taken me weeks to get some of their other products.

 

[CougTek]

I like Ubiquiti, and plan on getting one of these soon.

It looks like a trilobite.

 

[Santilli]

http://www.streakwave.com/Itemdesc.asp?ic=PowerAPN&eq=&Tp=

Price isn't that bad, and, it looks like you might have used some of their other products, like line of sight internet...;-)

gs

 

[ddrueding]

That is the device, but I bet they are lying about availability. Pasadena Networks is my usual vendor.