Wifi router reccomendations?

[blakerwry]

Just to throw this out there. A friend and I were at Microcenter and he was in the market for a new router (Netgear had been freezing on him and he had never had good coverage in his home). Based on coverage I suggested a 2 or 3 external antenna model over single/internal antenna models.

Microcenter had a WRT54GL and then an N router from Dlink, Netgear, Linksys, Trendnet, Belkin, Buffalo, and some other brand I'd never heard of. The WRT54GL was my favorite, but with a $20 price premium for a G router over the basic N models ($70 vs $50) it was hard to recommend. The Trendnet was the only $50 or less router that had 2 antennas (linksys, Belkin, and netgear had one or only an internal antenna).

We bought the Trendnet and he installed it on his own the next day. Apparently it's a dud. He said the speeds were better (was able to get 10Mbps to speedtest.net, while his netgear G would only give him 6Mbps to the internet). However, he said he had frequent IP connectivity drops between the router and multiple PCs. He tried different channels, settings, and a firmware upgrade with no improvement and eventually returned the unit.

I believe the unit he purchased was a TEW-652BRP (to replace a ~ 5 year old Netgear WGR614)

 

[Adcadet]

The D-link 655 arrived today. Setup was very easy although time consuming (lots of waiting) with the included CD. I tried to enable graphical authentication (where it displays a garbled image) but it seemed to muck things up so I reset it to factory default and re-did the install process. Indeed my network is now operating at gigabit speeds, although I haven't formally tested file transfer speeds between PCs. I'm rather surprised that my internet speeds have significantly improved. Online speed tests show my download speeds are now 12000-24000 kbps whereas before I believe they were more in the 2000-3000 kbps range, which has surprised me. I've tried a few different sites wondering if it was a caching trick, and I don't think I'm confusing kbps and KBps, and webpages do feel much faster. Wireless setup is also nice, and I really appreciate having a specific guest account that can't access my network. Overall I'm very happy with it so far.

 

[Handruin]

My internet download speeds also improved a lot when I upgraded to this router. I pay for a 16/2 Mb service and I get just about all of it now.

I never tried the graphical setup, so I can't comment on that. I setup everything manually the first time. I hope the router works as good for you as it has for me.

 

[Will Rickards]

It has one USB port, can you use a USB hub to connect a printer and a hard drive? And then both are available on the network?

 

[blakerwry]

Just to throw this out there. A friend and I were at Microcenter and he was in the market for a new router (Netgear had been freezing on him and he had never had good coverage in his home). Based on coverage I suggested a 2 or 3 external antenna model over single/internal antenna models.

Microcenter had a WRT54GL and then an N router from Dlink, Netgear, Linksys, Trendnet, Belkin, Buffalo, and some other brand I'd never heard of. The WRT54GL was my favorite, but with a $20 price premium for a G router over the basic N models ($70 vs $50) it was hard to recommend. The Trendnet was the only $50 or less router that had 2 antennas (linksys, Belkin, and netgear had one or only an internal antenna).

We bought the Trendnet and he installed it on his own the next day. Apparently it's a dud. He said the speeds were better (was able to get 10Mbps to speedtest.net, while his netgear G would only give him 6Mbps to the internet). However, he said he had frequent IP connectivity drops between the router and multiple PCs. He tried different channels, settings, and a firmware upgrade with no improvement and eventually returned the unit.

I believe the unit he purchased was a TEW-652BRP (to replace a ~ 5 year old Netgear WGR614)

Apparently he decided to give it another go. I helped him with a few of the options over the phone (based, in part, on Newegg feedback about the router)

1) Disabled auto channel option (manufacturer suggestion posted in response to a newegg review about the same problem)
2) Disabled 40Mhz mode (he has only G devices)
3) He had been using WEP, changed to WPA2

He says the router's web interface feels much snappier now and we ran some constant ping tests that showed a couple individual echo drops, but nothing major.