Router -

Post by **Mop** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 5:23 am

Looking for a good router set up for two comps, one wireless one wired... looking through a few things and since im a tard I figured will ask around ...

what do you like / recommend ?

So far checked out motorolla but their site sucks to navigate and Linksys.

Post by **Lyion** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 6:37 am

I've had just about every brand over the last 10 years, and they seem to go in batches.

I currently have a Linksys WRT-54G I've been for over a year without a hiccup.
Prior to that, I had two Linksys routers that were ass, so YMMV.

There really isn't much difference in functionality and I think the death rate is similar between Belkin, Netgear, Dlink, and Linksys.

I'd personally go for price, as cheap home routers are a crap shoot, literally. You can probably buy one for 20 to 30 bucks, based on sales.

Post by **Mop** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 6:40 am

i saw a few I liked in the 60 - 80 dollar range

Tikker · Post by **Tikker** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:36 am

in that range, the current reigning champ is the one Lyion mentioned

the nice thing about it, is there are 5 or 6 really good 3rd party firmware sets for it

so you can really get whatever functionality out of it that you want

Post by **Gidan** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:47 am

I have used just about every brand and stick to DLink of late. When you get down to it, the top 2 are DLink and Linksys. Linksys has had some firmware problems that caused the router to be non functional and linksys refused to replace them and told people to buy another, however its not extremely windspread.

I am not sure about the latest in linksys routers, but if you planned to do port forwarding such as you want to run remote desktop on both the computers behind the router thne your going to want a DLink. I still have not found a way to map an external port to a different internal port. such as mapping port 8080 in the real world to port 80 behind your router. A DLink will allow you to do this. If you do decide to go linksys you way want to look into 3rd party firmware ans Linksys has lowered the power of the wireless side in the firmware decreasing its range.

I would suggest nothing less then 802.11g on you wireless, 802.11b cant even compare with it in speed or range. Even if your only using a 802.11b wireless card the range alone would make the 802.11b worth it. Also be carefull of where you locate is and any 2.4Gz phones you may have as they will interupt your wireless signal. ie. dont put your router next to the base station for your wireless phone.

Post by **Lyion** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 11:21 am

Port forwarding is identical between the DLINK and Linksys. I have run both.

After running a DLINK wi fi router I'd actually say its range is much lower than my WRT-54G, so I'm not sure if you are getting that from a biased trade rag, and if it is indeed fact.

Again, I think there is very little difference, save in finding a good deal. I've had great luck with my WRT-54G.

Post by **Tossica** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 11:30 am

All the cheap routers are equally shitty.

Tikker · Post by **Tikker** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 11:47 am

I wouldn't really say that

some of them are better than others, but almost all of them provide the functionality required by any home, and most small businesses

the only real differential between most of them is whether or not they can be a VPN endpoint, and whether or not they support QoS

Post by **Gidan** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 1:08 pm

lyion wrote:Port forwarding is identical between the DLINK and Linksys. I have run both.

After running a DLINK wi fi router I'd actually say its range is much lower than my WRT-54G, so I'm not sure if you are getting that from a biased trade rag, and if it is indeed fact.

Again, I think there is very little difference, save in finding a good deal. I've had great luck with my WRT-54G.

Really, where is the page to set up for forwarding where the internal and external ports are different, I wasn't able to find it when I needed it. I knew it could forward say port 80 to port 80 on any IP didn't see a way to forward port 8080 to port 80 on a specific IP. It may hve been changed since the last time I used one though.

I also never compared the range of the linksys and dlink routers, I have never actually compared the max range of the 2 to give any honest advice about that. What I said was that linksys changed the firmware and lowered the power of its wireless signal. Using 3rd party firmware you can manually change it back to what it originally was. I dont have the exact instructions on how to do that but I can probably get them if your interested in seeing it.

In the end, its probably all personal taste. I have friends who wont touch a dlink and friends who wont touch a linksys. I use what was cheaper the day I picked mine up. I got my Dl-624 referbished for $20 and a wireless PCMCIA card to match it also refurbished for $15. They connect at 108M using windows together and 54M using linux. Standard 54M with any other card/router. There were no cheap linksys that day.

Post by **Lueyen** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 4:03 pm

I'm pretty sure I can forward ports in the manner you described on my Linksys router Gidan, it's pretty flexible, and I've never found anything I couldn't do with it that I wanted.

Mop make sure you get one that has a Wan port on it that allows you to clone Mac addresses, if you are going to be doing broadband. I ran into an issue with Comcast where thier Cable modem setup requires a single pc connection and registers with the Mac address of that particular card.

Tikker · Post by **Tikker** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 4:23 pm

I've got a befsx41 router, and it won't do the forwarding like Gidan wants

the wrt54g will tho (might have to grab a diff't firmware, but the 3rd party ones are much better anyways)

Post by **Tossica** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 5:14 pm

Routers are for nerds!

Captain Insano · Post by **Captain Insano** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 1:50 pm

I still highly recommend the Belkin Pre N Wireless stuff...

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductP ... _Id=184316

This router has crazy range and speed for wireless, lots of routing functionality and a 4 port switch. It's a bit pricey but you can get a pretty good deal on one at Walmart last i checked... I would froogle it to be sure.

Tikker · Post by **Tikker** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 6:46 pm

if you're going to spend that kind of money, go get a zywall

all the functionality of a big cisco router, but a tenth of the cost

Post by **Gidan** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 12:31 am

Have to agree with Tikker, if your going to spend that kind of money on a router, what you want is <a href="http://us.zyxel.com/products/model.php?indexcate=1125686118&indexcate1=1121212137&indexFlagvalue=1021876859" target=_blank>this</a> or <a href="http://us.zyxel.com/products/model.php?indexcate=1044943604&indexcate1=1123007871&indexFlagvalue=1021873683" target=_blank>this<a>, for the money, its about the best you can get.

However for normal home use, its far more then you need and far more money then you should spend.

Darcler · Post by **Darcler** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 12:33 am

Hey! Get off the internets at work. Fin will go on a rampage about it!!

RUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNN

:darkangel:

Darcler · Post by **Darcler** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 12:35 am

Oh also,

Dear Gidan,

For that car thingy we bought, I have to like load another CD with my thing hooked to the computer, will it actually recognize it or did you perform voodoo magix to get it to read it?

Love,
Darcler

Harrison · Post by **Harrison** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 2:25 am

<3 darcler

Sorry, I am not Gidan, but I can try!

Captain Insano · Post by **Captain Insano** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 3:09 am

If you really want to drop some kash on something that will work forever I prefer Alvarion.

Their shit is enterprise grade quality stuff. When it's set up and working it NEVER goes down.

Tikker · Post by **Tikker** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 10:32 pm

I'm over 13 months continuous uptime on my linksys router

Post by **Lyion** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 5:11 am

Tikker wrote:I'm over 13 months continuous uptime on my linksys router

About the same for me.

Captain Insano · Post by **Captain Insano** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 4:08 pm

You two are lucky... I've seen about 15 of those go down over the years... All different models though.

Tikker · Post by **Tikker** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 4:37 pm

Captain_Insano wrote:You two are lucky... I've seen about 15 of those go down over the years... All different models though.

I went thru 5 Dlinks in a 6 month period, it's all luck of the draw I think

Captain Insano · Post by **Captain Insano** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:43 pm

yah true... The thing I really hated about the DLink/Linksys level routers was that the damn things just wouldn't flat out break... The problems were always intermittent until finally completely failing.

IMO spending good money on a decent router/access point is worth every penny compared to wasting time when a shitty ones goes on the fritz.

Post by **Tossica** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 1:47 am

Buy a Watchguard Firebox X5w Edge.