I had a really good thing going, then the netgear pro thingy died. Back on some other crap thing.
What do you recommend.
Heard having the 5ghz waveband can make a difference?
What do you look for?
I need to new one (my netgear has become temperamental) and have been looking around.
I keep hearing Billion is a good make, but I have yet to see if it's true.
Not too sure about the 5ghz band, but I think it helps with getting signals through thick walls etc but at a price which is it's easily disrupted by house hold appliances. I could be wrong..... yea more than likely TBH so ignore that.
But if you're wanting rock solid information and advice, plus other network related products, this site I have found invaluable - http://www.smallnetbuilder.com
Hope that helps.
I used to partial to linksys until cisco bought them. Now, it's all netgear. If I were buying today, I'd be looking at the netgear wndr4500 aka the N900.
If you want to get geeky with it, but dd-wrt firmware on it. It's basically a small linux computer specialized for routing/switching, and the open source firmware adds all kinds of functionality and tweaking bits. It has a learning curve though.
5ghz is good if you can take advantage of 802.11n and its increased bandwidth. However, the signal is more sensitive, and it has more trouble through walls. If your connection is 25-30mb or less, it won't be a benefit speed-wise.
If you go the N route, make sure you get dual band and dual RADIO. If you have a single radio, the speed always defaults to the slowest connection. So if you have a G notebook on, and an N notebook on, your N notebook will only work at N speed if you have a dedicated N radio in the router. Otherwise both will be running G.
If you use any wired connections to PCs, make sure the switch is gigabit.
Cheers Dras
Good stuff. I spent ages looking at this and various options.
I opted for features that are a must were.
dual band (2.4 + 5)
Gigabbit etho
Decent data transfer rates
I narrowed it to Draytek with ADSL and VDSL,
Netgear D6300
Fritzbox
and a maybe of a cisco one.
Opted for :
http://www.netgear.co.uk/home/products/wirelessrouters/ultimate-performance/D6300.aspx
Looks like a good choice, and the one I would have picked from your list.
I'm not a fan of modem/router all in one box, but that's probably more of a personal preference.
That should work great for ya.
For 99, waddabout https://www.apple.com/airportexpress/
What? !?
WTF are you and what did you do with Raz?
I went through this search recently. I have a monstrously expensive NetGear Gigabit router...it is now being used as my most expensive Gigabit switch...POS! I've got 200Mb fiber and the geniuses at NetGear sell their FVS318G as a Gigabit VPN/Firewall/Router...yet they neglect to mention (except in the very fine print) that the WAN to LAN transfer is only 25 Mbps!!!!!! It took me forever to figure out why my transfers were so slow. Never again will I buy NetGear.
I have my entire house wired with LAN cables as I prefer the speeds and security to WiFi. On my next search I based most of my decision on the WAN to LAN throughput speeds. That's where this chart came in handy: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/view
I didn't go for the top of the line AC routers as they're going for a premium now and I don't have any hardware that would support them anyway. Instead I went for the ASUS RT-N66U. Great price. Updatable firmware. Good reputation. I've rebooted the thing once for a firmware update, but otherwise it's been up and problem free for months. Just set it and forget it. It removed the entire bottleneck from my home network, and now I have the added benefit of WiFi coverage throughout my house.
> WTF are you and what did you do with Raz?
Hahahah, we have it in the office and at home. The most reliable wifi/router I've ever had and setup is a breeze and will do dual as well :)
> dd-wrt firmware
What kind of performance gains are you seeing Dras? Been hearing good stuff about this prog if you can get it working
I've not measured any gains or anything, I just install it for extra features when I need or want them.
Stuff like adjusting radio power, better support for NAS, more guest network options/features, etc. You can see who is connected (some oem fw won't), all kinds of logging features and a bunch of stuff most people would never use.
I've installed it on several routers and always got it working.
Real performance gains are down to hardware, mainly enough cpu and memory for the number of simultaneous connections.
Similar to DD-WRT, I use Tomato firmware on my Linksys WRT54Gs (and for some reason I now have six of these). They're a bit old school now, but similarly, a lot of the performance limitations are down to the hardware, not the firmware. Doing things like increasing the output *can* degrade the network quality rather than improve it. Given the choice, I'd wire up the house with Cat 6 like Bill though.
Yeah, I've tried Tomato as well, didn't like it as much, but I was already familiar with dd-wrt. There are a couple others as well, open wrt, for one.
But agree, wired is where it's at. Unless you're on a notebook of course.