Router Recomendations

[BCPhoto]

Another recommendation for the WNDR3700. I replaced a 7 year old 2Wire with it and love it!

[Bob_S]

I have a Belkin N+ Wireless now. They all crap out of after a while (2-3 years) it seems. None of the brands seems seriously flawed nor superior to the others. D-Link, Linksys, Netgear, Belkin... It's just another Nikon or Canon debate.

Oh and I think just because Cisco bought Linksys that it doesn't mean you're getting same quality gear as when you buy Cisco commercial gear.

[ggeen]

Originally Posted by Bob_S

I have a Belkin N+ Wireless now. They all crap out of after a while (2-3 years) it seems. None of the brands seems seriously flawed nor superior to the others. D-Link, Linksys, Netgear, Belkin... It's just another Nikon or Canon debate.

Oh and I think just because Cisco bought Linksys that it doesn't mean you're getting same quality gear as when you buy Cisco commercial gear.

Bob brings up a good point. I replace these consumer grade routers every five years like clockwork. That is OK by me as a five year technology refresh is generally a good thing. Besides, these have gone from hundreds of dollars to under one-hundred dollars. I am on my fourth router, yes that means I've been at this more than 15 years. My first was a Netgear but then switched to Linsys when I started doing wireless.

The Linksys brand is still consumer grade equipment. It is a much nicer looking package now, though.

Do your research. Some of the less expensive brands do not do mixed mode networking very well. I was reading up on desktop switches. One vendor would degrade all ports on the switch to the slowest network speed. Let me explain that. Say you have a Gigabit switch to which you are connecting two computers. One, ComputerA, has a GigE card. The other, CompuberB, is an old laptop that only runs at 10 MegaBits (Mb). This desktop switch would degrade all ports to 10Mb/s rather than just the one. <edit> This is OK if you are just communicating on the switch. If, however, you uplink to a larger network, you want ComputerA to communicate at 1Gb/s an not 10Mb/s.</edit>

[toverman]

I've been using my Apple Airport Extreme for five years and have not had a problem. But I'm about to need a modem upgrade, as the AT&T DSL modem we have is the second-oldest one on the company's list. Yikes!

[canon_shooter]

Originally Posted by toverman

I've been using my Apple Airport Extreme for five years and have not had a problem. But I'm about to need a modem upgrade, as the AT&T DSL modem we have is the second-oldest one on the company's list. Yikes!

+1

And you don't need to have a Mac to use it.

[RKEnnis]

I've installed and used a BUNCH of different routers over the years. There are plenty of good ones. but my favorite by far is the Apple Airport Extreme.

Works great, easy to setup, but advanced settings are available for those that need them. I've used the Airport Extreme on a mixed Windows/Mac network for about 3 years, but they work well in a Windows only environment too.