Need a new router

[biff]

Looking for recommendations for which router to buy for the office. I've only ever used cheapies and our current one is no different. They work fine for a year or two then start to act up. Turning on the photocopier near by causes it to lose internet connection requiring us to restart the router.

Anyway, looking for a GB router with wireless, no special requirements on the wireless. We mostly use it for sharing files and printers if that matters.

[misterd]

Get something that runs DD-WRT. Right now I have a WRT310N v1 and it's flashed over to it for stability / features. It's gigabit + N - however I know the v3's which are available in retail channels now are not compatible with it. N seems to be more popular then gigabit so that gigabit requirement is going to limit your choices in the end. I know a lot of people also using the D-Link DIR655 but it's probably 2 years old now and I would imagine support is lacking as the newer models come out. Good luck!

[geokilla]

ASUS WL-520GU and Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 has my vote. Get the Buffalo if you need good wireless performance.

Don't forget to run DD-WRT.

[JD]

DIR-655 still has support, since they have yet to get 1.3x firmware bug-free....

Mines been running stable for 34 days now though using the latest Beta firmware (1.32NA Build 09) which is the longest this thing as ever been up.

[lcdguy]

anything that runs tomato firmware. My personal fav is WRt54GL if you don't mind not having 802.11n.

[biff]

Wireless get's nearly no use. Used maybe a few times a month to transfer about 10MB of data, so I'm not going to miss 802.11n. Stability is far more important.

What are the improvements that the third party firmware provides?

[lcdguy]

the fork i am using adds moer support for things such as QOS and MLPPP support. I also find it alot more stable than stock firmware.

[misterd]

Originally Posted by biff

Wireless get's nearly no use. Used maybe a few times a month to transfer about 10MB of data, so I'm not going to miss 802.11n. Stability is far more important.

What are the improvements that the third party firmware provides?

Stability and features.

"Among other features not found in the original Linksys firmware, DD-WRT adds the Kai Daemon for the Kai Console Gaming network, WDS wireless bridging/repeating protocol, Radius Authentication for more secure wireless communication, advanced Quality of Service controls for bandwidth allocation, and software support for the SD-Card hardware modification."

What is DD-WRT? - DD-WRT Wiki has many more listed features such as..

• 13 languages
• 802.1x Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP)
• Access Restrictions
• Ad hoc
• Afterburner
• Client Isolation Mode
• Client Mode (supports multiple connected clients)
• DHCP Forwarder (udhcp)
• DHCP Server (udhcp or Dnsmasq)
• DNS Forwarder (Dnsmasq)
• DMZ
• Dynamic DNS (DynDNS, easyDNS, FreeDNS, No-IP, TZO, ZoneEdit, custom, and others)
• Hotspot Portal (Sputnik Agent ,Chillispot)
• IPv6
• JFFS2 (JFFS2)
• MMC/SD Card Support (hardware modification required)
• NTP
• ntop Remote Statistic (ntop)
• OpenVPN Client & Server (only in -vpn build of the firmware)
• Port Triggering
• Port Forwarding
• PPTP VPN Server & Client
• QoS Bandwidth Management
• QoS L7 Packet Classifier (l7-filter)
• RFlow
• Routing (BIRD)
• Samba FS Automount
• Syslog
• Rx Antenna
• Tx Antenna
• Show Status of Wireless Clients and WDS with System Uptime/Processor Utilization
• Site Survey
• SNMP
• SSH server & client (dropbear)
• Startup, Firewall, and Shutdown scripts (startup script)
• Static DHCP
• Style (Changeable GUI; v.23)
• Supports New Devices (WRT54G V3, V3.1, V4, V5 and WRT54GS V2.1, V3, V4)
• Telnet server & client
• Transmit Power Adjustment (0-251mW, default is 28mW, 100mW is safe)
• UPnP
• USB
• VLAN
• WOL (Wake On Lan) (WOL)
• WDS Connection Watchdog
• WDS Repeater Mode
• Wireless MAC Address Cloning
• Wireless MAC Filter
• WMM (Wi-Fi MultiMedia)
• WPA over WDS
• WPA/TKIP with AES
• WPA2
• Xbox Kaid (Kai Engine)

I should let you read the rest

Anyways, it's been a god send in regards to stability. It used to be days and needing to reboot cause it hung up or got slow, this has been several months without issues and still going strong.

[ayah]

You could always build an old(er) system up and run PFSense or another linux routing distro.. ;)

[grinder]

if you truly want to break away from the "consumer/residential" grade hardware that was discussed here, then the best bang for your buck is a Netgear Prosafe.

ProSafe 8-port Gigabit VPN Firewall - NETGEAR.com