[Question] Wireless Routers

[Gared]

Ok, I've had my current wireless router, a Linksys WRT54GL, for about 6 or 7 years now, and it's descent into tech-death is starting to accelerate to a point that's getting pretty ridiculous. It has to be reset at least twice a week, sometimes multiple times a day, and if it hasn't been powercycled that day, good luck getting the administration page to come up from any browser. So I'm looking for a new router. It doesn't need to be able to do all that much, it just needs to be able to wirelessly and wiredly route network traffic. I may have, at any given point in the following wireless devices: two laptops - one for gaming and one for my wife's work, a Wii, and two iPhone 3GS's; and my computer physically plugged in to one of the ports via a 50' CAT5e cable. It needs to support WEP security (for some of my older devices) and WPA or WPA2 security (for some of my newer devices). It needs to not be 6 years old.

The only problem that I'm having is that, at least on Newegg, anything newer than another WRT54GL seems to be getting some pretty hit or miss reviews. Have routers really not improved in the past 6 years?

 

[Covar]

short answer, No.

long answer, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I need to check what I'm running at home, think it's a E3000 and it's been running well for a few years now (Note: I did install dd-wrt on it).

 

[sixpackshaker]

WRT54GL just seem to be rock steady beasts for years at a stretch. The newer stuff, eh.

I wish I had a current opinion on what's on the market now, but I've had a really hard time finding anything better than that WRT54GL.

 

[Gared]

Well, that takes care of it then. I mean, I've never had a problem running this one until it started getting old. It's managed to run multiple devices and not had any major hiccups, even when raiding over a wireless connection in WoW, so I guess I'll just order a new one from Newegg. Apparently my Fry's doesn't carry them.

 

[Covar]

Gared, you can always buy a new WRT54GL. They're solid and do the job, if you're not doing a lot of internal networking you don't really need 802.11N.

 

[Covar]

BAH! ninja'd.

 

[PatrThom]

Yeah. Most of the time, your device purchase will be dictated by the number of concurrent connections you need (either due to available channels or number of available wired ports), and even that limitation can be overcome with the addition of a good switch.

The WRT series is probably the de facto standard router, so much so that there are even 3rd party firmware packages available (DD-wrt, HyperWRT, Tomato, etc). I have not used any of these, but the feature list looks enticing.

If you're looking for performance data, Tom's Hardware has a router chart similar to that GPU one that keeps popping up.

SIDE NOTE: See what you can do to get rid of/replace your WEP devices. That's a serious flaw in your network security. If you must use WEP, make sure those devices are on their own, isolated subnet.

--Patrick

 

[Covar]

I'm a dd-wrt user and I find it just as easy to use as stock firmware, but with more features and options. For example it takes 1 click in dd-wrt to setup a virtual network interface, then you can just configure it the same as you would any other wi-fi network. I used this to create a WEP network for my Nintendo DS.

If you don't mind bringing down your network while you install and configure a 3rd party firmware I highly recommend it.