Choice of new home network equipment

Countryman

Member
Nov 2, 2006
53
0
0
Hi,

I currently have a system comprising of a 5 year old (iirc) SMC 7404WBRA Barricade modem/router, PC1 with Vista 64 Ultimate, PC2 with Windows 2000 Pro and three Slimdevices? Squeezebox 3s. For some time now the Barricade has been locking up when heavily loaded. (The Squeezeboxes can access either the internet or the music collection on PC1.) I have been unable to get legal download (bittorrent) programmes to work correctly with Vista and this function has now been transferred to PC2. I have a further complication in that I am about to move to a new house which has conduits, but no cabling, for seven rooms.

I have read previous posts on this Forum regarding the hopelessness of modem/router combos (thanks Jack) but my ISP is France Telecom who ?push? their infamous Livebox. Two of my near neighbours have had their Liveboxes fail within six months of deployment. I have also decided to listen to ?Spidey07? and wire the rooms with CAT6 from day one. Originally I decided to buy a DSL modem only, but none have integrated Firewalls. The French mail-order companies give me a modem/router choice of; Netgear DG834, D-link DSL-524T or Linksys AG241. I intend to use only one Ethernet output from the modem/router which will be fed into an eight port switch which in turn supply?s the PCs and Squeezeboxes. I assume that the PCs and SBs will be able to access the internet simultaneously. The only reasonably priced switch I have found is the D-Link DGS-1008D. The PCs have gigabit NICs and I would like to use PC2 to back up PC1 with its 600GB of Music, hence the choice of a gigabit switch although the SBs are slower.

Thanks for reading so far! Does anybody have any comments on my approach or which components to use? I have been unable to find any meaningful reviews of Netgear vs. D-link vs. Linksys apart from reports of unreliability of Netgear?s DG934 units.

Cheers.
 

spikespiegal

Golden Member
Oct 10, 2005
1,219
9
76
Actually I've had pretty good luck with NetGear's SoHo VPN stuff, bur their consumer routers aren't on my fan list. I agree Linksys is a better option in that market segment.