Seems like Black Friday has piqued my interest for upgrading our home router. Right now we're using the basic Actiontec MI424WR FiOS router (two years old now) has been solid and performed brilliantly but it's hobbled with wireless G and 100Mbit ethernet, and I'm befuddled that I can't get wired and wireless computers to network with each other using homegroup or even basic workgroups - they just don't see each other. Anyway...
I'm looking for something with gigabit ethernet and N built in that I'll chain to the Actiontec to run the TV set tops. All I really need is to be able to forward ports and have upnp which all routers seem to have, no NAS or printer sharing functionality is needed. Range is not a problem because we live in a moderate sized modern house so the walls don't interfere with the WiFi signal like in some older homes.
Problem is, all of the routers I can find online appear to be either great or absolute garbage depending on what review you read. I've got a WRT54G v2 still running elsewhere and I installed a DIR-655 about a year ago. That one specifically seems to be working fine but apparently later firmware versions have really borked it (e.g. the SecureSpot feature). Every other router on Newegg is the same story; some user reviews are overwhelmingly positive while the same product will be scorned further down the page. Other reviews by websites for any particular model are also bipolar, some say it's great, others say it sucks. And while it sounds cool, I'm not building my own router, I just want to take one out of a box and plug it in rather than dig up a power hungry P4 box and buy two expensive NICs and an access point only to spend hours trying to set things up and troubleshoot it later on.
So after all of that nonsense, all I wanted to ask was if there are routers that are favorites here or elsewhere with gigabit and wireless N that are simple and just work. Could be that all consumer routers are just hit or miss, but I'm hoping otherwise as 100mbit ethernet is really bottlenecking large transfers and it'd be nice to get all of our systems talking to each other.
Thanks for reading and anxiously awaiting your suggestions!
I'm looking for something with gigabit ethernet and N built in that I'll chain to the Actiontec to run the TV set tops. All I really need is to be able to forward ports and have upnp which all routers seem to have, no NAS or printer sharing functionality is needed. Range is not a problem because we live in a moderate sized modern house so the walls don't interfere with the WiFi signal like in some older homes.
Problem is, all of the routers I can find online appear to be either great or absolute garbage depending on what review you read. I've got a WRT54G v2 still running elsewhere and I installed a DIR-655 about a year ago. That one specifically seems to be working fine but apparently later firmware versions have really borked it (e.g. the SecureSpot feature). Every other router on Newegg is the same story; some user reviews are overwhelmingly positive while the same product will be scorned further down the page. Other reviews by websites for any particular model are also bipolar, some say it's great, others say it sucks. And while it sounds cool, I'm not building my own router, I just want to take one out of a box and plug it in rather than dig up a power hungry P4 box and buy two expensive NICs and an access point only to spend hours trying to set things up and troubleshoot it later on.
So after all of that nonsense, all I wanted to ask was if there are routers that are favorites here or elsewhere with gigabit and wireless N that are simple and just work. Could be that all consumer routers are just hit or miss, but I'm hoping otherwise as 100mbit ethernet is really bottlenecking large transfers and it'd be nice to get all of our systems talking to each other.
Thanks for reading and anxiously awaiting your suggestions!
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