Looking for recommendations for wired Router

[Tomer]

Looking to upgrade my home network router to a Gig and add some filtering capability.

Anyone have an opinion of a good unit that:

- Is a giga-switch (Do they even still make hubs?)

- Is a *real* router that will let me setup some elementary filtering in the router itself to block sites (This POS Linksys BEFSR81 won't let me do hardly anything except block the entire port)

- Is at least a 4 port

- Is affordable

 

[nweaver]

I would

1. buy a nice gig switch, jumbo frames capable
2. get an old PC and throw something like smoothwall on it

 

[JackMDS]

As for the Giga, like nweaver post above, separate it from the Router.

Peer to Peer Giga Networks

Setting a Home/SOHO Giga network.

As for Centrally Controlling, Heavy Traffic capable Entry Level Router.

LOL, they are looking for the Holly Grail for 2000 years.

It seems that people do not get it. There is No sub $20,000.00 Car that compare to a Lamborghini.

There are three choices.

1. Sub $100 that ac provide humble performance for Internet service and few LAN computers that do not employ heavy Traffic.

2. There are few Sub $150 that add a gimmick or two the mix (like the D-Link gaming Router) that are Not really solving central control and heavy traffic needs.

3. Every thing else that is used by Business that can to do what you need to, and comes with a Matching price.

Two decent options in the sub $100 category.
1. Linksys WRT54L flashed with 3rd party firmware.

Example: http://www.thibor.co.uk/

2. Buffalo High Power WHR-HP-G54 (About $55).
http://www.buffalotech.com/products/pro...detail.php?productid=115&categoryid=29

Want Entry Level Wire only?

They cost the same as Wireless, and there is nothing new in them since 2004.

So buy Wireless, and switch Off the Radio.

:sun:

 

[jlazzaro]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
There is No sub $20,000.00 Car that compare to a Lamborghini.

you need to spend at leat 30k for that

 

[Tomer]

Thanks for the feedback!

It was late, but I should have prefaced that I am aware of the separate SW firewall route, and have considered it, but for a few reasons I'd rather not go there just now.

I don't need some industrial strength ubber-router, I would just like something that can network 3 or 4 relatively low traffic computers, handle 1000Mbps speed traffic from these fine new $15 Zonet NIC's I have, so I can transfer data from machine to machine faster, and allow me to block my son from visiting thestileproject and other sites of dubious content.

I appreciate your feedback and I'll hit Google today to see what shakes out. I am a lot more lucid now after a little sleep.

I was hoping someone had experience with a box that would do what I needed with a minimum of fuss. It just seems to me that *every* parent in the free world would like the simple feature of blocking sites at the router level. I dunno.

 

[Madwand1]

Two problems: (1) Not many routers incorporate GbE at this point. (2) Content filtering is non-trivial.

Blocking sites is a dynamic problem. So there aren't any simple broad solutions that work well. Some D-Link routers offer simple "white list" (only allowed sites) filtering. Others such as DD-WRT running on a Linksys WRT54GL or other compatible router offer a bit more -- blocked URLs and keywords. The broader solution generally turns out to be running some software that's dynamically updated by some third-party censoring service, for a subscription fee.

The D-Link DGL-4100 and DGL-4300 somewhat solve (1) and (2). (1) They have 4 GbE ports, but no support for jumbo frames (which help somewhat for higher-end performance esp. with PCI NICs). (2) They offer a subscription-based "sentinel services" addon which does parental filtering. http://sentinel.dlink.com/ParentalControls/

 

[cleverhandle]

As Madwand1 explained, filtering is a difficult thing to do well, certainly very difficult on simple, appliance-type equipment. If you're interested in nweaver's suggestion to use a Linux box as a router (which has a lot of advantages and works well), you can take that a step further and install Squid and DansGuardian on it as a filtering solution. It's been a couple of years since I tried it, but I was impressed at the filter's accuracy. Certainly worth considering as a free solution.

 

[JackMDS]

I never tried the few offers that combine a Router with parental control subscription.

Searching the Internet for reviews, and reading the comments does not look encouraging.

Two Free solutions work rather well.

1. Using a special Host File that is designed for this purpose and is updated every few weeks.
Not familiar with host file? See here, Windows Host File- What is it and How to Mange it?

The File here, http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.zip

2. This is an Application that might help, http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/Parental_Filter/pfilter.html

:sun:

 

[cmetz]

Tomer, get a WRT54GL and a SMC8508T. On the GL, run third-party firmware with URL blocking, or for the low-tech / higher performance option, set up static routes to the web sites you want to block... just route them to nowhere. This is about as good as you're going to get at the SOHO price level.

Those Zonet NICs are cheap for a reason. Set modest expectations for the throughput you're going to get.

 

[Tomer]

Thanks again for all the excellent input guys. I'll let you know how it pans out.