Replacing a DGL-4300

[DarkRogue]

Hello guys,

My router died last week, and I've fallen back to hooking up a switch to my modem to keep my network running while I've been busy with work. Now that it's wrapping up, I have time to figure out a more permanent solution, but I need some help pinning down a good replacement router.

I'm thinking about getting an 802.11n router finally, since it's out of draft for a while now.
The other reason is because I would like to be able to transfer larger files between my PC and laptop without being forced to plug in all the time. My laptop is also currently a/b/g though I am looking to upgrade it to N in the future (I believe I can get the requisite 3 antennas on it as well.) This means it'd need to be dual-band, and ideally, dual-radio/simultaneous because I would like to make use of the 5GHz band as well. (There are 18 other 2.4GHz networks around me, but zero 5GHz.)

I would also like to have similar features to what I currently have, so at least some kind of customizable QoS, web/system logging, flexible scheduling and access controls. I also have domain/port blocking and bandwidth shaping/throttling being done in software, though it'd be a nice bonus to be able to move some of those tasks onto the router itself.

In any case, I've done a bit of searching and so far, it looks like every option is bad in one way or another. The easiest way to keep the features I'm currently familiar with is to stay with D-link, and that means I'm looking at the DGL-4500, or the DIR-855. Unfortunately, I remember there being a huge issue with D-link's firmware causing the routers to lock up every couple days, and I'm not sure if that's been conclusively fixed yet with their latest firmwares.

My other options seem to be the Netgear WNDR3700 and the Cisco E3000. The Netgear seems good but it's limited to 4k simultaneous connections for some reason, which sounds really low. Its options also seem very basic. DD-WRT is supposedly available for it, but it appears to be quite buggy. The Cisco also doesn't seem too configurable, judging from screenshots.

Are there any other good ones that I'm missing, or are these it for my choices? Does anyone have any solid information about D-link and their firmware problems after the latest firmwares?

Thanks

 

[Cyberia123]

As far as I know, NONE of the DLG series were affected by the lockup issue. I have a DLG-4500 and haven't had any problems with it at all. I run xp using bittorrent, many games, antivirus and an iPhone.....everything works like a charm, basically a fire-and-forget router.

 

[yuppiejr]

If you have a spare PC around with an extra network adapter you could retask it to firewall/router duty while you search out a stand alone wireless access point.

ClearOS and Astaro both offer free full featured Linux based firewalls that run on comodity hardware and are simple to install and configure via web GUI. Pair it with a $50 802.11a/n router like this Netgear and you are good to go.

 

[DarkRogue]

Sorry for the extremely late reply on this; Been a busy week.

I've spent some time reading and doing more research on this though.
Cyberia, that is curious because I recall threads on hardforum specifically singling out the DGL-4500 as having this issue with firmwares 1.2x+ and dlink's own forums had a bunch of threads about this before eventually getting deleted.

That said, I'm not sure I'd be very happy with anything other than another D-link at this point, so I may be stuck.

Yuppiejr, I know I could resort to building my own; I do have the spare parts from my old PC, but it's a huge headache to try and figure out a new piece of software when I simply do not have time for it. Thanks for the suggestions though, I'll keep them in mind for whenever I decide to get started on that.

Does anyone else have any suggestions or advice?

Perhaps I should just get another cheap G router, maybe a cheap used DGL-4300 again, and wait for better N routers to come out?