SMC vs Netgear router (please help)

[DWW]

I'm going to buy a 4 port router

Either:
Netgear RP614
or
SMC 7004VBR

Both are about the same price here. These are my only options (cheap as hell... only $30 CAN for either, boxed retail). Want to have 3 machines behind it. Win2k, XP and FreeBSD.

Any suggestion? Thanks.

 

[chansen]

Never touched the SMC, but I've had both the RP114 and now the RP614. I've never had a problem with Netgear stuff. The RP614 has a few more features than the older 114. One of my favourites is labelling the port forwards so you don't have to remember which port maps to which app.

 

[spanky]

i prefer smc. i just had a bad experience with a netgear nic and i haven't touched anything netgear since. tho i must admit, they have cool looking blue nics tho.

 

[RalfHutter]

Surf on over toPracticallyNetworked.com and read the reviews. They do a real good job with thier hardware reviews and the site also has lots of excellent info about home networking in general.

 

[Gaunt]

I bought the SMC7004VBR because it was cheap, and I find I have issues when trying to list servers for games.

It seems as if the router either 1) can't handle that many active connections at once, or 2) Some sort of "feature" is causing the router to quit handling new connections. (All firewall/hacker/SPI features are disabled, DMZ has been known to work on occasion, but causes problems for other machines on network)

Any connections active before I start listing servers remains active, and I am able to list about 350 servers on average before the router quits accepting any new requests for connections, and my cable modem lights flash like crazy as all of the extra ping packets bounce back and hit my router but don't make it to my machine. It takes 1-3 minutes before normal operation is restored.

However, I haven't tried the netgear, so I can't suggest it either.


And for reference, new firmware and tech support from SMC have not resolved my gaming issue. I suppose it could just be a problem with my router....