Router suggestions?

By Jaybonaut
in Smart Home, Network & Security

 Share

Recommended Posts

Mentor

Jaybonaut

Posted
Posted

Hi gang, I've been 'out of the loop' for several years on router tech and would like to get a new one. Can you tell me what you would recommend with the following criteria:

1. N protocol

2. Must be able to go through two walls with the ability to stream 1080p while using encryption

3. Wired gigabit speeds

4. Try to aim around $100~

I only have two devices that will be using the wireless: one that is directly downstairs from the router, and an Xbox 360 that is two walls away. I have two PCs that would be directly wired in the same room as the router.

Would the DIR-826L do well at this? Please help me out, I would love to hear feedback and recommendations. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

+jamesyfx Subscriber²

Posted
  • Subscriber²
Posted

What kind of walls are between the router and the Xbox 360? If they're thin partition walls you should be fine, but if they're thicker walls then you may struggle.

Also, is the Xbox 360 running on N Wireless? A lot of the earlier models don't, as far as I know... :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

HawkMan

Posted
Posted

I'd recccomend the linksys 4x00 or older wrt610 series. The 4000 series has better range though. But they may be above your price Arne. But then you get what you pay for. If you pay dlink/netgear price, you get dlink/netgear quality :/

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Crisp

Posted
Posted

Gaming on wireless is never really a good idea to begin with. As for D-Link, I personally wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. Cisco (Linksys) use to have the best home routers but have gone down hill due to privacy and forcing their crappy cloud service on you.

IMO Netgear seem to only be the better option left, unless you want to build a custom pfsense box.

  • remixedcat and abysal
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

HawkMan

Posted
Posted
. Cisco (Linksys) use to have the best home routers but have gone down hill due to privacy and forcing their crappy cloud service on you.

Except, you know, they don't.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Mentor

Jaybonaut

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Actually, I'm not gaming on the 360, but I do use it to watch videos and would love to be able to stream 1080p. I've never had an issue with DLink in the past Hawkman, so I don't know what you are talking about. There are more brands out there than Linksys/Dlink/Netgear also, but I don't know if they are any good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

HawkMan

Posted
Posted

Linksys is about the only consumer brand I trust, thoguh I've heard good things about Asus routers.

As for dlink, every device I've set up for friends and family, or that friends and famiy, or clients at work have had, has been a nightmare, they're slow, unstable, cheaply made app with bad quality control and hih failure rates. When they do work, they don't work very well compared to devices from other manufacturers. Netgear are somewhat better but they also have terrible qualty control, and randomly some of their devices have compatibility issues with other network gear, which IF you follow the standards shouldn't be possible.

Belkin is cheap but also suffers from the same compatibility issues, but otherwise offers lots of features for their price. But there's a reason why they are cheap. And that is in the form of the weird incompatibilites, and I would expect low LAN to WAN speeds.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Ambroos

Posted
Posted

One simple answer: (Cisco) Linksys E4200 v1 - not the v2. Through two walls with WPA2 mine still manages to deliver 80Mbps (actual) over WiFi , and 1080p requires far less. It is also extremely stable, mine has an uptime of over two months, I simply haven't had to reboot it even once since I configured it

The v2 is a bit slower, but more importantly, it can't run DD-WRT or Tomato. Tomato on the v1 is just a simple firmware flash away, and it performs brilliantly. I highly recommend it to everyone if you can still find one. I managed to pick one up at a greatly reduced price in a clearance! An easy way to tell the difference is because the v2 offers a theoretical 450+450Mbps bandwith, the v1 does 300+450. (Most receivers can only do 150, some computers do 300, so 450 is pretty useless)

(PS: gaming on it is fine. I've compared it to my desktop, it introduces 2 to 3 additional milliseconds in ping. If your WiFi spectrum is busy (many WiFi networks around) it might be a lot worse though, where I live there are simply no other WiFi networks anywhere near)

You can pick them up for $80 refurbished straight from Cisco, which is a great deal: http://homestore.cis...4VVviewprod.htm (or $120 for a new one)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Crisp

Posted
Posted

Except, you know, they don't.

I don't know what you mean by that, unless you buy an older model.

The v2 is a bit slower, but more importantly, it can't run DD-WRT or Tomato.

How so? The V1 only has a 480Mhz chip compared to the V2 which runs a 1.2Ghz chip, also the V2 has double memory. If anything, the V2 is better.

I've personally never tested them so I'm not sure, but on paper the V2 would be able to handle routing tasks much better. The V2 has the same hardware as the EA4500, but Cisco Connect Cloud...

oh%20god.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Ambroos

Posted
Posted

How so? The V1 only has a 480Mhz chip compared to the V2 which runs a 1.2Ghz chip, also the V2 has double memory. If anything, the V2 is better.

I've personally never tested them so I'm not sure, but on paper the V2 would be able to handle routing tasks much better. The V2 has the same hardware as the EA4500, but Cisco Connect Cloud...

A 3.4Ghz Pentium D dualcore doesn't even come close to a 2.0 Ghz i5 dualcore. Megahertz means nothing.

I quote Smallnetbuilder (basically the best networking reviews on the internet) from his v2 review conclusion:

There are those who will take one look at the E4200V2's lower wired routing throughput results and conclude that Cisco screwed up with the V2. They would be wrong. High routing speed doesn't do you any good unless you have Internet throughput to match, which few of us do. Given the increased processing power of the V2, I don't know why Cisco chose to crank down routing throughput. But that doesn't make the V2 a bad router.

On the other hand, the V2 won't provide a quantum leap (or even a little hop) in wireless performance, despite now supporting up to 450 Mbps link rates on both bands (with three stream clients and with 40 MHz bandwidth mode used).

The only real performance improvement the V2 provides is about twice the speed of the V1 for sharing a USB drive. 20 MB/s is actually pretty good, especially when you consider that's using an NTFS-formatted drive. If that, plus three-stream N on the 2.4 GHz band, is worth $20 to you, then by all means go for the E4200V2.

So, as you can see, the only thing that is better about the v2 is that it's faster in sharing data from a USB drive. If that really matters to you that much, go for the v2. But you lose quite a bit of routing performance (WAN-to-LAN), and you can not use third-party firmware. Cisco's firmware is never really completely stable, there are always some bugs. And the v2 is more expensive.

(and oh, you can by now completely opt out of Cisco's cloud services on all routers)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Enthusiast

Scott Hellewell

Posted
Posted

In the last few years this is what I have used:

NetGear (lasted about a year)

ASUS (lasted about a month)

Linksys (still working)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Crisp

Posted
Posted

A 3.4Ghz Pentium D dualcore doesn't even come close to a 2.0 Ghz i5 dualcore. Megahertz means nothing.

Nope, my 3.6Ghz P4 will wipe the floor with your 3.20Ghz i7! /s

(and oh, you can by now completely opt out of Cisco's cloud services on all routers)

Where have you heard that? I read somewhere that Cisco will let you roll back to the previous firmware on the EA4500, but on future models you'll be forced to use the CCC, like that new one coming out (IDK model number) with 802.11AC.

CCC is the future for Linksys products.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Ambroos

Posted
Posted

Where have you heard that? I read somewhere that Cisco will let you roll back to the previous firmware on the EA4500, but on future models you'll be forced to use the CCC, like that new one coming out (IDK model number) with 802.11AC.

CCC is the future for Linksys products.

http://blogs.cisco.com/home/update-answering-our-customers-questions-about-cisco-connect-cloud-2/

They reverted the default setting back to the classic (offline) management system.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

cork1958

Posted
Posted

Linksys 4200

+1

Do they even make the 4200 anymore?

Not sure about making them, but they're still sold in stores around here. Just connected one for a customer yesterday.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Ambroos

Posted
Posted

Is this the 'version 2' one you were talking about?

http://homestore.cis...6VVviewprod.htm

According to the description that should be the v1. The v2 is listed separately on the Cisco site. The v1 has the "Maximum speed up to 300 + 450 Mbps", for the v2 it's "Maximum speed up to 450 + 450 Mbps".

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Mentor

myxomatosis

Posted
Posted

Got the good old Linksys WRT610N (with Tomato firmware)... and I couldn't be more happy with a router! The newer "4000" serie is basically the same, with better range

Link to comment
Share on other sites
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing