Which router should I buy?

[sc302 Veteran]

and you search google for group it says nothing about what it belongs into. Here is a pic of my box.

[medium_pimpin]

Asus RT-N16 is wonderful. Supports my 10 devices fine. Wireless signal reaches from my basement to second floor with no issues.

[Rippleman]

If you are an average Joe, like 99.5% of the people that buy a router, under practical usage there is no end difference between any router you can buy aside from reliability but even then I have seen cheap ones last indefinitely and see name brands quit after just a few months. I have had cheap ones (<$20) and ones that where high (>$100) but in the end they all did the exact same thing. Even when people here say they modded firmware, there is no need if you are part of the 99.5% of people. Just plug and go.

[sc302 Veteran]

If you are an average Joe, like 99.5% of the people that buy a router, under practical usage there is no end difference between any router you can buy aside from reliability. I have had cheap ones (<$20) and ones that where high (>$100) but in the end they all did the exact same thing. Even when people here say they modded firmware, there is no need if you are part of the 99.5% of people. Just plug and go.

distance is the difference. granted not much (imo), but distance. 20 feet could be enough for someone to not get another router or add wiring

[+BudMan MVC]

Yeah I see it on the box in both pictures - but its nonsense if you can not look up the details of that matrix. For example what is the size of those house pictures suppose to represent? Arbitrary nonsense - where did they come up with the device number? And I see they put HD on the one column with 7 or more devices. That is nonsense. So what the group A can not do HD.

Thats fine if you to try and make it simple for the average joe, and upsell them something they clearly don't need. But there should be something that backs up how you came about your pretty little matrix. I can not seem to find anything at all about these capacity groups - maybe my googlefu is failing this morning? Anyone that any links to info about this please post.

[sc302 Veteran]

It is absolutely marketing bs crap. I mean really, less than three devices on the lowest group..come on, anyone with any sort of history (not even technological knowledge here) with wireless knows that this is bs and if they don't they are very naive.

[Rippleman]

distance is the difference. granted not much (imo), but distance. 20 feet could be enough for someone to not get another router or add wiring

even then sometimes cheap ones might surprise you. When I moved back out to the family farm, there was internet in my sisters house but not mine. We are seprated by 396 feet from her exterior wall to my exterior wall. Cheapy trednet reached, expensive Belkin wouldn't along with some others from Dlink and Cisco. The best of the group was a cheapy Trendnet rouer for $20 and even a type "G" not "N" usb key. Always had to be in a room on the closest side of her house though but super shocked it reached that far

[sc302 Veteran]

expensive belkin

belkin quality

These phrases do not compute.

belkin is the most worthless pos crap that you can buy...if you paid $1 for their product you over paid. If you paid $20 and you have gotten ripped off, you paid any more and I feel sorry for you. There really should be a belkin owners anonymous club for all belkin owners to get help and fight the disease.

[Rippleman]

expensive belkin

belkin quality

These phrases do not compute.

belkin is the most worthless pos crap that you can buy...if you paid $1 for their product you over paid. If you paid $20 and you have gotten ripped off, you paid any more and I feel sorry for you. There really should be a belkin owners anonymous club for all belkin owners to get help and fight the disease.

exact same results from Link and Cisco, over all for me, they are all about the same... for me ANY router for over $40 is a ripoff no matter the brand...

[sc302 Veteran]

lol, ok. I can't fight that logic for home use.

[remixedcat]

the belkin my sister had barely lasted a day LOL.... it couldn't even keep a proper system time. yeah it was that bad. that's what you get for 20 bucks at moolymart. LOL.

first router I had was a linksys wired only router... it seemed ok but was pretty basic.

I had a linksys wrt54g and it barely lasted a week.wireless completely died on it, then the wired kicked the bucket. ran really hot too. returned it and got the netgear wgr614

my netgear wgr614 lasted 6 years, still works but wireless is weak, and it lacked guest networks and other options it also didn't keep up with our demands.

I picked up an amped wireless r10000 cuz it was under 90 bucks at microcenter... it's been awesome so far.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

The sad thing is that who posted it posts also Neowin's news. What else can we expect on the front page?

posts news you say? after 3 weeks or so of looking through the front page and Neogamr, I have yet to find any articles written by him. I'm not even sure how he has the reporter badge honestly as his attitude goes against everything that neowin is

anyway back on topic, from what I've hear the Buffalo Tech routers are pretty good, and they are DD-WRT http://www.buffalotech.com/products/wireless/single-band-wireless-routers/airstation-n300-wireless-router

[+BudMan MVC]

Here's the thing your always going to get horror stories for any device. Some people swear by linksys/cisco others by netgear, other by belkin - I personally had issues with belkin, for the same dollar amount you get better features on other brands - the belkin I had only 2mb nvram, so could not even put 3rd party on it. I was gifted to me - have used it for sons dorm room at school, etc. Not something I would use in my main homesetup.

Any router should work and perform the basic functionality no matter the brand on the front. I use to have an old wired bsr41 or something linksys back when home routers were new. Ran great for years and years - never any issues with it. Then had one of the old B wireless routers from linksys wrt11 or wap11 or something like that - again ran for many years. Then a linksys wrt54g v1 or v2 -- ran for many years. My current wrt54g 4.1 working great - many years old never any issues. Have had multiple flavors of dd-wrt on it, openwrt on it, tomato on it currently - never any issues, and will prob work for many more years. How many years of service do you want out of a $50 item? Kind of wish it would die so would have an excuse to getting something more recent - but it works, so why spend extra money. I don't really need N, it would be nice - but hard to justify replacement when G works ;)

Now netgear I have had nothing but issues with - never my own device though, friends and family. But I wouldn't be my first choice if I was buying one today. But if found it for a good price, had the features I wanted from hardware standpoint - and supported 3rd party. I wouldn't not buy it just because it was branded netgear.

TL;DR -- don't get so hung up on brand names ;)

[+jamesyfx Subscriber²]

http://www.neowin.ne...and-google-maps

He wrote this a week ago. :p

And yeah I also heard that Buffalo routers are good products. However people tend to assume they're not very good just because they're cheap. I normally stay away from routers that are overly expensive, like Draytek ones. They are never as good as people say.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

http://www.neowin.ne...and-google-maps

He wrote this a week ago. :p

And yeah I also heard that Buffalo routers are good products. However people tend to assume they're not very good just because they're cheap. I normally stay away from routers that are overly expensive, like Draytek ones. They are never as good as people say.

oh, so he does actually write articles :p

and yeah, the reason Buffalo routers are able to be so much cheaper is because pretty much their only marketing is by word of mouth, and they only sell them online so they don't have to pay fees to stores (similar to cutco in a way)

even just looking at the buffalo routers they look rather sturdy unlike say belkins routers or even some of netgears older designs

[xpablo]

I currently have 2 Cisco/Linksys routers WRT320N & E3200 they all have DD-WRT installed and run flawlessly.

The WRT320N has 12 clients plugged in well into 3 ports and then a Cisco switch is used to extend the other ports, plus a few wireless clients on the router, have no performance issues.

This is for a small office.

The E3200 has 4 clients plugged in and several wireless clients, no issues either.

I had a Buffalo router with DD-WRT, but tried to put Tomato onto it and it got bricked, never bothered to try to unbrick it as it was only a 10/100.