Wireless router decision time... Anyone want to weight in?


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Ok so here's the deal, the router funtionality provided with the all-in-one router/modem unit by my cable company is rubbish and it's time for a change. I've read some good review of the WNDR-4500 made by netgear however when I went to New Egg there were many mixed reviews. I'm looking for the fastest Wireless router I can get for $150 or less.... who want's to throw in their vote?

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I currently own the Netgear R6300 and this is the fastest and greatest router I have ever had, however for that price the WNDR4500 is probably one of the best routers you can get, you are always gonna find good and bad reviews about most products, try and see what the consensus seems to be though.

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One of the things that scared me the most from the WNDR4500 was many people with the bad reviews stated that after about 2 weeks of use the router would no longer reliably keep a connection with their cable/fios modem and kept losing an IP etc...

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One of the things that scared me the most from the WNDR4500 was many people with the bad reviews stated that after about 2 weeks of use the router would no longer reliably keep a connection with their cable/fios modem and kept losing an IP etc...

Sounds like a netgear to be honest with you. This has always been my experience. Hell i picked up a net gear WNR2000 recently (last 2 months) because its was on an extreme sale at best buy. The router itself has good hardware but the software sucks. I put dd wrt on it and ****ing wonderful, hasn't disconnected yet.

I would say if you don't mind putting DD WRT on it, find a router capable, if you want a good router with good software then, like always, i recommend link sys, never had troubles. Stock or DD WRT. DD WRT actually pushes the limit of the hardware and I like it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124411

For your price limit, if you want something cheaper do so. I have 2 310n's 1 610n and a 3000 from link sys. Love them.

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Linksys E4200 v1. The v2 is slower and can't run DD-WRT/Tomato.

I have one since a week, picked one up as one of the last pieces in the shop for a great price. I get around 100Mbps wirelessly through two walls, which is impressive. I do have an extremely clean WiFi spectrum here, no other networks around.

But seriously, get something with Tomato. Even more than DD-WRT Tomato is a joy to configure and is quite fast too.

The only site you should really be visiting is this one: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews They're the only site with good reviews on almost all of the more popular wireless AP's, and they give you an excellent way to compare the capabilities of each one.

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Yeah I don't mind ddwrt at all actually. I used it on one of my older linksys routers many years ago at my old house (moms house) and it

s still running the network there today.

I'm looking long and hard at the E4200 now...hmm....

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DD-WRT or Tomato is just a matter of preference, both are extremely good. I like the minimalistic approach Tomato has.

Just make sure you get the v1, NOT the v2. Ask beforehand. The v2 is slower (especially in WAN-to-LAN) and will probably never have DD-WRT or Tomato because of a chipset that is hard to code for (no sources etc available).

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What kind of router do you need? For $150 you can get some pretty good routers. At that price, you could probably pick up a decent dual band router if you need that 5ghz channel. I just grabbed the ASUS RT-N16 for $76. It seems to be one of the better single band N routers, and has lots of extra features (NAS, FTP, BT client, VPN, etc.). I am planning on giving the stock ASUSWRT firmware a try. If I don't like it, I will probably throw Tomato USB on there. One of the main reasons for picking the RT-N16 is that it has good 3rd party firmware support.

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I got the e4200 v1 in part because of aesthetics and also because of third party firmwares but im still on stock firmware, didn't see the need to use tomato or ddwrt. i switched from a wrt54g on tomato.

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AMPED WIRELESS!!!!!! HARDCORE COVERAGE!!!!

R20000G dual band...guest networks... USB sharing

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I'm e4200 v1 here too since January 2011 and it's been sweet since then. Stock firmware and DD-WRT works great on it. I get killer wireless performance too but I use 5Ghz as I have a ton of 2.4Ghz APs around here. Still get 6MB/s speeds though on 2.4Ghz when copying files or downloading via N clients.

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