Need a Wireless router.

Although my faithfull old thomson speedtouch router has served me well, I'm finally fed up of all the cables and I'm looking ot upgrade, I've heard some stories of people having trouble with certain brands of router and was wondering if there are any I should avoid (i.e. not good for SL) or I'd like to hear if anyone has any recommendations

Cheers

Az.

I'm using a belkin with no worries, and linksys hasn't given me any SL problems either. Sometimes you have to open up ports manually on the router firewall, but that's not hard to do.

Christ, I'd better go, i'm going to blow my rep for being stupid!

99% of Linksys Routers and Firewalls have issues with SL. Avoid Linksys like the plague.

Cheers Peeps,

that was quick. right then avoiding linksys like a plague, now have shiny new netgear router head me-wards.

Woohoo then I'm the lucky 1%
Actually i have a newer Linksys wireless router, and am familiar with how to configure port forwarding etc in firewalls much grander then this little SOHO job, although i didn't need to. It was plug and play for all configuration related to SL. Don't know if your experience was with earlier versions of the hardware/firmware but we have 2 workstations, a laptop, and a Powerbook all on that router, and can play SL simultaneously on any combination of them with even the default configuration (except some changes to security, encryption, and IP subnets utilized).

furthermore...from experience...I WILL NEVER EVER buy or recommend Netgear anything. Not only does their product fail more often then not (not even talking SL specific, think much bigger then one app), their support and service is absoultely atrocious. Netgear = Yugo of networking devices. Linksys has made much progress after their big Brother Cisco interviened who has had a great portion of market share in infrastructure devices.

Older Linksys routers/firewalls have problems routing UDP packets with NAT. That's all. And that's critical with SL. My last and latest Linksys had no issues, but my new DLink wireless AP/Firewall/Router is much, much better in many ways.

I dont mean to drag this thread off-topic, but Im really frustrated with my current wired router. Right now, my Linksys BSFSR41 spontaniously dies, usually when many people are running filesharing programs simultaniously. SL's ping time also rises into the unplayable levels (600-1000ms) when any programs are uploading.

I bought a Netgear, only to find it was defective (I think); the web interface was very flaky, about 90% of the time it didnt work, I wasn't even able to get it to the point where I could access the internet. Returned it about 2 days after.

Anyone have any recommendations? I dont want to go wireless, because that would entail buying wireless cards for everyone, an expence I dont wish to foot
==Chris

I have a Netgear WGR614 and all my PC's have Netgear cards.

For the most part, it works fine, but I do lose network connections at least once a day.

Also, if I do not access the network for a day or so, the connection dissapears and I have to manually reset it.

Other than the issues stated above, it works fine with SL.

- T -

I have a Linksys wireless and both wired and unwired connections to SL work fine. I didn't have to open up new ports. We're using 811.b, but I've also connected to SL at work through a "G" version of the same Linksys router. I've had PCs, Macs, and a Solaris box connected through the home router, though I only ran SL on the Mac using a wireless connection -- the rest are cabled.

That being said, I did have one Linksys go bad on me over the course of its first month. It was replaced under warranty and I've had no problems since. My mom is still using our old Linksys wired router (given to her when I decided to go wireless). Works fine.

It would be interesting to see an objective study of failure rates of different brands of routers. A 99% failure rate seems unlikely for a company still in business, if you'll pardon my skepticism. It may be the case that Linksys routers fail more often than other brands, but that wasn't the impression I got from the seemingly knowledgeable fellow who replaced my router under warranty at Circuit City. I'd certainly accept a Consumer Reports or similar evaluation of routers over that opinion, but without some credentials (e.g. "I install routers for a living, I keep meticulous records, and 99% of the 1000 Linksys routers I've installed this year have failed within one month, causing my firm to discontinue offering them as an option to customers" I'm afraid I'm going to stick with my own experience, both in my own purchases and in my recommendations to others.

Neko

You say this as if you've tested all their products. I for one have used 3 different Linksys routers at 3 different internet locations with NO, problems at all. Perhaps you should do a little more research before stating such a blatent lie. All three of these Linksys routers I have used had NO modifications to their port forwardings as they were all standard out of the box setups. Having said this, perhaps it's not a problem with Linksys but your ISP? ISP's can block certain ports if they feel is has malicious intent of suspect a high usage of traffic for malicious intent, such as someone having a server with copyright infringement material as the content, however the case may be, don't start saying avoid this product unless you have your facts straight.

My Linksys router is over 4 years old. I have 0 problems with it routing UDP packets with NAT. It's all about how you take care of it. If you don't do firmware upgrades you're sure to see performance issues. It's the same way you take care of driver problems by downloading new drivers. I see many statements saying don't buy this don't do this when all their problems can be fixed by a simple upgrade. Please don't make companywide statements like this unless you have your facts straight. Buying new doesn't guarentee anything other, ex. When Windows XP was first released it was worse than Windows 98se with all it's bugs and security flaws, but with updates comes stability and reliability.

Let me first ask, have you updated the firmware?

Second, why are many people running filesharing programs simultaniously behind your firewall?

Third, perhaps it's because you have no more ISP bandwidth and there for your ping is fluctuating?

Fourth, stop all the filesharing and see if your ping improves. If this fixes it, start them up one at a time and see which one is doing it, and leave that filesharing program off. Finally if all else has failed perhaps you need a beefier router if you are moving this much data. The BEFSR41 was only designed to move so much data, if you are moving more than 100mbps you're likely to run into problems unless you spring for a dedicated switch, or a 1000mbps router.

Try these steps, if these don't work, perhaps it's your Internet Service Provider. If this is a university setup, then there's your problem, you don't get the full XXXXX speed, where X is the entire bandwidth of your universities connection.