Router advice
By
Bluemeanie,
Posted on: 2010-07-30 16:07 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
I use a ZyXEL X550N. Not sold in regular stores, but rock-solid (never had downtime). Plus it has gigabit ports and some nifty bandwidth management features.
I like my Dlink 4100, wired only. Here's a link.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...Tpk=dgl%204100
This router:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833166032
with this firmware:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv2/downl...td_generic.bin
It's cheap, you get a free wireless USB adapter with it, and DD-WRT is one of the best router firmware's out there.
My Linksys WRT54G has been solid for years. No re-doing firmware, etc. It is, of course, wireless as well as wired, but you can turn that off (most wireless routers will let you do that anyway,) and it's not all that expensive.
If you don't mind looking into refurbs, I've seen some Netgear and Dlink routers on Newegg pretty cheap, too.
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If you've only played an AT once (one set combo) and "hate" it - don't give up. Roll a different combo. It may just be those sets not clicking for you.
Some nice suggestions all around. I kinda like the look of the Dlink 4100, but I'm not keen on the $130 price tag. What were your guys experiences with setting up your respective routers? Easy? Any complications?
Before I upgraded to my homebuilt router, I used a Linksys BEFSR41. I got mine new for $40; I don't know how much they are now. If all you want to do is play games, browse the web, and other basic things, it's a good router, but it didn't support enough port-forwarding options or have the bandwidth-monitoring and advanced routing abilities that I needed.
Quote:
well. I've used multiple routers from Linksys, Dlink, Netgear, Rosewill, Belkin, Motorola, Trendnet, Zonet, and Arris. |
Originally Posted by LiquidX
Some nice suggestions all around. I kinda like the look of the Dlink 4100, but I'm not keen on the $130 price tag. What were your guys experiences with setting up your respective routers? Easy? Any complications?
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Given my experiences with Trendnet, Zonet, and Belkin I would not recommend their router products to anyone. Most of their routers start in terms of junk and rapidly descend into more vulgar terms. Dlink, as a brand, starts off with the obscenities.
You generally won't see Motorola or Arris routers unless you are buying a VOIP Cable modem or a modem / router combination. So I think these are probably moot for what you want.
My normal shortlist of routers you'd want to buy consists largely of Linksys and Netgears. If you were buying stock with no intent to mod go buy a Linksys.
That being said, for my own personal use, I had picked up the Rosewill I had mentioned earlier because of it's DD-WRT support. The default firmware that Rosewill ships with the router is, well, almost as bad as what Dlink packages in their routers.
The reason Rosewill ships a junk system is because they don't actually expect anybody to use the firmware included with the router. There's a reason the DD-WRT support is listed as part of the Router's title. It is, as of right now, the cheapest way to get a DD-WRT routing system.
As far as installing the router-firmware, the installation consisted pretty much of:
- Plug router in.
- Plug ethernet cord into Port 1
- Plug ethernet cord into laptop network port
- start. run. cmd. ipconfig.
- input default gateway into browser address bar.
- Login with username and password specified in manual
- go to upgrade-firmware tab
- point to DD-WRT file.
- follow on-screen prompts.
So, looking at that Roswell Router, it can handle Wi-Fi, correct? And if so, one can use the Wi-Fi function at the same time as using it as a wired router, correct?
Quote:
That is correct.|
Originally Posted by LiquidX
So, looking at that Roswell Router, it can handle Wi-Fi, correct? And if so, one can use the Wi-Fi function at the same time as using it as a wired router, correct?
|
All wireless routers, that I'm aware of, do wired and wireless connections at the same time.
And it's correct that it also handles Wi-Fi as well, yes? Also, since I'm going to be hooking a 360 and my gaming computer to it, as well as my roomates PC, I assume you haven't noticed any real slowdown on multiple connections working at once?
Quote:
Yes, the Rosewill I linked is a wireless router with a 4-port switch. |
Originally Posted by LiquidX
And it's correct that it also handles Wi-Fi as well, yes? Also, since I'm going to be hooking a 360 and my gaming computer to it, as well as my roomates PC, I assume you haven't noticed any real slowdown on multiple connections working at once?
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As far as slow-downs go... well. That's hard to answer given that my own internal network is a bit complex, and from a purely practical standpoint I can create situations that will bring network performance to a crawl.
That being said, I'm not exactly a normal user. I accept that.
So, let me give you the tech details on this question.
This particular router is a Class 802.11g router and offers a maximum wireless transfer speed of 54Mbps. The wired switch is a classified as 10-T/100-TX switch, which means it offers a transfer speed of 100Mbps.
For reference, DSLreports lists the highest Cox Communications download speed as 22Mbps: http://www.dslreports.com/faq/3646
Comcast's highest speed is 50Mbps: http://www.dslreports.com/faq/comcas...t_things#15643
Unless you are paying out megabucks, you probably won't have one of these ultra-high speed packages. It's more likely your internet connection speed will be between 12Mbps~18Mbps. This means that your wireless speed is going to be several times faster than your actual-internet speed, and your internal wired speed will be even faster.
Now... can you create a slow-down on the setup you've mentioned? Well, depends on who provides your internet.
From a purely numerical point of view, you can saturate your internet connection long before you can saturate what the router can handle.
So, I went ahead and ordered the Roswell. Thankfully, it should be here by Tuesday or Wednesday (Free 3 day shipping? Awesome). THanks for the advice, guys.
I went ahead and ordered it too. Thank you so much for the detailed recommendation Je Saist.
Are there specific ports that CoX uses that need to be reserved?
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So, I'm looking to pick up a new router. It needs to be Wired (Don't have any wireless capable devices), and hopefully inexpensive as possible while still being good. Any suggestions?