Emphasis on Stability

[tcolberg]

Hi!

I'm in a new apartment and while I only have a g-device at the moment, I'm planning on getting an N-capable laptop soon. I've been looking through all the forum posts and articles from the last year or so and am having trouble finding a device that's better than average on stability. There's a lot of emphasis here on bleeding-edge performance.

Let me go over my usage patterns and needs. I'm a gamer (hence my hatred of disconnects) and would use ethernet whenever gaming and use ethernet to hook up my Xbox 360 (which is used mostly for streaming these days). Because I'm mostly a PC gamer, I need expansive port forwarding tables, high simultaneous connections and stability. Wireless performance is not as critical, nor is range (small apartment). I also might keep a separate g and n network if the g-router I had in storage works when it shows up (it's being shipped across the country at the moment).

I don't need a media server on the device either since I just bought the Pogoplug that was on sale and advertised on SNB's front page Techbargains widget.

So, what wireless-n router would you recommend for someone who isn't afraid to run ethernet, wants something that does its job as a router well, and is decent at wireless-n?

THANKS!

 

[thiggins]

What routers have you tried? And what problems have you had with "stability"?

Why do you need a lot of open ports?

 

[tcolberg]

I have a Linksys WRT54GS2. I've noticed some people commenting that different routers have frustrating firmware and, in terms of stability, the Belkin's scheduled reboot feature is an acknowledgement of the weakness of their firmware that sticks out as an example. While I suppose having the ability to schedule reboots is a good idea, it would be better to just not need to do that except once in a great while.

Some PC games require forwarding a number of ports in one's to avoid NAT errors. For example, Company of Heroes needs ports 6112, 30260, and 9100 open. My forwarding table on my GS2 is full (only 10 or 12 slots).

 

[thiggins]

The good news is that routers have come a long way since the WRT54GS2. The bad is that routers can be as flaky as ever.

You may need to kiss a few frogs to find the router that's right for you. I personally have never had any routers give me problems. But I don't need ports opened, don't game and only occasionally download torrents. So my needs are simple.

You should be able to use one of the lower-end Cisco Linksys products like the E1200. Download the manual and check that it supports the # of ports you need to forward. Buy from a place where the return policy is good, like Amazon, so that you can return it and try something else if it doesn't work out.

 

[stevech]

My experience: stability comes from using non-consumer products because WiFi is so competitive that quality assurance (including debugging firmware) takes a distant back seat to price.

Some few WiFi routers have a constant firmware base and the hardware changes over time. That allows the firmware to mature and be far less buggy. Some examples in the upper end of consumer and lower SOHO are (not all-inclusive)
Cradlepoint
Cisco Aironet (Linksys is no longer in this category)
Some ZyXel
Some Engenius (due to parent company)
One may argue DD-WRT and Tomato almost fit this scenario but they try to baseline too many hardware variants.

And people here may have a few other examples of consistent firmware baseline across many different hardware products.