Looking for Router Guidance

[Lowkase]

Hi,

Here is my current situation:
- I have an older Linksys wireless router (sorry @ work and can't remember the model #). It has served its purpose over the last couple of years but it has one annoying glitch that I can't seem to shake out. My connection to the internet becomes slower and slower over the span of about 2 weeks. Eventually it gets to the point that I simply power down and power up the router to reset it and voila its back to normal operations. I don't know if this is a firmware issue or just a short coming of the router itself or a combination of many things.
- I connect my main workstation via wire to the router.
- I connect a HP network printer via wire to the router.
- We have a roaming laptop in the house (a 2 year old Toshiba) that uses a wireless connection (pre G and N).
- I am a web developer so there is a lot of browser usage going on in the house. I also play a MOO (Everquest) at least once a day. We have gotten into using itunes over the last few months and plan on expanding our library over the next year. We don't bit torrent (though I have wanted to look into it for a while). Thats pretty much the majority of our comm usuage.
- My cable internet provider is Rogers (Canada)


Here is what I am looking to accomplish:
- I want to buy a very stable wireless router to replace the old one.
- I just want to have this thing hum along without any of the reset issues I have had to make on the current router. I would even sacrifice a bit of speed for more stability.
- I want backward compatability for the wireless on my Toshiba laptop or the option to buy a USB NIC to bring the comm protocol on the laptop up to snuff.
- I plan on buying a new top of the line laptop by the end of the year. I am sure the new laptop will be N capable.
- I have just purchased a DLINK DNS-323 BYOD NAS so I would like the new router to play nice with the DNS-323.


I am thinking of going the "N" route to be able to take advantage of that "newer" technology while still being backward compatible for the Toshiba.

Brand name and model suggestions would be most appreciated. I have been a long time Linksys user but have no problems dropping them for a brand/model more stable than my current setup.

Thank you very much!


Cheers,

Lokase

 

[Lowkase]

One more thing.

Would be nice to have a USB port on the router for an exernal hard-drive.

I know if I ever have to upgrade the firmware ont he DSN-323 that I will have to offload the contents of the RAID 1 before flashing it. An external USB hard-drive off the router would make my life a lot easier in a situation like this.

Thanks!

Lokase

 

[scotty]

One of the most popular routers going these days is the D-Link DIR-655. It's a solid contender with a good feature set. It has a USB port on it, which with a new firmware update allows you to use it for a lot of different things, but keep in mind hard drives attached to USB ports on routers are usually very slow.

I too was a long-time Linksys user but in recent years I've had a lot of problems with newer WRT54G's. I was in the same boat, constantly resetting it. I've been using a 655 at home (as an access point only) and some with family members not a single reset to report.

It supports Wireless N, but I'm still running all G with no real need for N quite yet. Should the time come to move to N, some of the tests on SNB have shown that it's better to run N and G separately from each other.

 

[dieter]

I just upgraded my network like you want to.
I ended up with the dlink dir-655 and the dlink bwa-160 usb dual band N adapter. Make sure you get hardware versions B1 for both. Everything works great.
The 655 has everything you want, but it is NOT dual band. whereas the 160 is a dual band device.
For your NAS to humm, you need to investigate Jumbo Frames. You need to find out if your desktop nic allows for jumbo frames. Study this site closely. It has much info on jumbo frames.

 

[MoralDelima]

If you have a Linksys WRTG54 router you might want to look into putting some custom firmware on it. Custom firmware (like Tomato and DD-WRT) is something I've seen conspicuously lacking on this site. I had said name router and I was constantly having to reset it, sometimes multiple times per day. I flashed it with Tomatoe and wound up with rock solid performance and QoS + Usage graphs to boot, as well as a lot of features. Maybe look into it until you pull the trigger on a new router.

http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato
http://www.dd-wrt.com/
http://openwrt.org/

 

[Lowkase]

I have been thinking about doing just what you suggested MoralDelima. I read about the custom firmware a few months ago and its been working a hole in my brain ever since.

I think your right. I think I will look into flashing my current router with the backup of making a quick trip to Best Buy for a new router if things go terribly wrong.

Thanks for the suggestion!


Cheers,