Old D-Link DI-624 Upgrade to Linksys WRT110 or ?

[Aethm]

I have an Old D-Link DI-624 that I bought several years ago. It's been working well... however... I recently added a Windows Home Server to my network and I've started to have problems with dropped connections when multiple sources are using the network at the same time.

My Setup. Entire house is wired with Cat 5e. All connections are wired except 1 laptop and the nintendo Wii (they use Wi-Fi)

2 Xbox 360's (stream netflix and other media plus Xbox Live Gaming)
1 PS3 (not really used much)
3 Vista Computers
1 Nintendo Wii
1 WHS

I get decent performance when using 1 or 2 devices simultaneously. My file transfer speeds to the WHS are generally around 10-11 MBs/Sec. However... If I'm streaming HD content via Netflix, Playing an online Game, and doing any other network task... one or all connections will slow, stop and/or randomly restart.

Sorry for the long post ... but I picked up a Linksys WRT110 for $39 a few weeks ago.

Is this a worthy upgrade?

Would I benefit from a gigabit switch?

 

[thiggins]

If all the traffic is on the LAN side of the router, the internal switch could be dying. Or maybe you have a network adapter that is generating a lot of errors.

Did swapping in the WRT110 help?

Gigabit will definitely help for large file transfers as long as your computers are current and have gigabit Ethernet adapters.

 

[Aethm]

I tried the linksys router but I couldn't get it working properly. It wouldn't recognize several of my networked devices. I'm sure I could get it installed and running but I'm just wondering if I'd be better off returning it and getting a router with a gigabit switch since the majority of my traffic is LAN based.

Only the WHS server and 2 of the computers have gigabit Nic's. I'm not sure about the PS3 but I know the Xbox is 10/100. Most streaming is done via Xbox 360 Media Center Extender so it would get bottlenecked there anyway. hmmmm?

 

[thiggins]

I tried the linksys router but I couldn't get it working properly. It wouldn't recognize several of my networked devices.

What do you mean by this? The devices were not able to get a DHCP lease? Wired or wireless?

If you have some gigabit devices, you could be getting better throughput using a gigabit switch. But you can always buy a separate switch and uplink it to the router.

 

[Aethm]

What do you mean by this? The devices were not able to get a DHCP lease? Wired or wireless?

I'm unsure on the cause of the problem. The DHCP server was not assigning IP addresses to the devices. I couldn't connect wireless or wired but I didn't spend a significant amount of time troubleshooting. I think I might give it another shot sometime today and see how it goes.

 

[thiggins]

When you try again, go to the problem devices and force a DHCP release / renew.

 

[Aethm]

Thanks a lot for your help. I gave the router another shot. This time I didn't install the linksys software included with the router and things went much smoother. The only problem I'm having now is that I have to force an IP renew every time I want to connect wirelessly. Is there a way to fix that? I'm not sure what the problem is.

 

[thiggins]

Yikes! I didn't realize you installed the LELA software, but glad you removed it.

The need to force renew on the wireless client could be a driver/ client app quirk.
First, try deleting the address from the router DHCP client list. Also if you are using a client app that came with the adapter, try using the Vista client instead.