All right, so I'm living off campus for the first time this year and I need a router for myself and my two housemates. We're all CS game design majors, so that pretty much means reasonably heavy gaming and P2P usage.
As far as environment goes, we've got the top floor of a house (though since the router's going to be on the same floor I suppose that doesn't really matter) and the area that needs to be covered isn't terribly large (2 bedrooms and the living area, but the house is relatively compact). I do want to make sure range isn't a problem to of course keep us all happy, and also cause I'll probably bring it home with me after where the area is probably 50-100% larger.
We're all currently on G adapters, but I figured might as well get an N router to be more current and thus last me longer. Plus, I'm thinking about grabbing those cheap Airlink101 AWLL6075 N300 USB adapters from MeritLine that seem to be pretty well regarded as a solid value (5-pack for $55, or single for $13).
I'm looking to spend at most $100, with closer to $50 or lower being preferred. So far the main two contenders in my mind based on SNB's reviews are the Engenius ESR-9850 and the Asus RT-13U, though I'm certainly open to other suggestions.
The ESR-9850 is $60 at Amazon. It brings Gigabit ports and impressive routing performance, as well as solid wireless performance. DD-WRT support could come in the future, though I'm not really counting on that.
The RT-13U is ~$55 at Amazon (or ~$52 after tax and shipping at Newegg), with a possible $10 rebate (which of course may or may not go through). Main draw with this one is it appears to possibly have better wireless coverage/performance, and is of course a bit cheaper. There's supposed to be DD-WRT support, though having never messed with that before I'm not totally familiar with what that brings. It also has a USB port for print server and storage, though I have a basic consumer NAS box that can do the same so that's not really a big deal for me.
Really I'm a bit torn at this point. They both have advantages over each other. So any thoughts on which one (or other) would be best for me? While I do want to spend as little as possible, I also want to get the best possible performance for my money.
As far as environment goes, we've got the top floor of a house (though since the router's going to be on the same floor I suppose that doesn't really matter) and the area that needs to be covered isn't terribly large (2 bedrooms and the living area, but the house is relatively compact). I do want to make sure range isn't a problem to of course keep us all happy, and also cause I'll probably bring it home with me after where the area is probably 50-100% larger.
We're all currently on G adapters, but I figured might as well get an N router to be more current and thus last me longer. Plus, I'm thinking about grabbing those cheap Airlink101 AWLL6075 N300 USB adapters from MeritLine that seem to be pretty well regarded as a solid value (5-pack for $55, or single for $13).
I'm looking to spend at most $100, with closer to $50 or lower being preferred. So far the main two contenders in my mind based on SNB's reviews are the Engenius ESR-9850 and the Asus RT-13U, though I'm certainly open to other suggestions.
The ESR-9850 is $60 at Amazon. It brings Gigabit ports and impressive routing performance, as well as solid wireless performance. DD-WRT support could come in the future, though I'm not really counting on that.
The RT-13U is ~$55 at Amazon (or ~$52 after tax and shipping at Newegg), with a possible $10 rebate (which of course may or may not go through). Main draw with this one is it appears to possibly have better wireless coverage/performance, and is of course a bit cheaper. There's supposed to be DD-WRT support, though having never messed with that before I'm not totally familiar with what that brings. It also has a USB port for print server and storage, though I have a basic consumer NAS box that can do the same so that's not really a big deal for me.
Really I'm a bit torn at this point. They both have advantages over each other. So any thoughts on which one (or other) would be best for me? While I do want to spend as little as possible, I also want to get the best possible performance for my money.
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