Any recommendations for a wireless router?

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powayroger

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What I want to do is allow my son to have access to the internet on his computer in his room. Another thing is the battle my wife, son and I have over our desktop computer (The only one that is connected to the internet). Getting a router would allow us to use all 3. I understand how a router works, I plug my cable line into it and then for the computers that don’t have wifi capabilities, I put a wireless USB adapter into those computers.

So the next question is how do I install a password into the wireless router? I don’t want people outside the house to be able to have access to our internet.
Walmart has the “Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Router”- http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2381363,00.asp
 
All new routers have a easy setup menu on them, explained in the manual. usually dead simple to set passwords etc.

Of all the routers ive used my Apple Airports have been the most reliable. They work great in our mixed platform household.

Do a search on Amazon or Newegg for router reviews before you buy.
 
The fastest home internet connections out there are 25-30mb download, with congestion maybe a consistent 15mb. Newer computers have gigabit connections, but to what? a gigabit router? Big deal. So the router and computer talk fast. Still the internet surfing's the same. the real answer is QoS. Go on ebay and get yourself a Buffalo WHR-G125 flashed with tomato firmware. That $50 modded router will beat any factory flashed router. Can't tell you how many times people marvel at the speed when I replace a gigapoop with one of my mods.
 
Originally Posted By: LeakySeals
The fastest home internet connections out there are 25-30mb download, with congestion maybe a consistent 15mb. Newer computers have gigabit connections, but to what? a gigabit router? Big deal. So the router and computer talk fast. Still the internet surfing's the same. the real answer is QoS. Go on ebay and get yourself a Buffalo WHR-G125 flashed with tomato firmware. That $50 modded router will beat any factory flashed router. Can't tell you how many times people marvel at the speed when I replace a gigapoop with one of my mods.


QoS on which end of the connection? QoS on the users end is not going to make a difference if it is the ISP's end that is experiencing congestion.

And there are a host of factory firmwares that support QoS. ASUS has had it since they started making wireless routers. And many of their products can be flashed to DD-WRT anyway, giving you (IMHO) a more "user friendly" interface than Tomato, that is just as powerful.

I don't have a dog in this fight, I'm using a Juniper SSG 5, which replaced a Cisco ASA 5505, which was transparent with an 1841.
 
Main delay from your ISP is lost packets, collisions and DNS lookups. qos solves that. Tomato firmware has the best Qos setup of all the routers I've configured for customers. Why i recommend it. Ease of use and awesome performance. I personally use the Buffalo WHR-G125 reflashed with Tomato. got a scratchy skype? gone. Lagging xbox live? gone. especially Comcast people. They throttle you, powerboost you. Tomato's Qos has a min/max prioity bandwith Qos that handles fluctuation. Its a must have. I flash DD-WRT for people but mostly used as repeaters.
 
Originally Posted By: LeakySeals
Tomato's Qos has a min/max prioity bandwith Qos that handles fluctuation. Its a must have.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Tomato (or any firmware for that matter) only able to do QoS on the upload link? On the download, your router is too far downstream to be able to control what's coming in.

Upload prioritizing isn't that big of an issue unless you're trying to do P2P and VOIP/Skype at the same time. In this case, I agree QoS on the home router works.
 
I wouldn't say Gigabit ethernet is useless at home. If you have media server and HTPC they works quite well, or if you use it in a small office with traffic primarily inside the office (file server), they are good enough for small amount of users too.

DDWRT repeater is awesome. One of my friend lives a couple houses away from his parents and use 2 WRT54G with high gain antenna to share internet. It is definitely the best feature over any OEM firmware I've seen.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: LeakySeals
Tomato's Qos has a min/max prioity bandwith Qos that handles fluctuation. Its a must have.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Tomato (or any firmware for that matter) only able to do QoS on the upload link? On the download, your router is too far downstream to be able to control what's coming in.

Upload prioritizing isn't that big of an issue unless you're trying to do P2P and VOIP/Skype at the same time. In this case, I agree QoS on the home router works.



QoS is a useful feature for prioritizing traffic to and from the WAN link. Beyond that point, unless you have upstream QoS support from your ISP, any priority tagging is dropped and packets are handled in whatever manner the ISP has chosen.

For somebody that does a lot of bittorrent and VoIP, giving high QoS priority to DNS, web and VoIP traffic will indeed make the experience "better" due to shaping at the edge.

However, on a dedicated connection with end-to-end QoS support from the ISP, the experience is a bit better
wink.gif


BTW, there ARE talks (and I believe trials) of some ISP's rolling out QoS support to the end users to support consumer edge-devices. I think the concern is the abuse of the service with people assigning high priority to seedboxes and the like. However, I imagine they will have their own traffic shaping in place that can "reassign" priority to known offenders like these.
 
My router does do a sort of QoS on the downstream. All it does is if it sees more than 6875kbit/s or so it starts dropping packets.
Main idea there is to prevent downstream buffering and resultant delay.
Also, gigabit is indeed useful in a network. On mine, all the computers backup onto my RAID 5 once a week. It is nice for them to be able to backup at near hard drive speed.
 
Originally Posted By: NJC
I just bought a Linksys WRT54GL based on excellent Newegg reviews. A rip at $50 (refurb even) but I needed the same day. I haven't tested wireless yet though.


Thats a good one! Really strong signal. In my apartment complex there are 144 units. 50+ routers on a wireless scan. I put one of those in my neighbors apartment almost 200 feet away two floors down. Its as strong as the ones on both sides of me. Can flash tomato or dd-wrt.
 
powayroger said:
What I want to do is allow my son to have access to the internet on his computer in his room.
The router issue has been adaquately discussed in the above posts....

My question is....WHY... do you want to have your son... have access to the internet....in his room (privately) ?

Do you realize the dangers in such a move? (I'm assuming he is a tween or teen). With all the porn, gambeling and other dangerous websites he can access....without you knowing it...Its not a wise parenting move...and I would suggest you reconsider this.

Most books and courses on parenting...warn against such a move...
and suggest that all children view computer content under the watchful eyes of their parents...in a place where the whole family is in and around.
Click to expand...
 
Only read the first few replies. Any brand name router is going to do you well, at this point make sure it has 802.11n. They'll all have 802.11b and 802.11g but not all have n, and most wireless cards now are n, so if you can get it that's great cause if you have a wireless card and router on n (it'll figure it out on it's own), you get a faster throughput.

Anyways I'm posting to state some things that should be obvious at this point, so pardon me if they're repeating information you already know.

From the beginning, make sure you update your router's firmware. Most people will never do this, so just do it when you first get it so at least throughout the life of your router when you're forgetting to check you'll at least have the latest one that was available when you first set up your wireless signal.

Change your router's default password, and don't lose/forget the new password. It's disgusting how many people leave the default password on their routers, I don't care if you encrypted your signal, if you don't lock your router with a new password it's basically just as bad.

Use encryption, and use WPA2 (if it offers different options, use AES with it). I'll state this again, USE ENCRYPTION AND USE WPA2. Even if you get frustrated setting it up and then manage to get it working with something like WEP, don't tell yourself "It's better than nothing" because it's actually like using nothing. Set it up to use WPA2.

Almost all routers sold now will have a firewall on it that you can enable, do that. But just b/c you have a firewall on there doesn't mean that's all you need. At a minimum you should turn on Windows firewall on all your systems (or whatever firewall is on your systems if you don't use Windows). Personally, on windows I like Comodo firewall, it's free and good, but that's me. You need a firewall on all your systems not just on your router. If something gets onto one of your other notebooks it can easily spread to everything on your network b/c it's behind the firewall, so have a software firewall running on each system.

Likewise, each system should have antivirus running on it, and should regularly update.

Similarly, the systems should have all their system updates installed and regularly update with new security updates that are released.

So to repeat, change your default password on the router, use WPA2, turn on the firewall, and just b/c your behind a router with a firewall doesn't mean you don't need to protect each system individually.

Oh, and NEVER go through your router web traffic logs, you really don't want to know what sites the rest of your family is going to. You might think you do, but you really don't
 
The Netgear WNDR3700 is an excellent router, that's what I use, with DD-WRT loaded on it instead of the stock firmware. It's an excellent router, great performance and range. I had a bit of radio failure on the first one, but I've had this one for about I want to say 6 months now, and it's been rock solid.
 
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