I currently have a Linksys WRT54G wireless router. I was very happy with its performance until about a month ago, when it started intermittently being unable to browse until being powercycled, and would not respond to pings while this was going on. At first, I thought this was a wireless signal issue, since I rarely connect my laptop to the ethernet ports, but the same thing happens on my husband’s desktop, which is always hardwired.
It got to the point that I needed to reset to factory defaults and reconfigure the thing completely. There’s a couple of firmware upgrades that are available for this model and I will be applying them at some point today, but needless to say I’m unhappy with the performance at present and am looking to replace it.
I’d like to hear Doper recommendations on wireless routers, please. What do you like, what do you not like, and what did you like until it died in a most spectacular fashion?
I have a Linksys WCG200. It’s an all-in-one cable modem / router / 4-port switch / wireless access point. I like the fact that it eliminates a bunch of boxes and wires. I wish it had WPA encryption (the newer models do, but this one is too old, and can’t be upgraded for some (undoubtedly moronic) reason). I’m waiting until the equivalent device comes out with 802.11n capability to upgrade.
I went through the whole spectrum of wifi brands, Linksys, Dlink, SMC, with them all crapping out 8-18 months after purchase. I spent a little more on an Apple Express WiFi adapter and have been largely happy with it.
They’re useable vi both PC and Apples, have a usb port to plug in a printer, a stereo/optical jack to send streaming audio to an external source, and have newly been upgraded to 802.11n
I have the same router as you (version 2 if I remember correctly) and never had much luck with the Linksys firmware: encryption wouldn’t work, and it’d have odd issues occasionally. (Similar to what you’re having with connection problems except that I didn’t always need to power-cycle.) What worked for me was putting third-party firmware onto the router. I use Tomato (available here and a good resource for questions about it, etc., is here). After I put it on, I had no problems with enabling encryption and everything has been rock solid since then (router wise, that is. Now if only my 'net connection was the same…). As an added bonus, there are more features with Tomato than there were with the stock firmware (at the time, haven’t looked at Linksys firmware in ages): a nice graphical bandwidth monitor, etc.
Since you’re looking at updating the firmware anyway, though I’d throw this out as an alternative.
<< To a computer user, “No” means “Maybe it’ll work if I try it again”. >>
I’m using a Buffalo WHR-G125 flashed with DD-WRT firmware. It was very inexpensive and has been rock solid once I figured out the flashing process.
Unfortunately it looks like Buffalo is under an injunction not to sell any wireless equipment for the time being, so their stuff has gotten kind of hard to find.
I figured I’d add some of my other experiences as I’ve been studying firewalls pretty hard lately for my day job.
In addition to my Apple WiFi, I have a linksys WRT54g (v8) running dd-wrt as well. It works well for 99% of what most people would use it for. However. It does not have enough RAM to work well doing certain connection intensive things. As an example, BitTorrent works okay…other Torrent applications (e.g. Bittornado, Warez) will overwhelm the poor little sucker with connections and it’ll fall over pretty quickly. If you want inexpensive AND expandible, I’d recommend finding one of the better devices on www.dd-wrt.com…granted the wrt54g IS only $50 or so…so the price was right.
Check out this list here for recommended hardware: http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices#Note_on_devices_with_2.C2.A0MB_flash
The current crop of WRT54G’s are crap; I think v5 is when they redid the firmware and royally screwed it up, never to be better. I got a WRT54G with the newer firmware, and it did the same thing, requiring power cycling daily, even hourly. Abandon ship.
I’ve had good luck with NetGear wireless routers, and they seem to them everywhere.
Putting 3rd party firmware on it is something that had not occurred to me. Since Saturday’s firmware upgrade didn’t seem to help, I just may try that. Thanks, Nightsong!
Keep those reviews coming, guys. I may still end up replacing the bloody box anyways.
) and had the hardest time getting th other one to take untill I did the full factory reset correctly.