Recommend a wireless modem router

[Hos]

Hi all,

Have finally got our naked Internet connection sorted after several lengthy delays.

I purchased a Belkin N600 wireless modem router in December, and am very disappointed with its wireless capabilities and the excessive heat produced by the unit ( hot enough I don't want it touching anything else or hidden in the cupboard).

Can anyone recommend to me a simple to use, reliable, and quality alternative. I am very much lost in the world of computers and all there associated tech.

I want excellent wireless range, with the ability to connect to our HP (8500 i think) printer wirelessly from laptops etc.

Stores local to me are basically Harvey Norman and Dick Smiths. I need to get this sorted ASAP, my wife is very annoyed that something so seemingly simple is being quite painful.

Cheers,

Hos

[C4B]

Fritzbox 7390.

Not cheap but kicks ass. They come with a 5yr warranty standard too!

[macca_779]

Could buy a couple of Airport express routers. Turn the wifi off on you current router and connect one airport to it in bridge mode. The range of one is pretty good and they are dual channel so are very good performers for their ~$100 bargain price. If you then want more range pick up another one and have it configured to extend the wifi but located just shy of your black spot.

I picked one up last year and its now exclusively my wifi access point. Have a Billion 7404 which is a ok unit but did suffer from dropouts. Haven't had one now that its wifi is off and the little apple hockey puck is handling all wifi incredibly reliably.

Your printer is a wifi model so should work with any access point.

[jc_sv8]

I've got a Dynalink RTA1025W that has been great.
I've had it for 4 years so could do with a new version, although if it ain't broke...

Looks like the new model is http://www.netcommwireless.com/product/xdsl/nb6plus4wn
$129.95 online free shipping.

[bozodos]

Billion 7800VDPX. Bit on the pricey side, but more features than you can poke a stick at and they are rock solid reliable (which is more than I can say for the Netgear / D Link / Linksys consumer stuff).

Or the 7800NL for a cheaper option. Multiple antennas for better coverage as well.

TP Link are also really good for cheap shit, but you may have headaches setting it up

[IJ.]

DrayTek Vigor 2820 here after using Linksys for years this thing is awesome, again NOT cheap though, an IT Nerd mate put me onto them.

[skilly]

Super happy with my Netgear WNDR3700. Bought maybe a year ago, haven't had to touch it since setup.
A month ago installed Asus RT-N56U at my Dad's. Again effortless setup, much better range and far superior NAT capabilities than the Netgear Cg814wg Optus supplied him with.

[Smitty]

..bought a Netgear DGND3700 earlier in the year

did the research (noting a few PC mags recommend it ) and it is a great purchase!
fast, good range, simple to set up (and add other devices like my VOIP phones ATA)
has both 2.4 and 5ghz frequencies and is also NBN ready

have my old HP 2550 laser hooked to it via USB and all the mobile devices in the house
can use it...does a great job I also use it for backing up everything as I stuck a 2TB
drive onto it as well.

[QldKev]

I've got a Dynalink RTA1025W that has been great.
I've had it for 4 years so could do with a new version, although if it ain't broke...

Looks like the new model is http://www.netcommwireless.com/product/xdsl/nb6plus4wn
$129.95 online free shipping.


I've got the Netcomm nb6plus4wn. I would not recommend it. It took a bit of stuffing around to get it to allow wireless N. Also it has spasms of time where the wireless seems to be really slow. When the Internet connection is slow, you log into the router and it's own internal webpages are displayed slow, and often time out. We now have a network cable dragged across the hallway into the office. It also runs pretty hot.

It's a couple of years old, so the version may be different.

edit: I should add when I was using the wireless it showed 4 out of 5 bars for signal strength.

[feistl]

The best setup at a "reasonable" price?

ASUS RT-AC66U for around $220, load it with DDWRT.
TP Link 8817 ADSL2+ modem in Bridge mode for $25.

That Asus device is one of the most powerful routers on the market, has Wireless AC (version above wireless N), fully supports DDWRT (Most powerful router software available) and will be fully compatible with the NBN when it arrives at your place.

Only downside is having to run 2 devices.

If you want to go a little cheaper there are lower versions of the asus routers, just depends how much you want to spend.

Cheers

[Smitty]

The best setup at a "reasonable" price?

ASUS RT-AC66U for around $220, load it with DDWRT.
TP Link 8817 ADSL2+ modem in Bridge mode for $25.

That Asus device is one of the most powerful routers on the market, has Wireless AC (version above wireless N), fully supports DDWRT (Most powerful router software available) and will be fully compatible with the NBN when it arrives at your place.

Only downside is having to run 2 devices.

If you want to go a little cheaper there are lower versions of the asus routers, just depends how much you want to spend.

Cheers

that's expensive compared to others mentioned here.... I only paid $140 for mine (delivered)

[Stewge]

The ASUS RTs are quite powerful. TP-Link are also suprisingly good for their price. I'd certainly recommend either as a higher powered consumer-grade router. I've all but given up on the big names (netgear, linksys) as they all tend to end up being crap. It's also beneficial to use a separate modem/router combo. That way they aren't dependant on eachother and if your internet situation changes, you don't end up putting the whole lot to waste.

Unfortunately, all consumer routers seems to suffer from the same issues (heat usually, over-utilisation, weak hardware). I don't think I've EVER come across a consumer grade router which can stay operational for more than a couple of weeks without needing a reset. At home I've actually replaced the router with a virtual machine on a mini-ITX PC (i3, 8gb ram, twin gigabit for ~$500, old router retired to WiFi AP only) which is unbreakable, easy to backup (VM snapshots take seconds) and also virtualises a couple of other servers for us (1 VM is a "download head" which has torrent/usenet clients on it which download to the NAS automatically, another runs VOIP and game servers like minecraft). While I wouldn't recommend this for the OP, the more tech minded among us may be interested in this (especially if you've already got viable spare hardware, any PC will do really).

[duke5700]

Fritzbox 7390 here.

Performance seems to be quite good, no issues and a million options for setup.

I dropped the unit and broke the PSU, FritzBox replaced under warranty for me, they didn't have too but they did. Pretty happy with that.

[feistl]

Unfortunately, all consumer routers seems to suffer from the same issues (heat usually, over-utilisation, weak hardware). I don't think I've EVER come across a consumer grade router which can stay operational for more than a couple of weeks without needing a reset.

The Asus RT-N16 im using has been up and running for about 10 months without a restart or drop out. I normally put 300-400gb a month through it via torrents, often with 10,000+ simultaneous connections. The DDWRT QoS works brilliantly, as we dont notice speed issues with 4 of us browsing while torrenting at max speed. I was a bit like you originally (Got fed up with all consumer routers, even the ones running DDWRT), but ive been very impressed with the Asus so far. Of course its not a cheap option and probably overkill for most users....

[bozodos]

The ASUS RTs are quite powerful. TP-Link are also suprisingly good for their price. I'd certainly recommend either as a higher powered consumer-grade router. I've all but given up on the big names (netgear, linksys) as they all tend to end up being crap. It's also beneficial to use a separate modem/router combo. That way they aren't dependant on eachother and if your internet situation changes, you don't end up putting the whole lot to waste.

Unfortunately, all consumer routers seems to suffer from the same issues (heat usually, over-utilisation, weak hardware). I don't think I've EVER come across a consumer grade router which can stay operational for more than a couple of weeks without needing a reset. At home I've actually replaced the router with a virtual machine on a mini-ITX PC (i3, 8gb ram, twin gigabit for ~$500, old router retired to WiFi AP only) which is unbreakable, easy to backup (VM snapshots take seconds) and also virtualises a couple of other servers for us (1 VM is a "download head" which has torrent/usenet clients on it which download to the NAS automatically, another runs VOIP and game servers like minecraft). While I wouldn't recommend this for the OP, the more tech minded among us may be interested in this (especially if you've already got viable spare hardware, any PC will do really).

We use Billions on our redundant DSL links, so far so good after a couple of months of continual use (albeit in a load balancing fashion)

Interesting thought to run a server to handle all of your routing, I assume you have your DSL modem plugged directly into it? VMWare or HyperV?

[JET_VUGMH]

NetGear R6300 here, cannot fault, damn quick too

http://www.netgear.com.au/home/products/wirelessrouters/ultimate-performance/R6300.aspx

[macca_779]

We use Billions on our redundant DSL links, so far so good after a couple of months of continual use (albeit in a load balancing fashion)

Interesting thought to run a server to handle all of your routing, I assume you have your DSL modem plugged directly into it? VMWare or HyperV?

I won't buy another one. My 7404vgpx will last me till I get fibre later in the year. Then I'm binning it. Wifi reliability is average (fixed that with an airport express) and adsl drops out frequently enough to require hard resets. Potty really because it is a very capable router which is shy I got it. Only reason I'm still using it is it has inbuilt ata's

[bozodos]

you must have gotten a dud one - my last 7300g lasted 5 years and had wireless down the street, same as it's 7800NL replacement! we've switched at work to using Billion over Linksys because of the reliability (obviously anything critical DSL wise is on a proper Cisco router).

Still a fan of TP Link for Wifi though, they come with huge antennas as well.

[macca_779]

you must have gotten a dud one - my last 7300g lasted 5 years and had wireless down the street, same as it's 7800NL replacement! we've switched at work to using Billion over Linksys because of the reliability (obviously anything critical DSL wise is on a proper Cisco router).

Still a fan of TP Link for Wifi though, they come with huge antennas as well.

I'm far from the only one reading the billion forum.. Having to hack the firmware to fix an issue is ridiculous.

[Stewge]

The Asus RT-N16 im using has been up and running for about 10 months without a restart or drop out. I normally put 300-400gb a month through it via torrents, often with 10,000+ simultaneous connections. The DDWRT QoS works brilliantly, as we dont notice speed issues with 4 of us browsing while torrenting at max speed. I was a bit like you originally (Got fed up with all consumer routers, even the ones running DDWRT), but ive been very impressed with the Asus so far. Of course its not a cheap option and probably overkill for most users....
My last router was in fact the RT-N16 running DD-WRT. With ADSL2 it was fine, however we're now on NBN fibre (100/40) and while it does an admirable job, I couldn't keep it stable over long periods. Especially with P2P traffic (not necessarly movies and tv either, a lot of games update via torrent backends now), the sheer number of NAT translations tends to cause high CPU usage on the router which means less room to run other nifty features like QoS.


We use Billions on our redundant DSL links, so far so good after a couple of months of continual use (albeit in a load balancing fashion)
Interesting thought to run a server to handle all of your routing, I assume you have your DSL modem plugged directly into it? VMWare or HyperV?

Currently running Proxmox (which uses KVM internally) as the hypervisor as it's free, enterprise ready (use it all over the place at work) and darn easy to use. Not to mention it's incredibly easy to deploy with an actual install time of around 10 minutes + drive format time. Makes disaster recovery much easier as you can throw it into any relatively modern machine and have it up and running with virtuals within an hour. No silly management console application(my god I hate VMware for that), just a web interface. Since it's build on a Debian Linux core, there's also a regular bash console available to run everything.

Inside the VM we're running PfSense which is essentially a FreeBSD distro which unpacks into an easy to use router with web interface and it's significantly more powerful in pure performance and features than any standard router. The GUI is easy to use as well (the layout tends to be more logical than most routers funnily enough).

As for the WAN interface, since we're on NBN it makes the WAN side simpler (just configured as a DHCP interface) although pfsense is fully capable of PPPOE dialing via a modem for DSL connections and can do load balanced etc.

EDIT: For enterprise purposes (at work) we use Vyatta (cisco-like router distro but based on linux) installed into half-depth 1RU servers with additional intel quad-gigabit NICs. Currently they're simple Intel Atom D510 with 4GB ram, SSD for very fast boot times + internal 2.5" hdd for log storage and backups and they put cisco routers to shame. They handle millions of connections without so much as a stutter and better yet, come in at less than 1K each so we can afford to keep hot-spares. We also keep hot-spare USB stick installations of vyatta which can be stuck in if configurations fail or if the internal drives fail.

[team illucid]

Fritzbox 7390.

Not cheap but kicks ass. They come with a 5yr warranty standard too!

+1

Beats the crap out of everything else on the market. Had mine for almost 2 years now, and it is runs 24/7

[Hos]

Thanks for all the replies guys. I appreciate the simple remarks, to those who have made the technical replies, thanks also however all the acronyms have me completely stumped!

[bozodos]

the only modem I've ever had to hack the firmware on was a Thomson Bigpond POS. Billions review well, my personal experience with and also seeing them work fine on enterprise DSL links (i.e full throughput all day 5 days a week) would suggest that any possible issues with them are confined to particular models or batches.


Interesting setup you mention there Stewge - totally different to anything I use or have been exposed to in enterprise IT. I'm intrigued by the use of Atom based boards for your routing, I would have thought that they would not have coped well with large numbers of simultaneous connections given the type of hardware that Cisco ASA's etc run.

Why the hate for the VMWare hypervisor app? I like it more than the HyperV one!

Might have a look at Proxmox when I get a chance - I've got a whole bunch of Dell 1850/2850's sitting around just begging to be used for a test environment