Need a new wireless router.

Bionic Monkey

Update:

Okay folks, I bought the WRT54GL and for the most part, it worked flawlessly. But tonight, it's been dropping my wireless signal every 20 minutes, which is exactly what my previous Linksys router did. Am I doing something wrong, or did I just get fucking burned again?

________________________

I apparently have shitty fucking luck with wireless routers. My last one (a linksys wrt54g) would randomly drop the wireless signal, and the one I got to replace it (a belkin FSD 7230-4) has serious problems with overheating and dropping the connection entirely (wired and wireless). Now, before this only happened once or twice a month, so it was livable. But the last two weeks, it's been happening constantly. And I'm not even sure it's overheating either, since it'll happen 20 minutes after letting cool down for half an hour.

In short, the fucker needs to go.

I'd kinda like to get a router that's not going to shit-out on me after a few months this time, so I'm turning to you folks. I'd prefer to keep the cost under $50. The only other condition is it needs to work with the Wii, 360 and PS3, though the 360 and PS3 are wired.

chasm

Netgear makes good stuff.

zanetheinsane

Frys is having a sale on some "refurbished" Wireless-N routers: http://frys.com/product/5635861 ($25 and Free Shipping). Not sure how long the deal will last, but might be worth a shot at that price considering Frys is pretty solid.

Only caveat, there's no gigabit ports on it. Still a great deal, though.

Barrakketh

Bionic Monkey wrote: »

I apparently have shitty fucking luck with wireless routers. My last one (a linksys wrt54g) would randomly drop the wireless signal, and the one I got to replace it (a belkin FSD 7230-4) has serious problems with overheating and dropping the connection entirely (wired and wireless). Now, before this only happened once or twice a month, so it was livable. But the last two weeks, it's been happening constantly. And I'm not even sure it's overheating either, since it'll happen 20 minutes after letting cool down for half an hour.

In short, the fucker needs to go.

I'd kinda like to get a router that's not going to shit-out on me after a few months this time, so I'm turning to you folks. I'd prefer to keep the cost under $50. The only other condition is it needs to work with the Wii, 360 and PS3, though the 360 and PS3 are wired.

You bought a WRT54G instead of the WRT54GL? If you wanted a readily available router I would've went for the GL and put either Tomato or DD-WRT on it (I like Tomato). I would personally recommend a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54, but they can't sell wireless routers in the US ATM due to legal issues >_<

Faricazy

zanetheinsane wrote: »

Frys is having a sale on some "refurbished" Wireless-N routers: http://frys.com/product/5635861 ($25 and Free Shipping). Not sure how long the deal will last, but might be worth a shot at that price considering Frys is pretty solid.

Only caveat, there's no gigabit ports on it. Still a great deal, though.

horrible idea

routers barely work as-is, refurbished ones are just a horrible idea

Faricazy

Barrakketh wrote: »

I would personally recommend a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54, but they can't sell wireless routers in the US ATM due to legal issues >_<

aaaaactually

http://gizmodo.com/5060813/buffalo-might-be-back-in-the-cheap-router-business-with-patent-victory

ZackSchilling

You want the Linksys WRT54GL. Note the L.

The regular 54G is shit. The 54GL is great. It supports DDWRT firmware very well, but the stock firmware isn't half-bad either.

I give this router my "great-range-and-never-rebooted-in-3-years-of-heavy-games-and-torrenting" endorsement.

Barrakketh

Faricazy wrote: »

Barrakketh wrote: »

I would personally recommend a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54, but they can't sell wireless routers in the US ATM due to legal issues >_<

aaaaactually

http://gizmodo.com/5060813/buffalo-might-be-back-in-the-cheap-router-business-with-patent-victory

I guess it's a shame that those people don't know what they're talking about. Same with Slashdot, but you have users correcting the summaries that the editors let through.

On appeal, we affirm the district court's summary judgment rulings in all but one respect. With respect to the issue of validity, we uphold the court's entry of summary judgment that the '069 patent was not anticipated. We also uphold the district court's entry of summary judgment that the '069 patent was not invalid because of the addition of new matter to the application or because the asserted claims lacked a sufficient written description in the original specification. With respect to the issue of obviousness, however, we conclude that the district court erred by entering summary judgment against Buffalo because we hold that there was a disputed issue of material fact as to whether the prior art references that were before the district court were combinable in a manner that would have rendered the asserted claims of the '069 patent obvious. Although we vacate the summary judgment of obviousness, we have nonetheless addressed the issue of infringement, on which the district court entered summary judgment against Buffalo, because that issue will continue to be important to the ultimate disposition of the case unless the claims are held to be invalid for obviousness. As to that issue, we uphold the district court's summary judgment of infringement.

Buffalo gets another day in court, but they're still guilty of infringement and the injunction remains in-place.

Unknown

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Dark Shroud

I'm going to throw another vote in for the WRT45GL since it was made specifically for the people to flash the firmware. Basically it has more memory then the later model WRT54Gs that are still sold at an obscene retail price. The GL is the last Linksys product I still care to buy.

At this point the only brand names I still look at are Belkin and Asus when it comes to networking hardware.

victor_c26

ZackSchilling wrote: »

You want the Linksys WRT54GL. Note the L.

The regular 54G is shit. The 54GL is great. It supports DDWRT firmware very well, but the stock firmware isn't half-bad either.

I give this router my "great-range-and-never-rebooted-in-3-years-of-heavy-games-and-torrenting" endorsement.

Correction: The new WRT54Gs are shit. The Old v.1 - v.4 were solid. I've got a v.2

The WRT54GL is basically the continuation of the original WRT54G.

zanetheinsane

Faricazy wrote: »

zanetheinsane wrote: »

Frys is having a sale on some "refurbished" Wireless-N routers: http://frys.com/product/5635861 ($25 and Free Shipping). Not sure how long the deal will last, but might be worth a shot at that price considering Frys is pretty solid.

Only caveat, there's no gigabit ports on it. Still a great deal, though.

horrible idea

routers barely work as-is, refurbished ones are just a horrible idea

Well, anyone who wanted to jump on it, today (Tuesday) is the last day to. I went ahead and ordered one after checking around. Apparently the default Netgear firmware is pretty shitty (crap menus, dropped connections, etc), but the router is both DD-WRT and Tomato compatible (EDIT: Tomato compatibilty I'm not sure on, I'm seeing yes and no, but official compatibilty list doesn't have it on there, so assume no for now). Almost everyone who flashed it with DD-WRT has been very pleased with it.

Apparently a lot of the routers coming back out are pretty much brand new. People basically go "hurka dur dur how I network?" and send it back because they're too stupid to figure out how to set up a router and give up, sending it back "because it doesn't work."

Anyways, at $25 I figure it's not that big a risk for me, and I haven't heard anything negative from the people that actually got theirs, just the people who didn't actually get one but like to sit around going "Netgear DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM". I'll check back in this thread when it gets here and let you guys know how it works.

Bionic Monkey

Thanks folks. I was hesitant to pick up another Linksys after the last one continually dropping the wireless signal, but I went ahead and picked up the WRT54GL at Newegg since they had the $10 off promo.

Ironically, my Belkin's been working like a champ since I started this thread. Almost like it knows it's time is up.

zanetheinsane

Clearly our avatars are going to have to get into a nunchuck battle. You may have hope but I have KOMPRESSOR crushing power.

Bionic Monkey

Update in OP.

ZackSchilling

Have you considered interference or receiver trouble?

Have you tried unplugging your cordless phone, changing the channel, or using a different laptop?

Are you in a crowded WiFi environment?

WIckedkarma

Just a heads up my router started dropping connection alot recently my poor girlfriend was PISSED when hr macbook would drop every 30 seconds and then not see the network .

Turns out it was not the router I highly reccomend changing the channel the router is broadcasting on almost every router broadcasts on the same chan by default which all interfere with each other.

I changed the chan it was broadcasting on and everything was fine

Also we don't live in an apt we live in a house and we have like 4 other networks broadcasting so if you are in an apt im sure its much worse .

Hope this helps.

damm you ZackSchilling for stealing my helping hand thunder!

Bionic Monkey

ZackSchilling wrote: »

Have you considered interference or receiver trouble?

Have you tried unplugging your cordless phone, changing the channel, or using a different laptop?

Are you in a crowded WiFi environment?

No cordless phone or second laptop, but I did change the channel it was broadcasting on. There are 4-6 other wifi signals when I search, but they're all 1-2 bars, so I'm not sure if that counts as crowded.

I should note, that when the signal would drop, I'd open up the wireless window and search for signals, and it wouldn't even appear in the list.

ZackSchilling

That definitely counts as crowded. What channels are those other networks on? Try channels 1 or 11 for yours if they're free.

I don't know anything about your laptop, but try to get a program that will report more than just quality "bars". They're meaningless for troubleshooting. Signal to noise ratio would be nice. If you have outrageous noise, that might be your answer.

Any of the following could be wrong also:

Broken wireless chipset in laptop (I've had this)
Fluke broken router (Had this)
Dirty electricity/broken router power supply (Seen this, causes power brick to overheat and reset router periodically)
Stronger-than-usual interference from something else (Seen this: ancient blenders, microwaves, cheap 2.4GHz phones with "DSS")

It could also be your modem misbehaving and causing the router to shit a brick. DDWRT might help in this case.

In short, what you're experiencing is not normal behavior for the WRT54GL.

steeef

After using DDWRT for a while, I switched to Tomato. I have an earlier (pre-V4) WRT54G, and it works great. Never had an issue, never had to restart, signal is strong. There are 3 or 4 other signals in the vicinity, but I've never had an issue with the signal dropping.

The WRT54GL should be awesome, but you need to spend some time upgrading and configuring third-party firmware to get it there.

That_Guy

Rather than make a new thread on this, I thought I would ask here. I am getting the FIOS 20/20 package in a couple of weeks and I want to get a new router. I am looking for something high end that has beefy enough specs to handle heavy torrenting with out wigging out on me. I will be splitting the cost with my housemates so anything under $150 will be fine.

EDIT: I was looking at the Linksys WRT330N. It looks to be a pretty riced out router. Has anyone used one? The Cnet user rating were very high.

victor_c26

Jeebus, I fully expect that center antenna to turn like a radar antenna.

Unknown

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ZackSchilling

mcdermott wrote: »

Make sure you follow the instructions to upgrade the firmware, though. On the GL, at least, it's pretty straightforward...but you can still fuck it up if you flash over wireless or the power goes out at just the wrong moment.

Unknown

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