I’ve got \$75 of gift certificates to Best Buy thanks to a promotion through work, and I need to get a new router — but I don’t know quite which one to go for. Anyone have any suggestions?
Here’s the deal. Right now I’ve got a Linksys BEFSR11 firewall/router, but I’m really not happy with it at all. Ever since I bought it a few years ago, I’ve had to constantly struggle with it occasionally locking up. It appears to still be functioning, the lights still flash as if traffic is passing through, but no data will actually move from my LAN to the ‘net at large until I reset the router by unplugging it for a few seconds. I’ve upgraded the router’s firmware a few times over the years as updates have been released, but it’s never cured the issue.
I’d avoided the hassle for the past few months by taking the router out of the network — my PC was having issues, which dropped me down to only two functioning computers, and as I’ve got two IP addresses available, that worked fine — but after spending some time resurrecting the PC yesterday, I needed to put the router back into the mix. Sure enough, not ten minutes after it was back on the network I lost my connection. Grrr.
So, I need a new router, and I don’t want another Linksys. Nor do I want a Belkin, after their little destination hijacking spam trick two months ago. I don’t need to spring for a wireless router (three desktops in my apartment, none of which have wireless access cards, and I’ve already got Ethernet cable strung around the baseboards), so that should save a few dollars.
Looking at Best Buy’s Networking section online, they seem to concentrate on products from D-Link. Anyone have any experience with their routers, good or bad?
In an office I worked, we had D-link routers and were nice, really, carried with around ten computers under Windows NT without any problem.
Buy it!
And I think is cheaper than anyone else
Here’s the router I use and I like it a lot.
I have the D-Link DI-604 router (hardware revision E1) and really love it. I’m not a big fan of its GUI, after using only Linksys hardware for the past few years, but it’s a very powerful router. It has an actual firewall with stateful packet inspection, not just NAT, can alert you via e-mail when attacks such as denial-of-service attacks are detected, and the level of logging detail is adjustable.
“Virtual servers” and “Special Applications” (a.k.a. port forwarding) are easy to setup, and can also be scheduled. (Say you wanted to have an FTP server hosted on your cable connection, but only during the night. You can do that with this router. Unlike Linksys routers, you can forward WAN ports to different LAN ports, which is nice. Hardware revision E1 is also compatible with the XBox if that’s important to you.
I’ve been using this router at home for five months proving access for six PCs and a Pocket PC. The only time it’s been reset is when I updated the firmware or when changing a config setting. It’s rock-solid and a great value. (It’s around $30 most places, but I got it for $10 after a Best Buy rebate five months ago.)
We run our network at the office (8 people on Ethernet to a DSL line) with a D-Link and it has been trouble free.
Thanks for the comments! I just got home with the D-Link DI-604 and got it set up and (so far, after all of five minutes) working fine.
Cool! I hope you got hardware revision E1 because it’s got a faster CPU than the previous revisions. The label on the box and the router will indicate the H/W revision and the packaging will have the Xbox logo on it. Also be sure to grab the latest firmware for it before you spend too much time configuring because the firmware update will wipe all settings and restore factory defaults.
I did indeed — rev. E1, and it already had the most current firmware (3.20) available. Made sure to check that out first thing, I’ve had more than enough fun playing with firmware updates with the Linksys router.
One thing that definitely gave me good vibes for D-Link as opposed to Linksys: not only does D-Link admit the existence of Mac OS X in their manual and their website, but they even had Mac OS X screenshots in their quickstart guide. Always nice to see, and it happens far too infrequently.
Before Christams I had the D-link 4 port wireless router. IT was awful. It dropped my signal once every five minutes. I put an antenna booster on it & it did not help at all. I called D-link and was told I must have something interfering with the frequency. Since they weren’t going to help, I went to Best Buy and bought a Netgear, 4-port, wireless router for $29.95 after rebates. I plugged it in Dec 26 and haven;t been dropped from the network yet!