Need new router!

Sabre_X

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Feb 16, 2008
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Hi there.

I’ve been looking into a few different routers and I liked the look of the LINKSYS WRT320N at £67.

I’m willing to spend up to £150 for a top-performance wireless router. The WRT320N is the “Which? Best Buy” at the moment.

I’m interested in a few others such as the “NETGEAR N WNR2000” or ”LINKSYS Ultra N” or the “NETGEAR WNDR3300” or even the “LINKSYS WRT610N”...
... but I wanted to know if they offered significantly more than the WRT320N, because from what I can see there are few differences, but I imagine I am missing something!

In the past I have always favoured Netgear routers but if you think the Linksys are quite a bit better than I shall definitely change.

I live in a large 5 bedroom house and would have all 4 Ethernet ports in use (or more than 4 if some of the routers offer this, but it is not essential) as well as utilizing the wireless for numerous devices around the home such as consoles, laptops, net-books, mobiles, and WDTVLive.

Please advise!
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated =)

Thanks in advance,

P.S. I live in the UK so would need something obtainable from this country ^_^
 


I also live in the UK and I've always favoured and recommended Belkins and Netgears to the rest because of their simplicity in setup terms. That said, Linksys are from Cisco and few would doubt they're the most experienced of all networking companies.

A simple switch would give you eight more ethernet ports if that becomes a problem but at the end of the day, a small, domestic network who's main job is to ship out the parlously low Broadband we have in this country, the Netgear will do the job.

The "A" in ADSL stands for Asynchronous which means the upload will be a constant relative to the download which, as I've said, in this third world BB country, a small lousy percentage of the larger lousy figure and unless you're uploading large amounts, it shouldn't bother you.

It's very unlike this old patriot to run his country down but in this area, it's a strong point of principle and annoyance to me that we should lag so far behind the rest of the world just because one company has such a monopoly and won't spend its money on refreshing the infrastructure. BT should be forced to plough some profits back


 

Sabre_X

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Feb 16, 2008
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I have compiled a small, priced list of the routers I want to choose between:

NETGEAR N WNR2000 £40
LINKSYS WRT320N £67
LINKSYS ULTRA N £70
NETGEAR WNDR3300 £100
NETGEAR WNDR3700 £110
LINKSYS WRT610N £115

Apparently the LINKSYS WRT320N is not actually "Dual-Band" even though it claims to be, and rather than simultaneously dishing out both 5.0GHz and 2.5GHz frequencies, it can only do one or the other at any given time.

Which of these do you think I should go for?

On a side note, how exactly do access points work? Would using an access point greatly increase wireless coverage? Can you get access points that are much more powerful than a router and therefore even if positioned right next to the router, will provide a far stronger signal? When using access points, are there any conflicts in IP's, or does it quite simply just boost out the routers signal further?

Thanks for your response,
 

Sabre_X

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Interesting you say that! Was comparing the WRT610N and the WNDR3700 and...

WRT610N WNDR3700
Cnet 3.5 / 2User 3.5 / 3User
TestFreaks 8.9 9.9
PC PRO 6Star 2Star (out of 6)
Expert Reviews 4star 3star

Seems to be a close battle! Some websites rate them both, others seem to hate one but love the other!