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Ask Slashdot: Good Gigabit 802.11N Home Router?

Posted by samzenpus on from the bang-for-your-buck dept.

nukem996 writes "This week I will be moving into a new apartment with a very fast Internet connection (100M with the possibility of 200M in the future). I'm used to running OpenWRT on my Linksys WRT54G router and would like a well supported router to replace it. While researching routers I found most reviewers were using the default firmware and since I'll be putting on OpenWRT I'd like to know how well it works when using that. My requirements are gigabit LAN and WAN, 802.11N at 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz, well supported by OpenWRT and/or DD-WRT, and USB support would be nice. I was thinking of going with BUFFALO WZR-HP-AG300H but some reviewers say there are range and dropping issues. My ISP suggests the Apple Airport Extreme which isn't supported by OpenWRT or the D-Link 825 which has connection problems as well and a few friends told me to stay away form D-Link. What does slashdot think?"

3 of 398 comments (clear)

  1. Apple Airport Extreme and Cisco E4200 by jmcbain · · Score: 5, Informative

    The best 802.11n home routers right now are the Apple Airport Extreme and the Cisco E4200. The key feature to look for is dual-band: you want to keep 802.11a/b traffic on 2.4Ghz and 802.11n on 5.0Ghz. That will allow you to achieve 802.11n's upper bound of 450 Mbps without baggage from 802.11a/b. If you want the most effortless setup, get the Airport Extreme; the accessory Airport Express devices will also allow you to extend the wireless range of your network.

    1. Re:Apple Airport Extreme and Cisco E4200 by Cimexus · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yep. The Airport Extreme is one of the very few consumer-grade routers than can actually route at 100 Mbps on the WAN side. Many so-called gigabit home routers can manage gigabit switching on the LAN side, but start choking on the WAN side once you get to about 50-60 Mbps.

      Personally I use a FritzBox 7390. Can route at something like 400-500 Mbps on the WAN side so won't break a sweat doing 100 Mbps. Heaps of features in the firmware (QoS, VPN, SIP VoIP, DECT, traffic monitoring and blocking, line diagnostics blah blah) and compared to DLink and Netgear and all that other rubbish, and stable to boot. It is actually a combined DSL (ADSL2+/VDSL) modem and router but you can turn the modem part off and just use it as a plain old router. Has dualband 2.4 Ghz/5 Ghz WiFi too. Reason I picked this over the Airport Extreme is basically because the Airport Extreme doesn't have a web interface (you have to use Apple's proprietary configuration tool), and this does. Otherwise they are both excellent devices.

  2. Re:first poster has no problems with dlink by gregrah · · Score: 5, Informative

    Are you running BitTorrent? I tried out two separate D-Link routers about a year ago, when I was looking to replace a dying wrt-54G. Both of the D-Link routers would crash in a big way within minutes of firing up BitTorrent. I ended up buying another wrt-54G from Newegg, which still works perfectly, and vowed never to buy another D-Link product again.

    To answer the original poster's comments - I actually ended up buying a refurb Linksys E2000 on sale for cheap (less than $30). I continue to run my 54g, with my E2000 running alongside it in 5ghz mode. I would recommend this approach of running two separate routers for 2.4ghz and 5ghz access, as It's a lot cheaper to buy 2 selective dual-band routers than a single simultaneous dual band router. Also, if one of the routers should die on you, you'll have a backup.