The pricing of personal routers.....

[Atreyu 0]

Anybody else notice that depending on the web site you look at, home routers/firewalls can fluxuate as much as $250 for the exact same model? For example, the D-Link DI-704 is sometimes listed as $329.00 and other times it's listed as $70.00. It's the same model, and it's not new vs. used.. they are both new. I just thought this was wierd. I've seen the same thing with Linksys BEFSR41 and BEFSR81 models and once with a NetGear.

 

Just an observation....

And on a side note, don't buy any D-Link routers... take it from me, they are bad news.

[Atreyu 0]

Well I just ordered the NetGear RT314.

After research all morning here at work (i'm bored), that seemed to be the best router on the market right now for the price.

 

It's completely web-enabled, however you can chose to admin it from Telnet. My primary concerns were speed and stability. My current D-Stink DI-704 router constantly freezes and boots me and all my other machines offline. It's now having problems with TCP port forwarding. I've had enough so I decided to shop.

 

Apparently the NetGear RT314 is the fastest router out there. The Linksys BEFSR41/48 routers are nice as well, but have a 4mb bandwidth limitation on the WAN port. This wouldn't affect me yet, but I figured for a couple dollars more, I could go with the NetGear, which has measured to allow nearly 8mb on the WAN port.

 

Also, I read reviews on the RT314 dealing with stability, since that was a concern for me. The review team (i forget who it was), put the router in front of a very active web/ftp server along with a couple other hookups. No freezes, no hard reboots of the box... nuttin.

 

Also, I liked that it has a metal case, and that it's stackable. The Linksys was too plasticky for my tastes and if I wanted to put my 8 port switch on top of it as an uplink, it really wouldnt work. AS a matter of fact, it would cover the ventalation holes (on the Linksys). It's because of the dome-like shape. I prefer a nice metal, square piece of machinery :-).

 

I know two people with the Linksys routers who have never had an issue with them and love them. It was hard for me to decide on NetGear, but I think all in all I will be happier. I sure hope so.

[Atreyu 0]

here's one of many threads i've read on the matter

 

Thread

 

Read through the forums at Speedguide.net, they are very helpful.

[Atreyu 0]

Oh by the way, no matter what router you buy, you are going to read MANY positives and MANY negatives about it. Some people want to throw NetGear and LinkSys out with the trash, yet others swear by them. It's being able to decipher who knows what they are doing and if problems they are having are a result of ignorance rather than hardware.

 

I've read many places that NetGear is crap, but I've heard from more credible places (places that know what they are doing) that they are among the best. So it's really dependant on the person writing the review/message. As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

[Atreyu 0]

Yeah, I just read a review on the RT314 that was not very good... but all morning I've been reading reviews that kicked butt. So you take a gamble no matter what.

 

According to the review I just read (February 2001), the router does not have very good "firewall" protection. Also, the router allows only 32 computers behind it (not that I would ever have that many computers)... and if I did I surely wouldnt be using a home-user type router.

 

I'm confident that there have been firmware upgrades and such since then so maybe some issues will have been resolved. Either way you will get a mixed bag of opinions when spending $100-$125 for a router. I'm gonna keep on readin..

[Atreyu 0]

How 'bout this one.... according to the NetGear web page, the RT314 can handle up to the theoretical 253 clients.

 

Just a small discrepency there 253 vs. 32 hehe