Decent ADSL2+ Router - Recommendations?

arty · 25 Jul 2010 at 15:41

Hiya, my Linksys WAG325N router seems to be on the blink - it keeps losing its ADSL connection, my wireless network spontaneously conks out and the whole thing keeps 'crashing' such that I need to unplug it and plug it back in again - and as I've had it for some years I thought I'd look into getting a new router

As I'm really out of touch with consumer networking gear, what sort of makes and models are recommended these days? I'm really looking for a router with the following features:

ADSL2 connectivity
Wireless-N w/ WPA2
Gigabit networking
VPN passthrough (essential for work)
uPnP
WoL passthrough (nice-to-have)
Decent port mapping (single ports, port ranges, TCP and UDP etc.)
MAC address-based DHCP (very much desired as I don't have it currently)
Firewall

I really, really want something reliable as I've had loads of problems with 'home' routers in the past. Equally, I don't really want or need something incredibly fancy so would prefer less than £100 if possible.

Cheers

arty

arty · 26 Jul 2010 at 20:26

If anyone's interested, I decided to go for the Billion 7800n in the end. It's slightly more than I wanted to pay, but I'm hoping that it is of a quality to match its price.

arty

benftl · 26 Jul 2010 at 22:35

I do like the look of that router, the Broadcom chipset and Gigabit ports appeal to me.

Let us know how you get on

arty · 28 Jul 2010 at 14:18

Well, so far so good. My old router was burning hot to the touch when I unplugged it and a trailing USB lead had melted against it, so I'm quite glad I got a new one now

The Billion is quite a bit larger than I was expecting and looks like an early 90s modem, but I'm hoping that it runs cooler as a result

Speed-wise I've noticed that everything seems to load far more 'snappily', particularly iPlayer which was starting to struggle on my old router in its last days. I've set up a MAC-based DHCP address for my laptop which worked first time. Not tried a great deal else yet, but a promising start

arty

Nick1881 · 28 Jul 2010 at 14:24

Looks good, I like how it has a WAN input so you could connect another modem up to it if you ever went to VDSL or switched to cable you could still make use of it as a router/wireless ap.