Good router for student shared housing

Jaybrean

Jaybrean

Jaybrean

Associate
Joined
9 Apr 2009
Posts
14
Hi to all OCuk forums goer's.
In July myself and 5 others will be moving into a real house in Manchester and will need a good router that won't buckle under the stress of 6 students throttling the pants off it. Slight over exaggeration:P

At the moment I'm looking at either the Linksys WAG160N or the Netgear DGND3300. The Linksys sounds fine but I've read online that some have had issues with it assigning ip's to rebooted devices, thus requiring a router reboot, this just won't be acceptable with 6 people sharing it.
The netgear also sounds fine but some reviews say it has poor wireless N performance.
Any help would be appreciated hugely, recommendations for these or other routers etc.
Thanks in advance!
 
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Depends on the line speed really. ~20meg or less a 54GL would be fine, although you'd need to add a gigabit switch and n access point it totals ~£100. Or this N build http://www.linksysinfo.org/forums/showthread.php?t=63587 plus an RT-N16 or WNR3500L. The N16 costs slightly more but has double the flash/ram (32/128mb) of the WNR and detachable antennas - they have the same cpu.

budget & line speed would be helpful :p
 
For cheapness a second user DLink 615 v2 - N Class router given free to Virgin 50Mb cable customers.

Make sure its a v2 and get DD-WRT on it, I'm currently stress testing one with 55+ wireless clients connected, at least 4 live streams and the usual webbrowsing, eve, IM etc - no dropping connections at all.
 
Linespeed is yet unknown, hoping to go with Aquiss and it's Manchester so the speeds should be good. Budget-wise the netgear is the most I'll pay for a router (can get it for around £100)
Networking knowledge is basic, and a multi-divice setup (switch, access point etc) just sounds intimidating and a lot of hastle. Tomato and other such firmware isn't something I'm concerned about because we all know each other and have agreed not to abuse the net.
 
Oh I never suggested it because of net abuse, I did it for the same reason Rabtech suggested DD-WRT. They both give you far more options than "official" firmwares do, usually because those companies charge a few hundred quid for that same functionality. The setting pages in either is far more detailed than anything Netgear/D-Link produces.

I think most people here will recommend get a router that supports on of those firmwares and fit your budget (netgear does both).
 
It's not just an abuse issue - If any of you are gamers, having anyone else doing a perfectly innocent activity like watching a movie trailer or downloading some drivers can screw up your pings. QoS lets both activities coexist.
 
Thanks guys, you've saved me a big chunk of cash and taught me something valuable at the same time. Done a little research into this tomato/DD-WRT firmware and it sounds...well it sounds pretty much essential:P
I am a gamer and it is the reasoning behind choosing Aquiss as our ISP, my ping has been utter shizzle here (halls of residence) since september and I was adamant that my gaming wouldn't be compromised in the new place.
Going to go with the Linksys WRT54GL (cheers Azuse05), can pick them up cheaply on ebay. I found a tomato compatibility list and it said that only versions 1 and 1.1 of this router are compatible, so I assume that buying the first one I see on ebay might be a mistake because it might be a later version?
Should I just buy a pre-flashed 2nd hand one to be sure?
Thanks guys.
 
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Hey, I'm in the same situation as yourself, are you getting a separate ADSL modem or is the one in the router good?
 
The only difference is the later versions of v1.1 had detachable antennas, internally they are identical. The only check you need to do is determine which wireless chip version it has and that's simply telnetting in and running the command nvram get wl0_corerev If it's 5 or more you can use the ND builds of tomato (which you should if you can), if it's 9 or more you need to use the ND builds. Most GLs should be 9, I know mine is, since they're the later models.

Oh and it's a router, not a modem router, the distinction being you need a separate modem.
 
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If you need a modem too, get a DG834GT flash it with DGteam FW and set it into bridged/modem only mode :)
 
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