What should I replace it with? Dead one is a DIR-655 by D-Link that I have had for like 5-6 years. Whole house is wired with gigabit and all wireless clients are single-band 802.11n. High priority is going to be wireless range and throughput on the wired network. On the DIR-655 file transfers across the wired network were consistently 110 MB/s or faster.

What would you recommend?

4/4/2013 10:12:43 AM

i picked up the dual-band tp-link tl-wdr3600 for $39 AR a couple of months ago: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704144

threw on openwrt with luci and it's been awesome (the stock firmware sucks, so plan on doing this)

check SD, i feel like the tp-link units have been on sale quite a bit recently

4/4/2013 10:19:37 AM

http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-WR1043ND-Ultimate-Wireless-Detachable/dp/B002YLAUU8

4/4/2013 11:22:45 AM

^Damn, that's a good price. Amazing how that level of tech just a year to two ago was $300.

4/4/2013 3:36:40 PM

I agree with quagmire02, be sure your new router supports OpenWRT (or DD-WRT)

4/4/2013 6:04:45 PM

woke up this morning to the same thing. went to a tp-link wdr3600. $60 at microcenter. dd-wrt goodness supporting up to 4 VIFs

4/4/2013 8:31:52 PM

I second TP-Link. A couple years ago I worked for a company with Intrex house account and they seemed to have their prices in line IIRC. If you're ever in a bind. Amazon Prime ftw though.

4/5/2013 12:01:56 PM

I got a netgear router from Walmart because I was too impatient to wait. Piece of shit doesn't even work.

4/5/2013 4:19:27 PM

Got my old D-Link working again by reinstalling the firmware

Taking the netgear back to the store

4/6/2013 7:59:28 AM

I couldn't even get an ip from my router or get it to pull one from my modem

4/6/2013 11:21:58 AM

^^the fix is only temporary

keep looking for a new router, and have more patience

4/6/2013 11:43:57 AM

I know it won't work forever.

4/6/2013 7:50:38 PM

http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/92696/newegg-tplink-tlwdr3600-n600-wireless-n-dual-band-gigabit-router-w-2x-usb-ports

never had a tp-link router. gonna give this one a try.

4/6/2013 10:10:35 PM

^ that's the one i have...i've been pleased

i definitely suggest throwing on openwrt or dd-wrt (i prefer the former) because the stock firmware is kinda crappy (or so i've read...i didn't bother giving it a chance)

4/6/2013 11:54:04 PM

that's the one I just paid $60 for on thursday
It's good though

4/7/2013 12:11:48 AM

DD-WRT is supported: http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices#TP-Link

4/7/2013 2:04:23 AM

What sort of difference would I notice between that TP-link and the fossil WRT54G+tomato that I have?

4/8/2013 10:00:10 AM

wireless N and usb ports for network printer/file sharing.

right now the way my network is setup is:

Linksys e3000 running tomatousb in office connected to internet <--g bridge--> old as heck wrt54g running tomato usb in living room.

the wrt54g still runs great but the bridge is far too slow for streaming hd content. so im getting this new router so I can have an N bridge. It also has more ram and a faster proc than either of my current routers so I will probably try using it as my gateway router and move the e3000 into my living room.

Upgrading from a wrt54g to a newer N router is really about speed. If you have a super fast internet connection (most people don't) or (more likely) you are sending large amounts of traffic to devices inside your network, you will notice a definite speed increase for your wireless devices by upgrading. Also most, but not all, newer N routers have gigabit ports instead of the 100meg ports on the wrt54g, so you would see faster Ethernet transfer speeds as well. And lastly, if you get a router with more ram and a faster cpu it will be better at handling qos and lots of nat connections which is nice if you do a lot of torrenting.

if none of that really matters to you then there isn't a lot of point in upgrading. My wrt54g still works great, its just too slow for what I want to do.

One note, though, is that with these specific TPLink devices, they use Atheros cpus. Tomato is pretty locked to Broadcom cpus and tomato and the more recent tomato usb both seem to have been abandoned. I use tomato usb on both my routers and like it far more than ddwrt. everything works, but it appears no one is going to update tomato usb to work on newer routers as they come out. so if you're really attached to tomato, a tplink is probably not the right choice for you.

[Edited on April 8, 2013 at 10:17 AM. Reason : a]

4/8/2013 10:15:52 AM

Thanks for the post, very helpful. I currently have RR standard (15d/1u, although I've never seen a test higher than 11/1) but am considering upping to the Turbo, and figured I might get bottlenecked by the WRT54G.

I torrent quite a bit, so a definite need there. I had been streaming PC > Xbox, but got tired of constant buffering and just switched to thumb driving it. That was probably more a result of how shitty WMC is than lack of speed, but I don't know. I used to only have my Xbox wired to the router, but we switched to directv recently and instead of running another line to my living room, I opted to just move the modem/router up to an empty room, so now everything is wireless.

I'm not married to tomato by any means, I really don't usually touch firmware much outside of some port forwarding, so that won't be a problem. Sounds like I might see some benefit from switching, even moreso if I upgrade my internet.

[Edited on April 8, 2013 at 10:58 AM. Reason : .]

4/8/2013 10:58:20 AM

if rr standard is 15 where you are turbo is probably 20 or 25 so you probably wont see much benefit. it probably wont be a big deal until you get into the 30+ range. theoretically g is 54mbps but you probably wont see that. but then again, 50mbps rr is theoretically 50mbps but you probably wont see that either.

regarding streaming video, wmc should work perfectly fine and if you're seeing shuddering or buffering that's the network. if you arent streaming hd content you may be seeing general wireless interference from other 2.4ghz devices. going to 5ghz on a wireless N device may help with that. but idk if the Xbox's wireless adapter does 5ghz N.

but tbh, I'd say for $50 theres enough all around benefit to upgrade.

4/8/2013 11:15:51 AM

the router I ordered finally arrived yesterday. got it setup and moved my e3000 to my living room and bridged them over 5ghz and everything seems to work. I am able to stream much higher bitrate content that I couldn't do before, but I haven't done any benchmarking.

im gonna leave to stock firmware on there for now and see how well it works and if I find im missing something i'll throw ddwrt on there I guess.

4/17/2013 12:38:09 PM

I went with "upgrading" my modem as my first step. Went from whatever crap TWC gave me a few years ago to the SB6141. Had a bitch of a time getting the internet to stay up through my router. Re-installed tomato a few times, would work for a bit, then drop out. I was using some CAT6 cables, but switched to the ethernet cable that came with the modem and have had 0 drops since. (I actually just googled it and apparently that's an issue a lot of people were having)
The other thing that sort of sucks is that I guess TWC doesn't really cap speeds when using their modems (I was pulling 30Mb down, 2 up) but they do with personal modems (now 15Mb down, 2 up). It's a much steadier connection now with the SB6141, but slower. And I can't exactly bitch about it, since the Standard I pay for is 15/2. I'll probably scoop that router next, if for no other reason than to future proof.

4/17/2013 1:14:31 PM

Quote :

"The other thing that sort of sucks is that I guess TWC doesn't really cap speeds when using their modems (I was pulling 30Mb down, 2 up) but they do with personal modems (now 15Mb down, 2 up). It's a much steadier connection now with the SB6141, but slower. And I can't exactly bitch about it, since the Standard I pay for is 15/2. I'll probably scoop that router next, if for no other reason than to future proof."

i noticed the same thing when i went from docsis 2 to 3

turns out that you were probably ALWAYS getting the 15/2, but your speedtest results were showing the "power boost" rates (which are brief and inconsistent)...they've disabled power boost on docsis 3.0 modems

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r27564410-TWC-RR-Standard-with-Motorola-SB6141-Speed-Increase-

[Edited on April 17, 2013 at 1:18 PM. Reason : link]

4/17/2013 1:17:16 PM

imo buying a modem isn't worth the $5/mo savings when twc will blame any problem you have on your modem.

4/17/2013 1:26:50 PM

^^ Ahh thanks for that.
^ Ya I'm still debating on whether or not to keep the SB6141. I got it for $68 new, so in about a year it pays for itself. And ya, that'll definitely be TWCs go to, with the other issue being they won't push any firmware updates to it and you can't do it yourself.

4/17/2013 1:50:18 PM

I had problems with my internet when I first moved into my place and they had me swap modems like 5 times and sent out a bunch of techs but then they finally sent out a tech who knew what he was doing and he and some other guy figured it was a signal problem caused by bad cabling which they fixed. they also had a problem with oversubscription on a local node which they also eventually fixed.

haven't had a problem since.

Worst case scenario if you do have a problem tho, is that you have to use one of their modems again. if the problem isn't with your modem you can probably bitch enough to get it fixed. they gave me a few free months of turbo after my problems finally got fixed.

[Edited on April 17, 2013 at 2:07 PM. Reason : .]

4/17/2013 2:06:17 PM

I remeber the days when I had to reset my router, or it would break, or I would have to call TWC. Haven't had to deal with that since I got my AirPort.

4/17/2013 3:38:59 PM

My Netgear WNDR3700 is probably the best router I've ever owned. The admin interface is kinda crappy but all the features are there. It's been rock solid for the nearly 3+ years I've had it, along with the N bridge I've used with it. When DirecTV first launched Whole Home DVR, you could use with just ethernet, and the N bridge was fast enough to play content between the two DVRs I had connected to the network.

4/17/2013 5:07:26 PM

for anyone in search of a cheap N bridge
http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_00362128000P?sid=IAx20050830x000545&PID=4485850&AID=11042411&aff=Y

4/17/2013 8:17:43 PM

4/17/2013 8:42:32 PM