anyone know of a real good router?

supercool · Post by **supercool** » Sun May 06, 2001 3:21 pm

hey im thinkin of buying a router... i was hoping to get some feedback on what router you guys think is real good. im looking for a 4 port router. ive heard alot about that linksys router.. lots of good, but also lots of bad. maybe a 3com router? any ideas?

also, need it to be a good router for playing games, hopefully one where i can still host games without being firewalled..

[ 05-06-2001: Message edited by: supercool ]

staylor · Post by **staylor** » Sun May 06, 2001 4:08 pm

I like the lynksys router now that the new firmware has come,have no problems at all now,can forward ports for half life,UT,quake3,tribes 2,Counterstrike,or what ever....has been very solid!

scully_mulder · Post by **scully_mulder** » Sun May 06, 2001 4:34 pm

ya dude! I know of a great router....

Dakota · Post by **Dakota** » Sun May 06, 2001 5:28 pm

Try asking this in the Networking Forum, and also try reading that forum. Tons of info.

rachase · Post by **rachase** » Sun May 06, 2001 5:54 pm

Linksys is excellent -- easy setup and lots of features. If it doesn't come with ver. 1.385, go to their website and download it.

conical · Post by **conical** » Sun May 06, 2001 8:13 pm

I use the SMC Barricade which was a breeze to set up and includes a nice print server, 4 port switch and serial port for an external dial-up modem which I use as a backup when my cable goes out. J & R has it for $109.

But I think most routers (just like DOCSIS cable modems) are all bacically the same. The price varies according to brand just like everything.

I also use the Best Data cable modem and along with the SMC router they've been great at performing on my 3PC LAN which all have the Linksys Fast Ethernet NICs.

I have upload speeds of 920 kilobits per second (no cap?!) and download speeds range from 1.2 - 2.9 megabits per second.

Would any other brands achieve any better results using @home? Let us know!

[ 05-06-2001: Message edited by: conical ]

rodrod5 · Post by **rodrod5** » Sun May 06, 2001 8:21 pm

yes a cisco Ha Ha Ha

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Mon May 07, 2001 8:15 am

I did a long search for a good gaming router a while ago, with several other people, all of us hitting the forums posting questions. We were all tired of the Linksys blues, with all those problems the Linksys had hosting servers. The NetGear was much faster, but if you were hosting a UT or Rune server, all of us found this problems where it would randomly kick all WAN clients.

A couple of months ago, Linksys squeeked out some beta firmware which most people have found fixed the problem of hosting some games such as UT, where prior version of firmware had a major problem hosting a server, in that the clients had really funky graphical glitches. Most people report good things of this firmware, that the graphics problem is gone, but the little box sometimes kicks/burps/hiccups under a heavy load.

What myself and a couple of others did was to say "Hmm, I'm having some pretty heavy demands on my router trying to run a game server, so screw these little hundred dollar home routers, I need something beefier!" We went out and spent 300 bucks on a Netopia R910. I was one of the first ones to get it. Now I've setup about 35 Linksys routers, several NetGears, 6 RampNetworks WebRamps, so I've been around the home router setup. It took me 2 days to figure out this Netopia, because it's really a mid range router designed for the IT professional who deals with routers like this and Ciscos. I'm in the field as a network engineer, but I do windows networks from the computers on down, not the connectivity on the streetside.

Once I figured out how to do the port forwarding, it's easy to do. Just that initial learning curve. This router is very advanced, has a firewall you can turn on in addition to the NAT, supports VPN, it even hosts VPN for you.

This got lengthy, I just saw you mention hosting games, thought I'd try to share some of what we learned a few months ago. The Linksys had it's issues, seems the beta firmware fixed most of them. It's very easy to use. The NetGear to my knowledge still has issues of running a server behind it. I haven't heard of many problems with the SMC, then again there aren't many of those out there in the first place.