Reliable Wireless Router Needed .. HELP!

Interesting. I would have rated the vendors in the reverse order of the number of complaints.

Here's another way I like to check. Go to the download site for the vendor and see how many old products that they no longer sell have firmware updates. Also, how many updates. In my warped opinion, updates are a sign of continuous development, concern for the cutomer, and general attempts to improve the product. I think you'll find the Linksys updates almost continuously, even for old products. Belkin has at best one update per product. D-Link and Netgear are in between.

Yep. RF causes nightmares. It also causes brain cancer, bad breath, and premature impoverishment.

Speedstreamm/Efficient/Siemens make many modems. Some good, some bad. Any clue as to which model?

What's your DSL speed? Some of the bottom of the line routers don't do well at higher speeds.

Any price limit? There's some really nice stuff made by Cisco, Sonicwall, 3Com, and other high end vendors. Wanna pay the price for quality?

Any particular performance specs or limitations? Expected range? Environment (indoor, outdoor, vehicle, etc)? Better yet, how do you plan to use it? Casual web browsing, or heavy duty video?

Any important features? Dual SSID? Running a hot spot or neighborhood WLAN? Interference problems?

Also, see reviews at:

and performance charts at:

The order probably reflects the popularity to some degree ie LinkSys prolly sold more units than say Belkin and hence more complaints.

Good tip. Sounds reasonable.

Another tip is to cardcount how many returns are at Frys, etc. Frys had multiple returned boxes of routers of all four companies.

As I noted, the ones I've tried didn't even find the modem.

Thanks. Do you have a specific model number that you've tried and worked with flying colors?

Yes. After all, a good router cannot be too expensive.

Not fussy on the flexability and performance beyond the fact that the unit must set up and operate reliably .. aka error free with an IBM system.

Nope. I'm easy.

Thanks for your input. Hope you can supply me with a current model number. Thanks in advance.

PC Magazine rated the current crop or routers (G, fast G, N) a few months back and as I recall, Linksys came out on top in all three categories.

well, you could do something along these lines:

1. get a cheap intel/amd box (any speed faster than 500 Mhz)
2. install a wireless pci device and 2 ethernet cards
3. install openbsd
4. bridge one of the ethernet devices to the wireless (as a bridge)
5. have the other Ethernet device setup to acquire the ip address from your dsl/cable device (and run pf as the firewall on that device)

what you will have created here is a home built combination unit (a wired switch with a wireless interface and a firewall/router).

now, I know this can be done, but I don't have the actual know how to get it done (A friend of mine actually setup one).

there is a lot of reading material available on the subject. just use openbsd+router+wireless in a google search.

hope this helps