How much would YOU consider spending on a good router?

[Zak33]

Hi guys,

I consider a rock solid router to be paramount and for my use it needs

To be fast at VPN's (cheap routers are tediously slow at conntecting a VPN or don't support it at all).
To have a good fast menu so that I can see what's going on if broadband dies (which is does sometimes sadly)
To have port throttling, so I can restrict Sair's ebay useage and facebook addiction when I'm trying to play online
To be well Firewalled and to be easily adjusted for port forwarding
To be trusted to stay on 24/7 for many years

So.... now that some newer ADSL2+ is close for many people, a few router upgrades are imminent I'd say.

Me... I'm a Draytek Vigor man.
http://www.draytek.co.uk/

and I'm not gonna blink if it costs me up to £200 for a proper router.

But what's YOUR limit? Not just for your personal use, but what would you suggest your business/company spent on a good router?

[madman045]

Until I sold them through work, i've always had the cheapest.

Now having been spoilt by selling Drayteks (not the wireless models mind you) at work, I now have a 2820 at home on my ADSL2 connection.

I know there £150+ routers, but it does everything and more.

[Dogers]

I'd love a proper ADSL router (something uber like a Cisco 877W ), but at the moment I'm loving my £34 Safecom cheapo jobbie (link). It runs a cut down version of Linux, and the guys over at Router Tech have a version for it which supports lots of extra features

[Jay]

I built mine with a mitx board, atom cpu, 8GB CF Card with SATA converter, 1gb ram and pfSense. It was about £150 all in I think.

[gss03]

Draytek 2820 (n, Vn or just plain 2820) - all solid routers. Would have one at home in an instant if I wasn't stuck with my Sky(Netgear) DG934

Just experienced their RMA process today. Couple of emails back and forth this afternoon and I've got an RMA number and an address to send it to....don't think it would be half as quick with someone like Netgear.

Other brands I'm looking at are some of the high end Linksys/ Cisco kit that is being pushed by Cisco. Lot of features for your buck there.

[Dogers]

I built mine with a mitx board, atom cpu, 8GB CF Card with SATA converter, 1gb ram and pfSense. It was about £150 all in I think.

Jay, do you have a parts list? That's the other alternative I'd like to do!

[Steve]

I've got my Be* router setup as a bridge so that my Draytek 2910VG can do that hard work.

I would just use the 2800 I have, but it doesn't do ADSL2+, and ADSL2 is a bit hit and miss depending on ISP.

If I didn't have what I have now, I'd pay for a 2820.

[peterb]

I started off with a couple of truly horrid Connexant based unbranded routers, but then I discovered a slightly more expensive MRi. I had a couple of those and they were very good for the money - a very flexible firewall, but not too much help from the front end so it forced you to understand what you were doing if you didn't want the default settings (which were entirely adequate for most situations. The main problem with them was lack of internal user memory.

But I had always coveted a Draytek and upgrade to ADSL2 was the excuse I needed and I now run a Draytek 2800.

It hasn't been perfect, and some of the earlier firmware releases were a bit iffy in one or two features, but it is now an excellent router and worth the £170 I paid for it. The "how to" guides on the Draytek UK website are very good, as is customer support and the Draytek forums.

If you are paying anything from £180/year upwards for a decent broadband connection it seems silly to skimp on the components that will enable you to get the best from it.

[Agent]

<broken record>

WRT54+ Tomato and a separate ADSL modem for me.

Way more cost effective than a Draytek (although I love them too) and absolutely solid

Although I'm quite tempted to start playing with pfSense.

[beanbandit]

Currently running the router that O2 supplied me in May. But have a Draytek 2820 that is gathering dust, have been a lazy git but i should pull my finger out and get it set up. Was rock solid when i was using it with BT only had one issue (wouldn't let me use 2 Xbox360's online at same time) but a firmware upgrade sorted that out. Still can't believe i paid £175 18months ago. Also just seen that i can use it as a NAS soon, that could be handy. Guess what i'll be doing at the weekend

[Jay]

Jay, do you have a parts list? That's the other alternative I'd like to do!

This is my setup

LN17135 1GB, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5 £9.19

LN23846 8GB Kingston CF/8GB-S2 Elite Pro Compact Flash Card x133 £18.39

LN24690 Akasa AK-ITX01BK-UK Enigma Mini ITX Case, Black 80W PSU £63.23

LN27820 Gigabyte GA-GC330UD, Intel 945GC, Integrated Intel Atom N330 CPU (1.6GHz), DDR2 667, Mini ITX £63.42

total = £154.23

and one of these

http://www.raidon.com.tw/content.php...000095&p_id=30

Then download pfSense and install it... You have a router that will rival mid range Cisco kit at a fraction of the price

[PeterStoba]

£50 :d

[UseItNow]

Boy, do I feel like I'm in the small league, in fact I know nothing about routers, well maybe a little, small in comparison to the likes of our great minds here.

Spend: (Maximum for personal use, won't talk about business, don't work in this field, no idea) £50!

[Main]

I used to use a dedicated ADSL modem with a salvaged old 500MHz Pentium 3 system (paid ~£100 for components to make it useable and the modem) setup as a router with ubuntu. I found it considerabley more robust than any modem/router boxes I've used, namely the ability to survive the excesses of a uni household, although it was a pain to setup and tweak. That pain in the ass-ness of it and the lack of wireless are why it isn't sitting where the BT home hub is at the moment.

[pp05]

Zak I know where you are coming from.

I'm still using the Draytek 2600 router I bought for £150 around 6 years ago. It has served me well considering how steep it was at the time but I don't regret it. Hardly ever been down. Most problems comes from ISP end.

Would I spend 150 again - probably not unless it had something extra on top to justify it. Standards are very high but I've got to be a bit open. I've even started to overcome my hate of all boxes with netgear on them. I've not been overly impressed with adsl2+ ones. So I'd go up to 100 for personal use.

Hi guys,

I consider a rock solid router to be paramount and for my use it needs

To be fast at VPN's (cheap routers are tediously slow at conntecting a VPN or don't support it at all).
To have a good fast menu so that I can see what's going on if broadband dies (which is does sometimes sadly)
To have port throttling, so I can restrict Sair's ebay useage and facebook addiction when I'm trying to play online
To be well Firewalled and to be easily adjusted for port forwarding
To be trusted to stay on 24/7 for many years

So.... now that some newer ADSL2+ is close for many people, a few router upgrades are imminent I'd say.

Me... I'm a Draytek Vigor man.
http://www.draytek.co.uk/

and I'm not gonna blink if it costs me up to £200 for a proper router.

But what's YOUR limit? Not just for your personal use, but what would you suggest your business/company spent on a good router?

[joel_spencer]

My Netgear dg834 was 50 quid and is apparently the UK's most popular router. Works fine for what I do, lots of other companies use the same hardware too Sky, 02, etc Doesn't have Wireless N but if you play games then I wouldn't recommend Wireless. G is rubbish not sure how N does, would have to try it out first, but with the Powerline kits coming down why bother with wireless?