Cable router advice....please!!!!

[burble]

Ok guys. After many hours of brain numbing research and suggestions from you guys, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not gonna go Draft N just yet.

So I think it's between the Linksys or the Buffalo Airstation HP WHR-HP-G54. Both are similarly priced. I'm a little confused with the linksys as it's got different models GS/GL?? There's also one with a rangebooster?? Help me burble!! Which one do I need??

So, to end my misery, please could you give me your opinions on the above. Wanna get the best throughput from my 20Mb broadband. Oh by the way, I only live in a 2 bed terraced house so hopefully range won't be an issue with an 802.11g router.

I have no personal experience of the Buffalo router whereas I know several people with Linksys WRT54GL's (myself included) so I'd always recommend them.

To give you some indication, I'm a huge Cisco fanboy (incidentally, don't read too much into Cisco owning Linksys, you're not buying a Cisco router if you buy a Linksys one) so when I switched from ADSL to cable I sold my Cisco 877 on eBay and ordered an 876 to replace it but I was so impressed with the WRT54GL that I cancelled the order for the 876.

[boobster]

I have no personal experience of the Buffalo router whereas I know several people with Linksys WRT54GL's (myself included) so I'd always recommend them.

To give you some indication, I'm a huge Cisco fanboy (incidentally, don't read too much into Cisco owning Linksys, you're not buying a Cisco router if you buy a Linksys one) so when I switched from ADSL to cable I sold my Cisco 877 on eBay and ordered an 876 to replace it but I was so impressed with the WRT54GL that I cancelled the order for the 876.

Thanks Burble. So now I'm convinced I need to go for the WRT54GL. In your experience, what sort of speed will I see with it? Does it punch above it's weight so to speak? Will I get more than 54Mbps

[Agent]

Thanks Burble. So now I'm convinced I need to go for the WRT54GL. In your experience, what sort of speed will I see with it? Does it punch above it's weight so to speak? Will I get more than 54Mbps

Sadly you can't get more than the 54Mbps. The speed also depends on way too many factors to be able to guess what you will get (distance, line of site, what the walls are made out of, interference and other wireless networks can all make a huge difference for example)

[burble]

Thanks Burble. So now I'm convinced I need to go for the WRT54GL. In your experience, what sort of speed will I see with it? Does it punch above it's weight so to speak? Will I get more than 54Mbps

Even if you're sitting at the perfect distance from the router you won't get a real throughput of 54Mbit, irrespective of what the connection gadget in Windows tells you that you're connected at.

From doing tests with iperf the best I've seen for an 802.11g network was about 33Mbit.

[boobster]

Even if you're sitting at the perfect distance from the router you won't get a real throughput of 54Mbit, irrespective of what the connection gadget in Windows tells you that you're connected at.

From doing tests with iperf the best I've seen for an 802.11g network was about 33Mbit.

I'm quite concerned about that. Will it be ok for web surfing and downloads? Might go Draft N if this isn't good enough.

[burble]

Don't go expecting draft n to be a night and day difference. It is a bit better but not massively so.

Your internet connection is (in theory) 20Mbit and the wirelss will give about 33Mbit or so, ie, the wireless is faster than your wireless connection. It's nothing to worry about.

[boobster]

Don't go expecting draft n to be a night and day difference. It is a bit better but not massively so.

Your internet connection is (in theory) 20Mbit and the wirelss will give about 33Mbit or so, ie, the wireless is faster than your wireless connection. It's nothing to worry about.

Ok, I'm with you now. Burble, I've come across this - Linksys WRT150N Wireless-N Home Router. What you reckon? Read good reviews about it and it's resonably priced. Might give it a go and keep with the Linksys side of things.

[burble]

I've never used one, so don't have any personal experience with it.

[gman1981]

So it does, I didn't notice that part.

Personally I'd still go for a WRT54GL (with Tomato firmware would be my preference) over a draft n router.

That's exactly what I have, Tomato seems more stable than the vanilla Linksys firmware

[burble]

That's exactly what I have, Tomato seems more stable than the vanilla Linksys firmware

I didn't have any stability issues with the stock firmware (not that I used it for long), but Tomato gave me PAT which I needed. The bandwidth monitoring and QoS is pretty cool too.