How much would YOU consider spending on a good router?

[Zak33]

netgear caused me enough grief to avoid them forever, although their RMA system was very good. (just shouldn'tneed it as often as I have)

I guess I'm both lucky enough to be ablet to afford a Vigor AND wise enough to know that it's worth forsaking a CPU upgrade or a new video acard once in a while to get something which will outlast everything, even a good PSU.

On the other hand I have fitted loads of real cheap routers to mates houses and had no giref from them. But VPN speed/ability is key for me and cheap VPN hardware makes me wait toooo long...

[nightkhaos]

I'm looking for the following in a router, because for the moment most of the hardwork is being done my my server and I have an el-cheaper Wireless-G router in bridge modem, connecting to my Be* modem in bridge mode.

• Wireless Draft n-Max.
• 10/100/1000 Switch, however 10/100 should be fine under most circumstances.
• Single WAN, only needs to be 10/100, or supports the werid ADSL2+ that the LCCs seem to use.

However there is one thing that the router NEEDs to be able to do, and that is forward the port forwards correctly. I am sick of tired of having to setup an interal DNS and DHCP server just so that I can access the websites I host on my server internally! Weather this means I can configure the routers DNS server, or there is some flag that means the internal hosts follow the same NAT rules as the external ones (this would of course mean the router will be accessed on port 81 internally or something, I understand this)...

Any ideas?

[pp05]

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?

Joel they might be the most popular but that is down to price alone I think nothing else.

Over the years the amount of people who complained about their netgear boxes I just learned to filter out 'netgear' from my network vocabulary until recently that is -my cousin purchased Netgear wireless N router to replace a dodgy Belkin box.

For the first time I could actually see myself owning one. Setting up is a breeze - particular the security options. Changed my perceptions.

netgear caused me enough grief to avoid them forever, although their RMA system was very good. (just shouldn'tneed it as often as I have)

I guess I'm both lucky enough to be ablet to afford a Vigor AND wise enough to know that it's worth forsaking a CPU upgrade or a new video acard once in a while to get something which will outlast everything, even a good PSU.

On the other hand I have fitted loads of real cheap routers to mates houses and had no giref from them. But VPN speed/ability is key for me and cheap VPN hardware makes me wait toooo long...

Zak absolutely. Reliable router is paramount these days, match it with a hi-grade quality filter. Then all that is left is to understand ones ISPs fair usage policy and what kind of throttling they have in place for no nasty surprises.

I was considering vigor 2800 last year but the reliability issues made me delay the adsl2+ purchase. Lot of the problems are at the wireless end.

[burble]

I suggested and then spent about £60K on Cisco stuff as part of a project to migrate away from slow and expensive frame relay links to an IPSEC DMVPN.

[Splash]

I splooged about £180 for a 2820N when they first came out. Great bits of kit, but I rather fell out with Draytek support over one feature: if you specify DNS servers in your WAN setup (as opposed to auto-assigned by your ISP) you cannot then use the Vigor to resolve LAN addresses. It's been put in as a feature request, but to be honest I'd have expected it in there from the get-go.

VERY solid though, and the dual WAN for backup 3G access works like a treat for if some moron takes out the BT line, or if I switch to cable.

[nightkhaos]

Oh... I think the 2820n will be perfect for me, does anyone have one of these and can tell me how well it handles internal port forwarding. i.e.:

I have a domain record pointing to my connection that assigns example.org to my external IP address.

I have port fowarding that assigns port 80 to 192.168.1.1 internally.

When I go to example.org externally it connects to the server as normal.

However, with my currenty router at least, when I go to example.org it connects to the routers configuration page.

Also, is this a good price?

[Steve]

What's the IP of your router?

Either you're forwarding to the LAN IP of the router, or port 80 is open on the WAN side of router for the admin panel. This can often be disabled or reconfigured. On Dratek's it's possible to turn on/off and change the port. But that's the case on a lot of routers.

[oolon]

Personally I have tried a few firewire/routers and gave up on them, mostly due them them not doing what was required properly. One of the reasons I still use virgin is they give you a cable modem that is a raw connection on ethernet, which can then be firewalled properly by a real OS or a PIX. Finding a good adsl adapter that does not monkey with the connection is some way is difficult. I had to use a D-Link "bridge" at a job for a while, and the thing would not connect to the outside world until something inside tried to access the outside world, so I ended up having to ping every 60 seconds just in case. As people were quite upset to find the connection had gone down over night, and not started up again, so there was not access in.

[nightkhaos]

What's the IP of your router?

Either you're forwarding to the LAN IP of the router, or port 80 is open on the WAN side of router for the admin panel. This can often be disabled or reconfigured. On Dratek's it's possible to turn on/off and change the port. But that's the case on a lot of routers.

Just what I needed to know! The Thomspon I use currently doesn't allow me to change port.

Router is 192.168.1.254 currently. Althrough the configuration is likely to change if I get the 2820n. (I'm thinking of also increasing my subnet from 24 to 16).

[Funkstar]

I bought a Draytek 2700 for about £90 and have an Edimax DraftN AP for the wireless.

That works for me. I'd like a £200 router, I would just struggle to justify it over something like the second hand Draytek.

[pipTheGeek]

However there is one thing that the router NEEDs to be able to do, and that is forward the port forwards correctly.

My Netgear rangemax 240 (WPNT834) did this flawlessly. If you connected to it using its WAN address then it routed the traffic according to its port forwarding rules. If you used it's LAN address then it displayed its web admin interface. It was rock solid for the 2 years or so that I had it running. When I originally bought it, it was £90. So I'd be prepared to spend £100 on a home router, although I would want good evidence that it was worth it.
The one thing that it couldn't do (that I found) was forward say port 80 externally to port 8080 internally.
I now have one of the newer Netgear draft N routers which VM gave (lent actually...) me with my 50MB upgrade. It's okay and has been perfectly stable, but it can't do the port forwarding trick. Any attempt to connect to its WAN address (port 80) from internally gets met with it's admin interface. It's a shame, but I have an internal DNS server anyway so I can work round it.

So, tell me more about the Draytek, why should I want to spend £200 on one?

[aileen]

used to have a draytek but soon sold it. I cant see the point why spend that much on a router.

now I use the one from o2 and a 100/1000 switch, serve me very well

[funkymunky]

WRT54GL running OpenWRT at home, didn't cost me anything.

At work we run a large amount of various OSPF/BGP routers with the latest additions being a couple of Foundry/Brocade XMR 4000s and an MLX-4 with some scarily expensive 10GigE cards in them.

[Splash]

My Netgear rangemax 240 (WPNT834) did this flawlessly. If you connected to it using its WAN address then it routed the traffic according to its port forwarding rules. If you used it's LAN address then it displayed its web admin interface. It was rock solid for the 2 years or so that I had it running. When I originally bought it, it was £90. So I'd be prepared to spend £100 on a home router, although I would want good evidence that it was worth it.

I now have one of the newer Netgear draft N routers which VM gave (lent actually...) me with my 50MB upgrade. It's okay and has been perfectly stable, but it can't do the port forwarding trick. Any attempt to connect to its WAN address (port 80) from internally gets met with it's admin interface. It's a shame, but I have an internal DNS server anyway so I can work round it.

So, tell me more about the Draytek, why should I want to spend £200 on one?

Because it will do

The one thing that it couldn't do (that I found) was forward say port 80 externally to port 8080 internally.

And be rock solid while doing it. Sure, it's expensive, but it's a solid VPN endpoint, it supports multi-NAT, it's dual-WAN (with 3 options - ADSL, ethernet and a USB 3G modem), supports multiple wireless network SSIDs, with the choice to vlan or merge...


I'm talking about my 2820N, but... look into it. It's a great piece of kit, and probably cheaper than £150 these days.

[MarcLister]

<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.

This is what I've done. Linksys AM200 + Tomato'd Linksys WRT54GL.

Can't really justify a Draytek at this point in my life but perhaps when I get my own place I'll think about it.

[aidanjt]

I spent £300 on a itx box, installed gentoo on it.. unfortunately the HDD on it is dying so I'll probably use my chunky old full lenght P4 as a replacement.