Belkin or linksy? advice please!

[razer121]

I've had a netgear, and was not pleased with it at all, so i've decided to spend a little and have come across these 3, however they all have very mixed reviews! so thought i would ask my fellow hexus members

so, in the line is!

Linksys WAG54G2
Belkin N300 F5D8636uk4A
Belkin share/play/ basically one of these n300, reviews are very mixed mind!
Belkin n1 (unsure of model number but basically one of the n1 models)

So the main use of the router is really for online games, so it needs to be able to control NAT settings as i'm fed of being on a strict NAT!

So any advice will be very helpfull!

[Splash]

I'm no fan of Linksys gear, but if those are your options I'd be looking at the WAG54G. Personally I don't think it's going to be any better than your Netgear, but it's your money.

Not sure what you mean about NAT though - are you talking about port forwarding? If so *any* modern router should be able to take care of that for you. If you're talking about removing the NAT and placing your machine in a DMZ then... I think you're mental. You *always* want your client behind a firewall of some sort.

[razer121]

Well, there just some i've been looking at to be honest. I just want the option to have my NAT setting as "open" as the thomson i have doesnt have the option to open my NAT and keeps it in strict setting....Not very good for gaming really, and no i'm not intent on using DMZ.

[ChaosSystem]

NAT allows you to have multiple computers behind one external IP. It also offers some firewalling protection. You would open ports or port forward to allow external traffic to your internal system.

[KowShak]

Maybe the feature you're looking for is UPnP, I find having that option enabled on my router to be useful. UPnP allows applications that support UPnP to dynamically set up a rule to map an external port to an internal one.

[razer121]

Although both the last two posts are informative, there not what i'm looking for, i'm looking for an open NAT setting. If a router gives me the option to open my NAT then it's one i would consider, otherwise it's out the window!

[peterb]

Can you explain what you mean by "open NAT" please - 'cos I'm not sure I understand what it is you are trying to do!

If you want your PC to have a direct connection to the internet, so it has a public IP address, then you are looking at bridge mode or DMZ - and it is dangerous withoght some other form of firewall in place.

You may need to open up inbound ports (still a risk) or, as has been said elsewhere, use UPnP (still a risk, but less of one.)

As for the products you mention, I have no direct experience of the routers made by those mfrs, however I would go for the Linksys or Netgear. Both are good makes, Linksys are now owned by Cisco, and Netgear have a range of products from home to high end professional stuff. That isn't to say Belkin aren't any good, but as you say, they get mixed reviews.

[Zak33]

Buy a Linksys..

then start a new thread, with the model and the ports you want to open and people will help you with the NAT firewall, so you dont' drop it totally.. its good to have a hardware firewall, you only ned to open certain ports for gaming

[Behemoth]

I'd take a Linksys over a Belkin router any day of the week. Me and Belkin never seem to get on.

[Zadock]

I actually have that linksys model, its fine... does what it says on the tin. Pretty stable and quite easy to configure.

[razer121]

Ok, looks like i'm going to take the linksy then!

NAT - i'm not 100percent sure what it is but know that due to me not being able to have a "open" NAT im unable to play some games online correctly, for instance Call of duty MW2 my NAT settings are set to "Strict" and it prevents me from connecting to alot of games online, even after opening all the ports for codmw2 im still unable to connect to my mates every time..

So now you probs understand why its a must for me! I'm going to look into the linksy and hope that a shop near me sells it, dont want to order it online and have to wait!

thanks for the advice guys.

[peterb]

NAT gives you a private LAN behind the router. Packets that go out have their sent address changed by the router so that they come from the public IP address, the router keeps a note of the packet ID. When a return packet associated with the outgoing packet is received, the router changes the destination address to the computer that sent the originating packet and sends it on. Any packet arriving that doesn't have a corresponding outgoing packet is rejected. The router also looks at the source and destination ports and makes decisions based on those.

Some applications (particularly games) require ports to be open to receive packets, even though that port may not be originating packets, and I think that is where the problem lies.

You either need to open the range of ports for inbound traffic manually (port forwarding) or use UPNP routers which will open inbound ports on demand from an application, or disable NAT. The latter is a BAD idea. As an example, I have remotely log into a server so I have an inbound port open on my router. On a good day, it gets probed under 500 times. On a bad day it can be over 50,000 - all attempts to log in. I'm sure other ports are similarly probed. On the manually opening a range, ports above 1024 are generally less unsafe to leave open than those below.

This is not an insurmountable problem - many other people will be playing the games you want to play, but you need to check the configurations carefully and allow only the minimum access to play the game successfully.

There is some info on this link, which also links to other sites that may be of use. (but I haven't followed them!)

[usxhe190]

Linksys and Belkin are consumer focused. But I would take a Linksys over a Belkin.

[KowShak]

Linksys and Belkin are consumer focused. But I would take a Linksys over a Belkin.

Personally I'd take whichever generic router I can run RouterTech on!

[razer121]

I should update, my mum bought me a Belkin N300 F5D8636uk4A (old style ones)

I cannot complain! It's a free router and one that i was contemplating on getting, however i'm already having problems with it XD damn thing needs switching on and of occasinally to keep working, it has a week before i get her to take it back and get me a different one, (£60 budget but i might add to it and go all out XD)

[usxhe190]

Sorry to hear your problems with the razer121. My opinion but Belkin doesn't really last long..you need to be a business partner with them to actually consider their products.

Have you tried the Thomson Speedtouch series? Not sure how they are now but previously (i.e. a few years ago prior to ADSL2) they were affordable and pretty solid routers.