I'm not knowledgeable about routers, but I have the WRT54GL. It was easy to set up, signal strength is good throughout the house, and I haven't had to reboot it in 18 months. I bought it because Newegg buyers gave it such high ratings.
I had the same model for about 4 years and it worked perfect until it crapped out. I looked around and found that this one had the best track record picked up 2 at newegg to have a backup.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320030 this fella can handle pretty much anything,including heavy P2P. plus couple USB on the back-
FWIW- I use a Netgear WPN824 - refurbed I bought it 3 years ago for $12. I have a 3 story house with 24 inch thick brick walls and I get a signal on the 3rd floor. I have 4 friends who have had issues with signal strength for whatever reasons and I bought them all a refurb one of these - for about $20 and it solved issue. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...C-DealNews&cm_mmc=AFC-DealNews-_-NA-_-NA-_-NA new they are about $60
Traders who want a robust and reliable wireless router should go for the tried and trusted rather than the latest and greatest. A tech's choice of router would generally be the Linksys and also the Netgear DG834G. The reason is they have a large number of users and by now all the bugs have been ironed out. They will work no problem also with non-standard settings like from AOL broadband. Wireless N sounds great but many routers have not ironed out bugs. Also you need a well matched router/adapter pair. The wireless may work great with one adapter and not connect with another. If you want a standard laptop to work with its inbuilt wireless, then stick to the wireless g standard (54Mbps). Your broadband connection is likely to be 8Mbps max and your trading data bandwidth use is only going to be a few K, so there is still plenty of headroom. Wireless range is handled best by positioning the router well. If you have enough space around you and/or have known/trusted neighbours you will get some speed, responsiveness and signal strength improvement by leaving the wireless unencrypted. This always sends geeks into fits, but I leave the wireless open for many home customers without problems. Unless you are a targeted company, the likelihood of a white van spending hours outside your house to hack your computer is far less than a burglar breaking in and stealing the computer. You can know easily if a neighbour is hogging your connection by the lights on the router going rapidly when your system is shut down. Then you would need to lock it down. Also extremely unlikely, but if you download via P2P having an open wireless can be a defence - it could be a neighbour with a laptop who downloaded that 49 year old movie. Also I see no point going for expensive Cisco routers, good as they may be. You may need help to set it up initially and then wait for the mail order if it did go down. A home Netgear or Linksys can last years and are easily set up. If it goes down you can get a replacement over the counter at a nearby computer store immediately.
I searched to find a thread about routers. Here's my problem: I've had a WRT54GL for a few years. Good signal strength however it's becoming useless for P2P and I suspect my P2P usage is causing the need for numerous resets. Is this a common problem? What's the reason? Is there a fix? If I stay off P2P (ares for music) will the router resume reliable operation without needing to be reset so often?
routers do die over the time..specially when used for P2P..i use to have old belkin wireless router,which is died this year. i've tried couple new ones, including this asus(died after a month,belking last for few years)- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320030 after all i bought belkin N at local BJ for like $40 and very happy with it. setup is very simple,user friendly. no usb functionality, but works very well with P2P and my cascaded nat. i would recommend it N+ is even better with usb port
Awwww, c'mon - with the kind of bucks you make trading? Splurge and get one of these -- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124296 This thing is rock solid and fast as all get out. Couldn't understand some of the user reviews where they complain about how hard it was to set up. Took me all of 10 minutes, if that. I mean, come on folks, how hard is it to call up the wizard and press the go button? All kidding aside, this really is an excellent router. They seem to have ironed out most if not all of the problems their past models had (high heat output being one). I've had mine for six months or so and haven't had a problem yet (knock on silicon).
I agree, time for a new router. You could even get the same WRT54GL model, they are still popular, especially when flashed with custom firmware.
just got this USB Wireless Adapter signal strength is always full bars but I only had it for 2 days. http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0282141