Am I the only one who struggles with routers?

[stealth17]

I've been through several routers of various flavors and I've yet to have one that works longer than 1.5 years. Here are the models I have tried:

• (2) WRT54G
• Netgear WNR3500L
• Belkin something

Whenever they quit working I go through the motions of a true hardware reset (30/30/30) which sometimes fixes the issue. I've also installed DD-WRT on these once I get fed up with issues and that gives it a bit more life before something acts up again.

My current router, the Netgear, is now having intermitting wireless connection problems. I am sick and tired of dealing with these crappy routers. I have replaced the actual router with a FreeBSD server so the Netgear is just a switch with a wireless NIC, and even that doesn't work reliably!

What should I do?? Spend good money on a router or just get a wireless NIC for the FreeBSD machine?

[WordMasterRice]

If you find any answer for that let me know. While I don't personally have the problem (My Dlink DGL-4500 has been solid as a rock) almost everybody I know has.

IMO Consumer grade networking equipment is one step above going in a garbage bin the moment you take it out of the plastic. I've had switches and routers fail all the time, they are just trash.

[digitaldd]

Not sure what you situation is but as a fellow resident of NYC, I will say this if you have Cable/DSL/FIOS don't rule out the possibility that the modem/DSLAM is bad. I have a few friends who have been replacing their routers for years every few months only to find out that there were issues with the modem/dslam device which feeds the internet into the router. I myself tend to replace my cable modem every 6-8 months as it usually takes about 6 months for the cable modem to start dropping the connection regularly and after i suffer through the random disconnects for a month or so i walk into a Time Warner location and demand a modem swap.

[maxgull]

^^^^This, more often than not.

[kwiksilver]

[Puts on flamesuit]

Apple Airport Extreme - Most solid router I have ever owned. I have only rebooted it once, and that was to do a firmware update b/c it kept bugging me about it.

[/removes flamesuit]

Previous Routers:
WRT610N - Ran DD-WRT - Fast router even with stock. Pretty stable, but would choke with alot of local network traffic.

WNR3500L - Ran multiple flavors or DD-WRT and Tomato USB. Third most stable router I have ever owned once I got tomato USB on it. Usually a reboot once a month.

WRT54Gs - Ran DD-WRT -- Total POS w/stock firmware, ran ddwrt and it was okay just ran too hot.

WRT54G v1. - Ran DD-WRT second most stable router I ever owned. Usually only needed rebooting every few months

I owned a cheap ASUS router for a while before giving it to a friend who needed it, I never got to really give it much of a chance.

Also had a WNR3500 (non L) less ram and no DD-wrt or other firmware. It got too hot and it blew caps. I ended up giving that to Jason and idk what he did with it. It was a pretty solid router. I bought one of those REALLY cheap verizon routers when they were like $6-7 as a project router, but the third party firmware never came to light with it.

http://lifehacker.com/5921343/most-p...expressextreme

[hostage67]

I upgraded from the WRT54GS a while back to the E4200. The old router did fine while I had it, but wasn't an N router. So I upgraded to the E4200 and it has done quite well for me. I get about 50mbps on the wireless signal when close to the router, and about 30mbps if I'm at the other end of the house(it did require some tweaking to get those speeds).

I believe they also have a newer version out than the one I picked up that has several improvements as well.