I'm not the only one with home router woes; I've gotten lots of sympathy and some requests for advice. My new Belkin router is mostly working now, but at $40 I don't have a lot of faith it will last. That, and its implementation of UPnP isn't compatible with uTorrent's. Yay.

I've gone ahead and also bought a Netgear FWG114P. It's one of the blue metal box Netgear devices for business use; I've had great luck with this line of hardware before. At $120 the big feature you get is VPN support, but I'm hoping it's got better electronics too.

Another option is to buy a $65 Linksys WRT54GL; the L makes all the difference. That means it runs the old Linux based firmware that you can flash upgrade with 3rd party open source. So the software won't have stupid bugs but the hardware is still a gamble. I had a first generation WRT54G crap out on me after about a year.

One last option recommended by a reader is a Draytek router like the 2900G. They're a European brand with a reputation for high quality and extra features. I like the 2910G; two outgoing WAN ports with load balancing and failover. They're a bit spendy at around $200.

tech
  2007-07-07 21:23 Z