[X4U] Wireless Router Suggestions

[Stroller]

I've installed a lot of Netgears in the last 6 months, having been 
recommended the brand by the Mac-consultant who has the franchise in 
the adjacent area to me. Initially I ignored his advice because my 
favourite supplier did only D-Link, but what a mistake that was! The 
interface on the D-Link was horrendous, and I had to upgrade the 
firmware to make it compatible with AOL's ADSL, which is common around 
here.

I've had very very few problems with the Netgears, and my customers 
would let me know if they'd had any! I've had one that was duff out of 
the box, and went back to the supplier the same day, but otherwise the 
only problem is that sometimes they "hang" and need to be power-cycled; 
I sometimes get a phonecall about this about a month after 
installation. I can now get them up & running in just a few minutes (I 
connect my laptop by RJ45 cable for the initial configuration, set the 
ADSL username & password and wireless settings, then I can copy & paste 
the WEP key into the laptop's "Connect to Airport network" dialogue 
box) and my customers are frequently impressed by how quickly I can 
demonstrate that I have wireless internet working.

I really like the web interface on the Netgears - it's simple to use 
and intuitive, much much better than the D-Link one. On their ADSL 
router units they have a "setup wizard" which will have the Internet 
side of things up in about 90 seconds, and cabled clients need no more 
configuration than that. They also support, I think, dynamic DNS 
services like DynDNS.org, informing servers when your IP address 
changes, and have "firewall" and other nice features.

This is not a criticism of Sylvester's post, just a counterpoint of my 
experiences,

Stroller.


On Dec 29, 2004, at 5:12 pm, Sylvester Roque wrote:
> ...
> I have avoided Netgear lately as a royal pain. I had one that would 
> periodically "go blind" and not be able to see any pages on the net. 
> They replaced it with a second one that within a month had the same 
> problem. The entire process took three or four calls to tech support 
> each requiring over an hour and a level two technician just for some 
> basic troubleshooting.
>
> Sylvester Roque nyles at cp-tel.net
>
> On Dec 29, 2004, at 2:56 AM, 
> x4u-request at listserver.themacintoshguy.com wrote:
>
>> OK folks. My wireless router just died. I have dealt with being unable
>> to print locally long enough.
>> ...
>> I really have no need for an Airport base station, and I need more
>> ports than the Airport Express has. So I'm going 3rd party. Anyone 
>> have
>> a good suggestion? D-Link? Linksys? Netgear?