Recommended Router

[RichardB]

My mate is on ISDN at home but is upgrading to ADSL in a couple of weeks. He wants to get a router to share the modem with the other computers in his house. Can anybody recommend a good router at a decent price, or does anybody have a suitable one for sale?

Cheers,

Richard

[jibber]

bosch do some nice ones, try machine mart, bit dear tho, around the £200 mark for a nice one.:D

[Jeedai]

I'm with Blueyonder and I use a LinkSys BEFSR41 - This has 4 LAN ports and can connect to my modem through a WAN port as well. It literally takes 5 minutes to get it set and up and running!

It wasn't the cheapest one on the market but I bought it from Amazon (59.99 UKP when I bought it - it is now 49.99UKP!) who replaced my first faulty one immediately without any quibbling. I can't fault Amazon for their customer services when replacing items that are DOA. Ebuyer (£46.77 UKP) do a cheaper version but the quality of the products they ship and their customer services when trying to send back faulty products leave a lot to be desired!

If you want to connect to other PCs around your house, a couple of my friends use a wireless Linksys router which is the mutt nuttz, but is a bit more expensive! No need to drag cables through walls and up the stairs! If I needed a new router then I would get a wireless router along with a few wireless network cards - The latest versions are more than fast enough to cope with broadband download speeds.

It should be said that my modem uses a network card socket - I know some ADSL services use a USB port to connect to the Internet so this may ned to be checked.

Sorry to keep banging on about this, but it is the best piece of kit I have bought this year. It is great for network gaming as well! I can't tell you how many hours I've spent playing games on the internet. For more info on this router:

http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?prid=20&grid=5

Hope this helps:)

[voodoo_melon]

I've got a Linksys befsr41 too, very easy and quick to set up, I'd definitely recommend it.

As for wireless, if you're going to be transferring a lot of stuff pc-pc over the network it'll be a lot slower than cables although as Jeedai Hunter said for Internet it'll make no difference (wireless is 11mbit, cable/adsl is .5-1mbit)

[Nathan_200sx]

Netgear do some nice kit with a built in firewall, Im using a Solwise router at home. It only has one ethernet port though so I uplink to a netgear hub, very easy to set up and get running.

[Yak]

Im using a NexLand Pro 400 at work and it seems fairly good. Lets you do a fare amount of stuff with it and it hassnt totaly confused me :p

[Yak]

This one may be handy if he hasnt got a modem yet....

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?SupplierID=9&ProductID=158

[SteveDunn]

Netgear DG814 (http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=34058) is what i use, just a case of plugging in and going, as it has an inbuilt ADSL modem, and 4 10/100 ports aswell.

Perfect for a small network :)

[tubstar]

I am using a zoom x3 which is pretty good. But have always gone with linksys until this. You cant really go wrong with them. Having said that Belkin have just reduced their prices at PC World and you get a lifetime warrenty with most of their thing nowadays.

Cheers, Alex.

[Wak]

Originally posted by jibber
bosch do some nice ones, try machine mart, bit dear tho, around the £200 mark for a nice one.:D

:D PML:D

I think the computer bods didn't get that or chose to ignore it :D

[yeager]

if you want something super configurable and very secure...

www.freebsd.org
www.openbsd.org
www.netbsd.org

I've got one running on a 486 DX4 100 with 32mb RAM and a 1 gig disk in it, in a performance test it was as quick as my 2600 Cisco :)

[RichardB]

Cheers for the replies guys.

My mate has looked through the posts and is still deciding what to get. Looked into the old 486 as a router option but I dont think his parents want another computer knocking about. Its the noise from the fans etc that pisses you off innit. Some of the routers are pretty cheap anyway so might aswell get something small and decreet.

Cheers,

Richard