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Old 7th November, 2005, 01:25 PM
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fantomfreq fantomfreq is offline
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I would try to stay away from D-Link as a company for routers. I have an older D-Link router at my house and it will do just fine for a while and then for a week or two just randomly D/C all the computers on it for no real reason. The Linksys I've got here has never ever given me a problem ever. Linksys is the company name that Cisco uses to put out consumer products, so you're pretty much guaranteed something good if you go with them.

I've got the perennial favorite WRT54G, which is the best-selling wireless router ever to my recollection. Interestingly enough, it runs on an imbedded version of linux and can potentially be flashed to a fully-functional linux box if you so desire. I got mine for $40 US after a couple $10 mail-in rebates.

That link you post points to a router with 'Super G,' supposedly giving twice as much bandwidth as an 102.11g router. Don't believe this; it's all marketing hype and D-Link lost a class-action lawsuit over these claims in the past year or so.

Also, Danrock is right in saying that MIMO will give you a better signal and a longer range. If you've got a huge house you might need this, but I've found that a regular router works fine in my house. Keep in mind that MIMO will cost you a good chunk of extra money.

In the end, it's all up to personal preference. You can get routers that will enable the whole household to share one computer or ones that will allow you to attach a USB hard drive to create network-attached storage. As far as wireless cards for your computer go, stick with something PCI and stay away from the USB stuff. The USB junk might be more convenient but it will limit range and is generally just not as reliable.
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