Wireless router group test

No draytek, billion or even linksys. Disappointing. It would've also been nice to throw in a cisco for comparison to "enterprise" level routers.

 

This is about the first review on here that I've found really dissapointing.

There's some major routers missing from the test, all of the features of the routers are not outlined, and the tests are very basic to say the least! It also seems like the author doesn't have a full knowledge of networking in order to fully review these devices.

 

They mentioned iso's and bittorrents in part of the review is that not piracy ? Half the routers on the market where not their it was a pretty pish review.

 

Bittorrents and ISOs are the best way to get FOSS software like Archos source code and Linux Distributions.

 

I thought it was as good as a router review can get. Many magazine publications barely touch on real-world performance. Surely it's a good thing to see bit-tech reviewing products that we'd otherwise overlook? It's impossible to review every router out there too.

 

Anyone here tried the RouterTech 3rd-party firmware?
Gives way more functionality than the original firmwares and seems very reliable.

I used it on a cheap £30 wireless DSL router modem from ebuyer and it rocks!
Bought one for my mrs for her new place and its been running solidly since I installed the RouterTech firmware.

I'd say its every bit as good as my Netgear DG834PN and is better than the DG834N we had at work for about a quarter of the price.

Can't fault it yet personally but would love to see it put through its paces in a test like this!
Hell, I'd likely be up for sending you my other-half's one to test if you wanted?

 

I have the RouterTech firmware on a Safecom router, and DD-WRT on my WRT54G(L)'s. The third party firmwares are truely excellent, and the additional functionality now available on the WRT is astounding, way exceeds the features a router could give you for less than £200. The Safecom used to drop the connection every month or so, but the RouterTech firmware has stopped that, not that it was much of a problem anyway. Never managed to crash the WRT54G, and only suffered one problem where it stopped working - but that was one of the dodgy SMPSU's that were doing the rounds. They've now seen the light and provide proper PSU's with transformers in them.

 

In the article it states a couple of times that there was a linksys router connected to the tested router... So there was a double NAT for those pc's? Or was it just a switch that was added?

 

Switch

 

@ the Bit staff

You guys think you would be able to try out a wireless router running the RouterTech firmware?
I know I would love to see the open-source routertech firmware stacked against the likes of Netgear, Linksys etc.

 

Wired all the way... I dont trust wireless for neither security nor speed and reliability.

 

Bump.

 

YES!!

I'm so glad its not just me!! We have this very router, my XP/Vista box wired in upstairs, our Linux MythTV box in the living room wired (which is also our bittorrent client) and we both have laptops that wirelessly connect.

Bittorrent runs, but when its finished, and i turn on my laptop or reboot my PC, i get 'acquiring network address' in windows, and the maddest DNS errors in my system log on my linux laptop. Bizarre - we tried updating the firmware to a linux based one, third-party, but it died, and we had to short two pins on a flash chip on the circuit board, just to flash the rom and reload the original firmware.

Its a shame, cos the wireless strength is really good, and although a reboot of the router sorts it, its just a shame that its completely useless in the long run - every tuesday we download 24 and heroes, and it involves rebooting the router without fail, not somethingi like doing. especially when its for unknown dns problems i'd prefer to hunt down and fix.

 

you might wanna check out DD-WRT - apparently that is much better

 

DD-WRT

Yup! I'm using DD-WRT on my Linksys WRT54G (v3.1) router and it kicks ass. You got simple VPN server (PPTP) if you need to, you can add as many port forward entries as there is available memory, you do site surveys, check signal quality of connected wireless clients, it has a much better design of the administration web pages.

DD-WRT turns your cheap WRT into something worth a lot more.

www.dd-wrt.com

TRY IT!