Router.

[A. Crow]

Ok, back in 2006 I walked into the walmart in my college town and bought the cheapest wireless router I could find.  A tiny little DLink- it had shit for range (which I was actually looking for as I was very near campus living over a restaurant and didn't want my wifi accessible to everyone) As it stands, my router is at the extreme back end of my apartment, and the PS3 at the front gets... OK signal. 

Shortly, I'm going to want coverage on a bigger area. 

I also recently pulled the trigger on a USB 3.0 4tb external to use as NAS.  So I'd like a router with a USB 3.0 port (if such a thing exists).

The Dark Knight is currently sitting around $150... and it's very tempting to just pull the trigger on that, I saw the AC model available for right around that price too on sale earlier this week. But neither of them have USB 3.0

so, sub $200 with a USB 3.0 port.

Thoughts? 

 

[HeK]

Asus routers are generally pretty good. $150 isn't bad for a router.

[A. Crow]

yeah, but it used to be $30 wasn't bad for a router.  And I think I paid all of $20 for my current one. 

[HeK]

yeah, but it used to be $30 wasn't bad for a router.  And I think I paid all of $20 for my current one. 

It all comes down to features and performance for price.
You are getting a IPv6 compatible wifi router with MIMO support and gigabit ports for $150. File sharing, media server and BitTorrent client.
256mb ram, print server, 3G compatible with a dongle, hell it can even setup a second guest wifi network for your visitors.

Too bad the USB ports are still only 2.0

However, USB 2.0 has a maximum bandwidth of 480mbit/s, the MIMO 802.11n on the Dark Knight is limited to 450mbit/s.
Unless you are using the 1gbit/s ports, the benefits of USB3 are not there.


Dlink does make an 802.11ac router with USB3, but I wouldn't touch Dlink.

[A. Crow]

I'm going to be throwing one or two powerline networking points in there to avoid running cable, too.  I've only seen the adapters up to 500 mbps, maybe I can squeak by without the usb 3.0 ports.    Nevermind.

What do you think of this guy?

Internal antennas make me slightly sad. 

[HeK]

I know of a bunch of people with the N65U, not a single complaint of any of them.
I've been at a restaurant which uses a single N65U to serve wifi to their customers. It was quick.


It's funny that the N65U actually advertises that it supports up to 300,000 sessions. Currently my router is running 330 sessions, just sitting idle. That's from all my network connected shit, phone, two desktops, currently one laptop, xbox, bluray, etc. When you actually start doing stuff, it bumps up quickly. Torrents alone can eat up several thousand.

[A. Crow]

we might have a winner then... now to wait for a sale

[A. Crow]

Ah... they've made an AC version... but it's not on sale yet... hmmmm

[Eightball]

Hijacking/necro'ing because: My router is being a piece of fucking shit.

This is the third or fourth consecutive night where I've had my work interrupted because my router's wireless network decides to shit itself. Speeds drop to being essentially unusable. A restart of the router (USUALLY) fixes it, but it happens with astonishing regularity--once per day in the afternoon or evening. I was blaming my ISP until I saw that all of my wired devices were working fine. I'm becoming increasingly, irrationally angry at this thing that costed more than my WRT54GL and delivers crappier performance.

Current settings: WPA security, WPS enabled (whatever that is), mostly automatic channel settings. Firmware is up to date (factory default; ASUS), though I'm pretty close to installing DD-WRT or TomatoUSB.

Too bad there isn't a scheduled reboot feature.

[HeK]

Too bad there isn't a scheduled reboot feature.

You can with DD-WRT

But really, load the WRT.

Don't use auto-channel. Either use 1 or the lowest channel that is not in use by neighbors. Software like inSSIDer can be used to survey your home.
If your wired connections continue to work but your wireless connections suffer, you are possibly experiencing interference from neighbors... or your radio shit the bed.