Recommendations for stable, fast, good range Wireless-G router

Hello,

I have been using an D-Link DGL-4300 for a couple of years with add-on D-Link 4dBi antenna for my home network. Up until recently it has been working nicely, stable, fast enough, with range to certain parts of the house and a garage apt. being the only limitations.

But now I am seeing dropped connections and strange behavior from it where either the wireless signal drops out - or the router gets locked up or bogged down and the internet connection drops or becomes very sluggish.

At first I thought it was my cable connection, but I've had technicians out on 2 different occasions to check everything. They brought the signal down a bit with a splitter (it was too high) and swapped out the cable modem to be sure... but everything now checks out very well on their end.

I have a couple of wired devices on the net, an NAS and a Windows box - and several wireless connections (an Apple Airport Express hooked to my stereo for streaming iTunes, a wireless Tivo, and two laptops - one Mac and one PC). We also have two iPhones that jump on the network throughout the day.

Everything is set up for wireless G access only on the network. Currently using WEP, but I plan on moving it all over to WPA soon (once I get these problems resolved).

So, after much troubleshooting, swapping cables, moving things around, reconfiguring the router, etc. I decided to try another router. Having had good luck with D-Link up to this point in time, I decided to give the DIR-655N a try.

After about 4-5 days of screwing around with it... it was also unstable and was demonstrating some of the same frustrating connection drops and lockups. I returned it to the store, did some more research and decided to go with the WRT54GL/Tomato solution (using the latest 1.19 firmware).

This is what I am running at the moment, but it has since locked up twice over the last couple of days for no apparent reason. The latest one requiring me to cut the power and reboot. During this time, the cable modem stayed online and appeared be fine.

As part of the troubleshooting process working with the different routers, I did some ping tests on both routers and the DGL-4300 appears to have some issues with many of the response times in the triple digits (settings were default factory). This router used to run beautifully. I'm now wondering if its in the process of dying on me.

The WRT54GL didn't have the ping issue and responds quickly, but I'm not convinced that it is going to be a stable solution for me based on the last two lock ups.

The default range on the WRT54GL leaves something to be desired in my situation and appears to be noticeably less than what I had on the DGL-4300 set up when it was working. I've played around with increasing the power output on the WRT54GL in the Tomato settings, but I'm wary of running it too high thinking that it might cause more issues than it solves.

The WRT54GL also does not have the gigabit ports that the DGL-4300 has. I can live without those if the router is going to be stable and perform well otherwise - but they would certainly be nice.

So... does anyone have any insight into what might be going on here? Could it be something about my set up... the demand I'm putting on the router with the various devices... or is there a router solution better suited for my needs?

Can anyone recommend a rock solid, high performance wireless-g router with good range (and possibly gigabit ports)?

Thank you,
John

 

Hi Jay,

Thanks for the reply. I should have been more explicit in my post, the WRT54GL is a Linksys router. Based on the research I did, it is one of the more high rated and popular models out there (although I'm sure some will differ on that).

John

 

Thanks Ddeere2.

I am running 3rd party firmware on the Linksys. Tomato v1.19.

I've been experimenting with increasing the power raange settings slightly up from the default 42mW, and have recently added some high gain 7dBi antennas.

We'll see if it makes a difference on the strength of the wireless signals.

 

I've got the band pretty spaced out from the neighbor's channels, but there probably is some cordless phone interference in the house.

Do you know how to tell what frequency a cordless phone is on? ie. 2.4xxx?

 

Thanks for the info RadioRaiders. I'll look into the receive sensitivity in terms of the range issue.

I think I've narrowed down what is locking up the routers, and it appears to be the ethernet card on a system that is hooked up directly to it. Its a RealTek gigabit card which had been working fine for quite a while. But recently appears to have started causing issue with the router after it has been connected for about a day or two.

When I reboot that or unplug the system, the problems seem to go away. So I've reverted to the built in 10/100 adapter on the motherboard and things are running pretty smoothly now.

The only issue I've seen was once after using a VPN client on a wireless connection to connect to an external network, the Linksys seemed to lock up in a similar way. It hasn't happened since then though.

FWIW, the Tomato firmware seems very solid and nice in my time with it so far. Unless its causing the above mentioned VPN issue (and I don't think it is), then I'd whole-heartedly recommend it.

I've also replaced my 2.4 cordless with a newer 6.0 band phone. We'll see if it makes a difference.

John