Home Wireless Routers
Posted on January 30, 2008
Filed Under Hardware |
A lot of people ask what’s a good wireless router? I’ll share my experience with home wireless routers.
I bought my first wireless router 2 years ago. I researched the web looking for reviews and recommendations. I found a few wireless routers with 4 out of 5 stars with 100 or more ratings. The strange thing about the reviews was some reviews were really bad. I couldn’t help but wonder why were there 10-15% bad reviews while the rest were very good???? Is this a quality product??? How do you really know???
I ended up buying a Linksys wireless G router. It was easy to setup and worked well for about 6 months. I noticed that my laptop was loosing the wireless connection. I had to reconnect it. This happened once a week at first then became more frequent. I rebooted the router but it didn’t fix the situation. I remembered one of the attorneys at a law firm I worked for had the same identical problem. He also had a Linksys wireless G router. I tried everything I could think of to remedy the situation but it only got worse. I would loose my wireless connection every time I used the laptop. This was real pain. This was definitely not a reliable wireless router.
I went shopping once again. I read hundreds of reviews and finally decided to buy the D-Link Xtreme N Gigabit Wireless Router. It was the highest rated wireless gaming router. It was said to be extremely fast and reliable. I had purchased various devices from D-Link in the past and they always worked well. I had owned D-Link cable modems, switches, hubs and KVM’s. They all worked really well. So I thought this would be a good choice.
I ordered the D-Link wireless router from Amazon.com. They had the best price and I’ve purchased a lot of items from Amazon and trust them. When I tried to install the software for the router, Windows Vista would not launch the install.exe file. It looked like there was a permission issue. I could not get the install file to run even when I ran the file as the administrator. Windows Vista is totally different from Windows XP and Windows 2000. I played with it for a little while and then decided to setup the router manually. I plugged the router in and hooked up the LAN cable. Then I launched my browser. I typed in the default IP Address and I was in. Pretty easy. Forget about the setup software, it’s not needed. I like to get stuff done. Don’t forget to power your cable modem off when you’re done configuring the router. Reboot everything and then you’ll be set.
The D-Link Xtreme N Gigabit wireless router is working well and seems to be faster than the Linksys router. I don’t loose the wireless connection either. This seems to be a well made device with plenty of features. It’s easy to setup and configure and reasonably priced at $125.00.