Recommendations for better Broadband modem

[yesthattom]

I'm so *fucking* sick and tired of my D-Link DI-714 4-port hub with Wireless access / NAT box. It loses connections constantly. They rarely update the software. The proxying for IRC sucks, and there is no YIM proxy at all.

The major problem, however, is that it loses TCP connections constantly and the wireless support is barely functional.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a replacement that doesn't suck? Maybe I should just buy the new Apple Airport Extreme.

QUICK POLL: Do you prefer SMC or Linksys?

Comments

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Hm. I wouldn't trust D-Link or SMC for anything important, most of the time. Linksys are okay...

I have a Motorola cable modem, and it's been pretty decent so far. Of course, I have no idea what your provider supports...

The Apple Airport is a really really nice base station-- it's got a good configuration system (a useful GUI, from Apple-- go figure!) If it'll talk to your cable provider or cable modem properly, go for it. I've had one for a year or so, and while its modem has issues with ISPs that like to give non-standard error codes (like RCN, say) the ethernet support has been great, with two people on IRC and SSH and stuff basically constantly...

[slinkr.livejournal.com]

I've been running my home wireless network off an SMC box for the past two years with no problems.

[pir.livejournal.com]

I've got a chunk of SMC gear that Just Works (wired and wireless). The linksys wireless gear has a really bad rep in many circles, I won't touch linksys gear (any of it) with a bargepole anymore (what little I've had broke really badly or wouldn't negotiate or other bad things).

The apple airport may be really nice, but it's also three times the price of most anything else.

One bit of SMC wireless gear that has a known problem is a couple of revs of the wireless barricade, but the stand alone SMC base stations I have (one base station will not cover my whole house properly) have been working fine for the last couple of years.

[ceo]

I don't have wireless, but I have a Linksys firewall/NAT/4-port switch box that I'm very happy with. It's never given me a problem, just sits on a shelf in the basement and is blue.

SMC.

[arfur]

I wouldn't go near a linksys.

I have a SMC7004VWBR (Wireless broadband router) - it's a NAT box, 4-port hub, and wireless access point all in one. Pretty good configuration system, etc.

I also have a SMC 802.11b NIC.

At first, the two often dropped connections to each other, or else got poor enough signal that they might as well have. However, since I don't have any other wireless NICs to test against, I don't know whether this is (a) the NAThubAP, (b) the NIC, (c) interference, or (d) something else. I do know that in the past month or so, I've re-oriented the NIC and the AP[1], and the connection has been almost as reliable as wired ethernet.

---

[1] parallel to each other; perpendicular to the line connecting them. See, high school physics is worth something, after all! :-)

[fj.livejournal.com]

I think there is something to be said for a certain level of decoupling, which is why my hub is separate from my wireless access point, whish is separte from the DSL modem I got when I signed up for DSL. I don't trust vendors to get both very spectacularly right, and I'd like to update one without the other.

Linksys router, some cheap Taiwanese Access point I bought off eBay. Seems to be working, including serving up the content on the webserver.

[entirelysonja.livejournal.com]

We rent the cable modem from our cable company. We just switched cable companies, so now we're using a 3COM; before, it was a Motorola.

For wireless, NAT, etc. we use a Linksys 4-port switch/wireless hub; we used to use an Apple Airport until it died. The only issue we've had with the Linksys is that it wasn't compatible with the Cisco VPN 3000 software when we first switched to the new VPN (we'd been using the 5000 before), but Linksys released an update and all was well. It would probably have worked even before that if we hadn't wanted to use the VPN with multiple wireless laptops using NAT. (What we did instead was keep using the VPN 5000, since the hardware hadn't been decommissioned yet, sticking our heads in the sand until the murky distant future when we would be forced to switch to the 3000. :-)

I haven't had any other issues with the Linksys; it's been extremely stable. I haven't tried to use any IRC clients with it, so I can't comment on that. We're a Macintosh-only household, so I have no comment about its performance with any kind of PC networking standards. It's been fine with any Macintosh networking things we've done, though, like printer and file sharing.

what did you end up with

[salliesandbags.livejournal.com]

recently i purchased a netgear 4port nat, etc RP614.

i've been having sporadic drops which result in being kicked out of whatever i'm sshing into. it's new behavior since the purchase, last thursday.

Re: what did you end up with

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

I got an SMC WiFi plus 3 port switch.

I'm very happy with it. No problems since I installed it.