[Sagitario]

I loved my small, light, linksys WRT54GC router ever since I laid eyes on it, but the love song didn't last much.

I don't know if everybody has this problem, but my experience almost every linksys router I've used is that the internet connection at some point freezes. You stop receiving data at some point everytime you connect. I then have to go into the router's settings web page and refresh the IP's so that it can renew the connection. At first I thought it was the cable modem and then my laptop or my phone, but all of these work well with other router brands.

I used it for two months and once I got an unlimited data plan from my phone provider, I simply canned it.

[Sagitario]

I loved my small, light, linksys WRT54GC router ever since I laid eyes on it, but the love song didn't last much.

I don't know if everybody has this problem, but my experience almost every linksys router I've used is that the internet connection at some point freezes. You stop receiving data at some point everytime you connect. I then have to go into the router's settings web page and refresh the IP's so that it can renew the connection. At first I thought it was the cable modem and then my laptop or my phone, but all of these work well with other router brands.

I used it for two months and once I got an unlimited data plan from my phone provider, I simply canned it.

[Eriq Cook]

I've had to replace 4 linksys WRT54G routers at my house over 3 years (I'm not counting my customers). They seem to have a 1 to 1/2 year life span before crapping out.

I just replaced my 4th linksys router 2 days ago as a matter of fact. I was surfing the web and all of a sudden my Internet went out. After 30 minutes of troubleshooting (it took shorter this time because I've been through it before) I narrowed it down to the router once again and replaced with a spare (brand new version 8) WRT54G.

Don't even think about the Linksys Wireless G with Speedbooster technology. Those are the flakiest wireless routers I've used to date.

[intothevoid]

I just recently bought the Buffalo Nfiniti Router WZR2-300N and it works really great. I bought this in place of my Linksys WTR54G v8 which i bought a little over a month ago but it kept going down. With the Linksys my wifi kept going down and i had to power cycle it almost everyday and sometimes if my laptop and my wifes were both on it was dying more frequently. The Buffalo has been really great except My Tmobile Wing is unable to connect to it no matter what I have tried: no security, wep, wpa and it doesn't connect at all. It sees the router but when i try to connect it goes into unavailable and i have to reset the phone to see more access points. The buffalo router had great reviews and does work great. I have 2 laptops and nintendo wii over wifi. And i have my desktop, slingbox, vonage router and the linksys wifi router hard wired.
The linksys was compatible with my phone so I hooked it back up to the buffalo for now. I contacted buffalo about this but they couldn't figure out what the problem was and told me to call HTC or tmobile or microsoft. I also noticed other people having this problem with Kaiser's on xda developers. This is really sad. I think i am gonna return this and try to get the new buffalo router with the dd wrt firmware built in and it doesn't support QOS which sucks.

[laner]

It seems like the quality of the drivers for the wireless cards going into laptops has gone down the drain. We've had real issues with the wifi cards Dell is selling in the D620 & D630s. It doesn't matter if it's the Intel or the Broadcomm based ones they both have issues. It seems like they don't have any tolerance to much latency. We never had this with the older generation of cards that went into the D600 & D610 laptops. I'm mainly connecting with Aruba and Jumiper gear. I've recently changed to an Atheros based card, the GigaByte GN-WI01GT and it's made a world of difference. It is connecting quicker, doesn't drop, and better signal strength. There are rooms in my house that the stock cards wouldn't connect in to save my sole, now it's no problem.

[Russ Smith]

It would be nice to have some real numbers to work with. I can believe that the "need" to drive prices downward (competition) has resulted in less quality control over time. It almost always does. While I haven't experienced the issues some of you have, I don't discount them either. I have a DLink DIR-655 myself and it's been rock-solid since I got it. (I love being able to transfer files at GigaBit speeds ) I tend to keep up on the firmware releases so that may help a bit. We've got a Hackintosh and a Vista box wire-connected and a Lenovo laptop, hx4700, and Palm T/X connecting wirelessly, all without issues. None of the wireless connections support WiFi N even though the router does. That might help a bit. (N is still draft as someone pointed out.)

What is weird is range. The hx4700 gets a connection three houses away (about 300 feet). The Lenovo and Palm only work within the house. Go figure.

As an aside, I also have a Linksys WRT54GC (Compact G router) that I take along on trips. It's never failed me either, but it's hardly in constant use.

[Shredder11]

Originally Posted by Tracy Daubenspeck

I had nothing but trouble with dlink hardware for several years. I switched to a Belkin 7230 several years ago and have 0 complaints. We use WM devices, an N800, and multiple laptops from different manufacturers with no problems. I think a lot of the issues are firmware on the routers and drivers on the PCs.

I've only owned one router since May 2005 and that is the Belkiin F5D7230uk4 which I assume is the same model as yours. Suffice to say my experience has been a really good one. Rock solid day in..day out and is on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I have a Synology DS-101j NAS Server connected to it, along with two wired desktop PCs, a Mio 168 Pocket PC WM2003 with a Sandisk WiFi+256MB SDIO card. My sister connects her Acer Aspire laptop quickly and easily with no problems too.

So you would think that my next choice of router would be simple? If only it was! Every Belkin I have looked into on the net has had endless comments from users with problems, usually unsolved and quite often related to ADSL models. The same can be said of most other brands, except for.....Draytek. They cost a lot more than your average router but so far I have not seen, read or experienced any problems with them. They are more highly specified and work in environments where reliability and compatibility really matter, i.e. business and servers etc.

So although my experience of routers is fair to average, I can say with confidence that my next purchase will quite likely be a Draytek model.