Welch wrote:Well I've just about had it with Linksys. It seems like every time we put one in place, 2 years or so down the road it ends up resetting itself at random intervals and/or losing settings all together. These latest ones were the Linksys/Cisco branded Business class Security Routers with VPN support. Utter crap~!
So, its time to adopt a new, much more reliable brand. For those of you who manage networks for small business to larger corporate clients, what do you use? Speaking on my Home front, I finally **** canned the Linksys we had and got a DLink DIR-655 and have loved it, QOS out of box is noticeable as all heck. I'd suggest DLink for our future clients but at the same time have zero experience with their Business/Enterprise class hardware. Anyone have an opinion on them?
Some of the smaller offices we service are dental offices with only a handful of computers, typically 6-10. A few others that we take care of easily have 70-100 computers and rely on their networks (especially their VPN) to communicate across state with their other office for updates on their aircraft's whereabouts and things like that, so reliability is KEY.
I have never had problems with Linksys routers, although I have not purchased any since around the time Cisco purchased Linksys. After that, the new routers were modified to cripple third party firmware and I was happy with my old router. Then in recent years, they made new designs, but I guess the quality is not as good as the original Linksys hardware was before Cisco purchased them. There is no router that gives you everything, but if you are willing to forgo dual-band support, the following router from Asus is the best you can get for under $100:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833320038The router has 128MB of RAM, so even if you are willing to spent $200, you are unlikely to find a router with that amount of RAM. The 32MB of flash it provides is also extremely generous and it is almost as rare to find a router with that much flash, even at a $200 level. Getting something significant better than that would require building your own router with parts intended for desktop computers, which is possible, especially if you have an old system. An old motherboard from recent years, any processor that can go into it, a miniscule amount of RAM, a USB key and a few network interface cards could likely mop the floor with any wireless router available on the market today. If you want to go that route, here are some suggestions for network interface cards.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833122133 - Wired Ethernet for PCI slots
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833106033 - Wired Ethernet for PCI Express slots
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833127219 - Wireless Ethernet for PCI slots
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833320048 - Wireless Ethernet for PCI Express slots
Unfortunately, the 32-bit PCI bus only has enough bandwidth for a maximum symmetric transfer rate of 1064 Mbps across all available PCI slots, so even though you can use multiple gigabit network PCI cards in a single system, you cannot transfer more than 2 gigabits per second through a system using such cards, so while it is difficult to find a motherboard that has all PCI Express slots, I know that some of the motherboards in recent years have a few PCI Express slots and a bunch of PCI slots, so it would probably be best to go with one Realtek gigabit Ethernet PCI card and a bunch of Intel gigabit Ethernet PCI Express cards. It would also probably be best to go with Asus's wireless Ethernet PCI Express card, because the PCI-Express Asus option is based off a chip from Ralink, so it should not support any of the non-standard proprietary garbage that companies like Atheros and Broadcomm introduced into the market, unlike the PCI D-link option I posted above.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.11_non ... _equipmentDepending on how much spare hardware you have on hand, you might be able to spend less than you would for ready-made router and get something that performs much better. It would of course be much physically larger, but as I said, it is difficult to find something more powerful than the Asus RT-N16 without spending enough that you could build a router yourself with desktop hardware.
Disclaimer: I over-analyze everything, so try not to be offended if I over-analyze something you wrote.