Is their a huge difference between the different brands of routers?
I’m looking at this D-LINK 614 + AirPlus Enhanced 2.4GHz 22Mbps Wireless Broadband Router from eCost.com right now at $26.99 after mail-in rebate.  PCWorld does claim that you can get up to 22 Mbps with the AirPlus adaptor, and they rated it a best buy.

http://www.ecost.com/ecost/shop/detail.asp?dpno=973449

What about Linksys? Belkin? Netgear?

Thanks!  :D

I only use Linksys. I’ve had issues with Belkin and D-Link.

I have the WAP11 now but I am buying the B/G version of their access point this weekend.

Erik

And I’ve had pretty bad issues with my Linksys WiFi/cable router. It took two firmware updates to get the thing to be stable. IME with this sort of equipment you get what you pay for.

Apple Airport Extreme

Wow…were you a very early adaptor? My Linksys came with the most current firmware out of the box. 15 minutes and I was active.

The D-Link was exactly half the price, and my friend bought it and had so many issues getting it to work.

Erik

I’ve had pretty good luck with D-Link so far and bad luck with Linksys. However, I know my incidents are probably not the norm…but what are the odds, I got two defective units in a row.

I’m currently using a Microsoft MN-700 and it’s actually extremely easy to use and can be used as an access point or a wireless router. It doesn’t have all of the features of many other brands but it is a good product for newbies as it’s easy to set it up. It’s probably the easiest one to setup on the entire market.

Speaking of which…every single manufacturer should offer their wireless routers to act simply as access points…it’s essentially the same hardware…instead they “force” you to buy the separate product just so they can make more money.

I bought a BEFW11S4 rev 4 in August. I don’t honestly know when that router was released, but I don’t think I was much of an early adopter. That was just the model that happened to be available at Best Buy when my cable modem came. At that time, the NAT implementation was absolute crap. Unless a computer was set as the “DMZ” machine, most of the TCP connections made would timeout, which was especially annoying downloading large files. That was fixed in early Sept with a firmware upgrade and the main problem I had afterwards was the router deciding it didn’t like being a WiFI AP all of the sudden and needing to be rebooted. The latest firmware patch seems to have made it more stable, but I only discoved it last month. The whole experience (and their ignorant tech support) really soured me towards their gear.

Well, I called ecost and they sold out of those.  Looks like it was a good deal. 

From what you guys are telling me, their is no real consistancy between different brands of routers.  Looks like I’ll just pick one and see what’s best for me. 

Any other experiences?

Apple AirPort Extreme at work and Netgear MR814v2 at home, they work great, look cool, and the Netgear one was only $20. I remember buying the original AirPort Base Station for $300 back in 1999.