Belkin!

In the words of Billy Gibbons, "I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole".

I know their routers are performing better than they used to but, I've seen so many problems with them, I wouldn't dare trust one.


I did a bit of forum trawling and, as Netgear seem to have gone downhill a bit, decided to throw out the budget and buy something still held in reasonably high regard.

It is very nice, extremely easy to set up, and looks very sleek.

I need to figure out a way to secure my wireless though, looking at the traffic on my line, the other week, someone had obviously cracked my encryption. One of our laptops is limited to 128 WEP, while the others have WPA.

Am I right in thinking you can lock down the wireless, so it will only allow access by specific laptop IDs, rather than just rely on a WEP key?

Draytek FTW

I've got a belking N1 Vision at home (as it looked nice) and after the latest firmware update works like a charm, although for work we only install Drayteks

Yeah, you can filter by MAC address, and you can also limit the number of hosts who can connect. Definitely do both.

Ah yes, thats what I was trying to get at.

Thanks Nick.

...Or you could have no security at all, and hide your SSID.

Err no, that would mean your network is 100% unsecured.

Definitely don't do that.

Update.

I've returned the Linksys router. It got incredibly hot and started acting up.
It was also very picky when supporting more than one laptop wirelessly.

After such a promising start, it turned out to be quite a let down.

Anyway, I've taken a chance on a Netgear DGN2000.

It was even quicker to set up than the Linksys, no fiddly issues with multiple laptops and doesn't get anywhere near as warm. It was nice to see that it didn't put up a fight connecting to other manufacturer's networking kit - my one concern.

Regards

Spreadie

I've bought, at different times, and for different purposes, three different Linksys models which were DOA and were returned either for a refund or replacement. All have had a disappointing feature set (e.g. some models unable to assign IPs to MACs) or flaky firmware (e.g. DHCP fails when IP/MAC assignment is used).

I won't buy Linksys again.