Hi people

Just bought a lappy and want to connect it to the main system, i am on Virgin Media cable broadband,

All i want to do is connect 1 lappy so i can share internet connection, nothing to spectacular but i really have no clue of what to look for in a router

So fire away

WRT-54G series, any of them.

To be blunt, just about anything will do the job these days with the name "router" on them. Once its setup you are rarely going to fiddle.  The price you pay is for the features and ease of use imo.

But to throw a name into the hat it would have to be old faithful DG834G for me.

Quote from: CypherTo be blunt, just about anything will do the job these days with the name "router" on them. Once its setup you are rarely going to fiddle.  The price you pay is for the features and ease of use imo.

Depends, some of the cheaper ones have absolutely terrible signal strength.  The better branded stuff tends to be somewhat more stable as well

QuoteBut to throw a name into the hat it would have to be old faithful DG834G for me.

hes after a Cable Router, not ADSL or i would have suggested that myself.  great little routers for SOHO use.

Sorry, misread.

im looking for a cable router too.

Shame is the atlantic thingy modems they use support up to 32 ip addresses, so if virgin would provide an additional ip address id not have to bother with a damn router, as I have a switch but now... need a router. Gayness.

got a wrt-54g for my brother. Its a great box, except for it lacking  couple of features you might need. But then if youre brave that can be solved by flashing one of the many 3rd part firmwares available for it.

The d-link one that Im using has stood up well for a few years, though theres probably a newer model around now.


One thing I will say is to stay away from Belkin routers. My gf had one at her old house (just a wired router, no wireless) and it needed resetting all the time, and even then it could be iffy. I can only imaging the wireless version being worse.

WRT54-GL, if you need QOS or any of the other features missing from the majority of routers at this sort of price point then DD-WRT or better yet Toamto are fantastic 3rd party firmwares, both also allow you to increase the signal strength of the wifi if required.

be careful about increasing the wifi strength as they could overheat.

Personally I have a WRT54G with OpenWRT on it. Any router running Linux underneath should be fine interms of network performance - mainly due to Linuxs well tested TCP stack

The two I have only tend to fall over if overclocked to unreasonable levels (must get round to putting a heat sink on the cpu at some point), increasing wifi power doesnt *seem* to impact heat much but ive not measured it accurately.