gdgt

8.6

A decent router

By bytehead - Dec 16, 2009

My WBR-3210 started dropping the wireless signal, just like that. Wired computers didn't have any issues. The signal would just disappear. Rebooting the router fixed the issue (I even found a widget that allowed me to one click reboot instead of going through the browser and logging in), although there were times when a hard reboot was needed. So I bought this one on after looking at some reviews.

It worked out of the box, no problem. But the next day, my cable modem was flaking out. Putting the old router back on seemed to cure everything. I replaced it with another one, which again, was fairly easy to setup (I should have saved the settings, it would have been even easier!). Not even 8 hours in, it started doing the same thing, and again, I swapped out the old router. The next day, I decided to see if I could see when it was happening. I set it up, and even the next day it was working just fine (and has been since, I haven't rebooted it since, which is about four weeks now). The difference now? I routed a cable underneath it (didn't even notice it when it happened), and evidently the airflow increased just enough to cool things off so that it doesn't freak out the cable modem.

My wired desktop has actually increased in throughput. I haven't heard any issues with the wireless users either.

The latest software is nice in that while setting it up, you can defer rebooting until when you've completed it. And the reboot time is much shorter than my previous D-Link.

I have always ran an open AP. I've had bad luck in setting up WPA2, dealing with some old devices that ONLY support WEP, and with WEP being cracked so easily now, I just leave it open. This router allows you to set up a guest AP SSID (on a schedule no less), so now I'm actually contemplating locking down the main SSID, instead of just leaving both SSIDs open now.

I'd do a little more comprehensive testing if I hadn't bricked my laptop doing a BIOS update, so now I just have a desktop. :-O