getting the right wireless router

[XiL Puscifer]

I have bellsouth dsl and the westell wireless router that has to be reset every time I want to use the internet.The wireless router is about 3 years old and I have spent hours on the phone with bellsouth ever since I got internet but it's my only choice where I live. I want to try a new router and i've been researching and I would like some mac-owners ideas.
My set-up-

1 mbpro upstairs
1 dell laptop upstairs
2 x-box 360's downstairs
1 dell desktop downstairs


The router has to be downstairs so I can get my 360's connected straight to it.
I get a good enough signal upstairs on both computers as it is. I almost came to the conclusion that the Dlink 4500 would be my best choice until I read their forums and realized they were having problems with their firmware.The thing sounded perfect, fast speeds, gaming priority,strong signal. well my question is this- is there anybody who has a similar situation
that could say whether airport extreme would do well for me?

 

[Tomorrow]

802.11 G or N? Or both?

I've had bad luck with every D-Link product I've ever owned; others have had better experiences with them.

The speed is pretty much based on the protocol; 802.11G is pretty much going to run at the same speed no matter who makes the router. You'll hear about Speedboost and stuff like that, but that technology uses compression and pretty much only works between like-branded hardware (say, Netgear wi-fi adapter to Netgear router) and thus won't make a difference with Dell, Apple, etc. hardware.

I'm assuming you're going to hard wire your Xboxes to the router; so wireless technology and speed are unaffected. So is "gaming priority" - this just lets you set one or more ports to have priority over others; it's not likely to make a noticeable difference in performance.

My advice to you is to get pretty much any brand-name router - Netgear, Linksys, Airport Extreme, Time Capsule, etc. They all work well for what you're trying to do.