Router Recommendations uk, Netgear?

[sarah3585]

Hi,

Looking for a router for ADSL O2 BB 8meg. We have 2 macs and a dell. We live in a 2 bedroom flat that will need to have a good signal in all rooms but they are quite close together.

Been looking into the Netgear DG834G or DG834GT. Seem to pick them up on ebay for £30 but concerned about getting the sky one.

Thanks

 

[techound1]

This is strictly my personal experience, but netgears have always ended up having issues for me and I simply quit considering them. Linksys, on the other hand, have been pretty solid (albeit a bit more expensive).

 

[emac82]

Linksys has always been very good to me as well. Well worth the extra $$..

 

[blimeyoriley]

Time Capsule - Never failed for me !! Plus you can use it as a Time Machine backup drive, if you have Leopard !!

 

[sublunar]

Hi,

Looking for a router for ADSL O2 BB 8meg. We have 2 macs and a dell. We live in a 2 bedroom flat that will need to have a good signal in all rooms but they are quite close together.

Been looking into the Netgear DG834G or DG834GT. Seem to pick them up on ebay for £30 but concerned about getting the sky one.

Thanks

I have owned both of the models you mention. I understand the Sky version is customised only to work with Sky so avoid it if you can. I have heard of some people flashing the firmware to a standard Netgear firmware but it's not worth doing if you aren't happy with how this is done. Look out for offers from time to time at places like PC World as the price can come down greatly. The DG834G is commonly available new for under £50 online.

The user interface is very good and the firewall is quite flexible. There are cheaper ADSL/Wireless modems around so I would do more research but my vote is with the Netgear if I were buying now.

The DG834GT adds a non standard 802.11g-based Netgear only turbo wireless standard which no Mac supports so there's little point in having it if you intend to use Macs on the wireless network as the whole network will throttle back to 802.11g.

The only thing to watch for is overheating. If the unit is used on its side using the plastic stand clips that comes with new units you should be OK.

 

[sarah3585]

I have owned both of the models you mention. I understand the Sky version is customised only to work with Sky so avoid it if you can. I have heard of some people flashing the firmware to a standard Netgear firmware but it's not worth doing if you aren't happy with how this is done. Look out for offers from time to time at places like PC World as the price can come down greatly. The DG834G is commonly available new for under £50 online.

The user interface is very good and the firewall is quite flexible. There are cheaper ADSL/Wireless modems around so I would do more research but my vote is with the Netgear if I were buying now.

The DG834GT adds a non standard 802.11g-based Netgear only turbo wireless standard which no Mac supports so there's little point in having it if you intend to use Macs on the wireless network as the whole network will throttle back to 802.11g.

The only thing to watch for is overheating. If the unit is used on its side using the plastic stand clips that comes with new units you should be OK.

Thanks for your help. So there are no benefits to having the GT if you are on a mac? What about online 360/PS3/Wii gaming?

Anyone know if O2 supply a router?

 

[Slippery Gimp]

I agree with sublunar: I just cancelled my Sky broadband & tv and my Sky branded router is now useless as it will only work with Sky. I need to buy a new one now, probably get the Airport Extreme.

It was the GT I had and I had my iMac and my PS3 both using it, and had medialink to stream stuff from Mac to PS3 as well.

 

[sublunar]

DG834GT not worth having for Mac users

Thanks for your help. So there are no benefits to having the GT if you are on a mac? What about online 360/PS3/Wii gaming?

Anyone know if O2 supply a router?

O2 do supply a router but I don't know what model offhand (although I have briefly looked at one). It has 4 LAN ports and it's wireless so you should be able to get 802.11g but I can't comment on how good the firewall (if there is one) is.

The XBox 360, PS3 and Wii only support standard 802.11g which runs at 54MBps (theoretically). IIRC the Netgear turbo standard bonds a couple of available wireless channels together to achieve what they call 108MBps which is in reality about a 25% increase in transmission speed and a slight increase in range in some cases but only if all units in the network are using relevant adaptors (which Macs don't have at all).

In real terms you have to have matching Netgear 108MBps 'turbo' adaptors running within a completely Windows PC network to get the speed increase. If you were to introduce a standard 802.11g device to the network everything else would slow down to the 'standard' speed in just the same way that a user with old fashioned Airport (802.11b) would slow a wireless network to 11MBps.

Getting the GT model, therefore, will cost more and you won't get the benefit if you own anything other than a Windows PC.

In fact, if you do have a games console that you'd like to get online wirelessly too you're stuck with 802.11g for the same reasons outlined above.

And finally, in an apartment block it's possible there may be a lot of wireless adaptors in close proximity so you may get degraded signal quality from the competing base stations. It's possible that a stable signal could be hard to come by so it's worthwhile tracking down routers which have a decent number of aerials or signal quality.

One remedy is to get your base station to broadcast on a less commonly used channel (they go from 1 to 11, most wireless routers default to channel 6) or perhaps even resort to good old fashioned patch cables.