router/wap suggestions?

[Mike Lovell]

Garth Hill wrote:
> I'm looking to replace my shoddy wireless router and I have the 
> following questions for the myriads of (knowledgeable, experienced) 
> sysadmins and hobbyists on this list:
>
> 1. Is it preferable to have a regular router and then a wireless 
> access point, or a wireless router?
Depends on your price limits and the amount of flexibility that you 
need. If you want to do very many fancy things on your border to the 
outside, say a vpn or voip server, then you could definitely benefit 
from separate devices. I do them separate cause I like pfsense for a 
router. But if you don't really care about processor or storage 
intensive functions, combining them is probably fine.
> 2. Is 802.11n the way to go yet?
Again, depends. I personally don't see the need for 802.11n at the 
moment. But then of course, for any thing where I need speed, I use 
wired networking. If you want to stream HD over wireless, you might need 
it. On the other hand, unless you have some insane internet connection, 
regular 802.11g is still faster than your connection to the internet. So 
unless you want to transfer a lot of data around your own network, you 
probably wont notice a difference.
> 3. What are your suggestions of a good router and/or WAP based on 
> these priorities: reliability, speed, price?
Buying dedicated Access Points is usually pointless for home users cause 
the routers are cheaper and, by doing simply turning off the dhcp on the 
router and setting an different IP address, you have an access point.

I usually just go for the tried and true wrt54gl. Good solid router that 
has been tried over and over again. I have used at least 10 of these 
with no problems. So they are reliable. They have good speed if you only 
need 802.11g. And the price isn't bad. Usually ~60 from newegg.

Although, I have been looking for a new router with 802.11a (too many 
neighbors creating 2.4ghz noise) but most current ones also have 
802.11n. I am being tempted by the Linksys wrt610n for an access point. 
 From what I have seen in researching new linksys routers with openwrt, 
it looks like the 802.11n chipsets have limited support in openwrt. So 
if you do want 802.11n and more features in the router besides what 
comes with it, you probably want to separate the router and access point.

Hopefully this has been somewhat helpful for you.

Mike