wireless routers

[RunAwayHome]

Can anyone help with making a decision about what wireless router to buy?

This is the one I have Netgear 54 mbps

It seems to be dead. (well not entirely; I still seem to have computer, printer etc connected by the wireless network, but the internet part of it is dead). My internet signal is OK as when I plug the cable directly into the computer, it works again, but not through the router.

So I was just going to replace it with pretty much the same thing, as it's worked fine over the years. But there are a million new ones on the market too. And even within Netgear, there are loads of models. There's another one similar to the one I have, but 108 mbps. And many others too. I was just going to get it through amazon or something, once I know what to order.

Do I need something more updated than 54 mbps? Other features that I would want and/or not need?

It's going to need setting up again, isn't it, all those 64 characdter passwords and security choices and network names, which I'm not sure I remember how to do. But if I did it the first time, surely I can do it again, I guess.

[niceguy2]

They're all pretty much the same nowadays. Don't worry about the 54Mb or 108Mbps. It's all marketing spin. In reality the actual speed difference is negligible and given most broadband is about 2-5Mbps it hardly matters. Your bottleneck is the speed of your ADSL circuit, not the wireless.

In short, getting a "faster" wireless connection won't help your internet go faster.

I'd say just get any reasonably priced router. All modern ones will support WPA2 encryption and most are easily set up nowadays. There's little difference in what they do. The higher end ones do have additional features but to be fair if you need them, you'd know what to look for.

I'd expect to pay £30-£50 and you can't go wrong. If you get it from a mainstream manufacturer like Linksys, Netgear, Belkin it means you can get some UK support and not have to return it to China or something if anything goes wrong.

[RunAwayHome]

ok thanks very much; definitely worth knowing it's not needed to go for the 'faster' sounding one.

It's a cable modem connection, can't remember what it's supposed to be, but something like 10Mbps perhaps (think it's the 'medium' package offered by Virgin Media).

I might just go for the same thing as I had before then, if I can find a reasonable priced one. Wireless routers in general ranged from about a tenner to well over £100, when I looked online, so it's good to know now something slightly more specific.

[niceguy2]

Ah ok, if it's Virgin then you need a DSL router....not ADSL router/modem.

Personally I think something like:

This or this would do. The D-Link is wireless N which means if you have a N compatible laptop then you should get a bigger range (ie. you can go further away)

[RunAwayHome]

thanks very much; I'll take a look at those two.

My old one was Netgear (the one in the link above) which I guess much have been specifically for cable, though it doesn't actually say so, nor whether it was N-wireless or not. But possibly it was. The laptop is fairly new, though most of the time I just use the desktop which sits right next to the router anyway.