Please recommend a cable/dsl router

[brettallica]

Originally Posted by Sylin

I'm very much anti-Linksys, having owned many of their products in the past both personally and professionally, and having rotten experiences with all of them.

They are very easy to use, and you can hack the firmware on many of their models to turn a $50 router into a $300 router, but IMO, their signal strength is crap and they do NOT deal well with interference. So if there are more than 2-3 neighbors also using wireless routers expect to have connection issues.

For a few years at the house, we used the Apple Airport Extreme. However, when we got Vonage, and I learned the AE doesn't support QoS, I sold it.

Personally, I'm a big fan of D-Link routers, but you have to buy the right one. Their low cost models are no better than a Linksys or a Belkin. But their DGL-4300 ($149) and the DIR-655 ($99)... I have owned both and never had a problem with either of them. Rock-solid performance. Easy to set up. And I've never had to troubleshoot a single thing with them.

That said, no matter which make/model you purchase, a few tips:

(1) Do NOT be fooled by gimmicks. There is no such thing as a "Windows-compatible" router or a "Mac compatible", etc. It's all marketing. It's like buying a cordless phone and having it say "Vista compatible"--it has nothing to do with the OS you use.
(2) DO pay attention to security features. Even in suburbia, bored teens and curious neighbors had wreak havoc on your network. IMO, WEP is worthless. WPA or WPA2 are better. MAC address filtering is OK, but MAC addresses can be spoofed very easily.
(3) Do NOT feel as though you have to have a Draft N-capable router. VERY few devices actually utilize N, and if you have any B or G devices on your network (like your PS3), N-capable devices dumb themselves down to G speed whenever a G devices is transmitting packets on the network.

Great advice all around! I think the OP is more than well-equipped now to make his purchase. Nice work.

Quick question on the dumbing-down comment, though. Even though a draft-N router dumbs-down to G speed when G devices are in use on the network; doesn't the N router still give you N-type range? That is to say, G speed, but with greater range than a typical G router.