Be Excellent To Each Other

Bought one of these last week after my current router started to lose the ADSL connection all the time

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B009 ... UTF8&psc=1

I have BT Infinity, but this one also has an ADSL2 modem built in.

Must say I’m impressed, it has no cumbersome wireless antennas on it and does both 2.4 and 5GHZ connections. You can also set up guest wireless networks that have no security, but only allow access to the internet not anything else on you LAN.

If you like you can attached a USB Hard drive and share that out on the network, it also lets you print to any printer on your LAN from an IPad. The solution does require you have a small application on you PC and when I tested it the IPad print job flashed up on the PC first, not very elegant but does do the job.

Also comes with applications that show you what you have connected to your LAN, I was surprised to see I have 18-20 devices at any one time!

Time for a bit of a turn around on this

Its been great up until a few days ago, then I started to get devices on the LAN not working, then on my PC I would get no internet access despite the fact the router assured me I was connected. Then I would reboot my PC and have the "no internet" error again the router would tell me I was connected.

I've had to rebuild my XBMC as what ever went on has destroyed the network on that, so it will take 5 or 6 hours before its scanned all the media.

Spent a few hours this morning troubleshooting then decided to put my old router back in place, everything worked straight away, so this is going back in the morning

No idea what to get now, might not bother as nothing really looks to be broken!!

Netgear routers can be a bit hit and miss, I had one a few years ago that was amazingly bad, stupid thing would overheat once it got busy with lots of devices hitting it at the same time, you could almost set your watch by it falling over once the network got busy. (A lot of people retrofitted a fan to keep it cool.) But then again my last router was a Netgear too (recommended by my ISP) and it was flawless, would sit there for months on end and just work, and this is on a busy network with some seven wired devices (I had a couple of hubs hanging off it) and fuck knows how many wireless devices. Only changed it because it wasn't VDSL compatible.

My very unscientific approach with Netgear routers is that the swizzier they look, the worse they'll be.

My current router is a Fritz Box 7360, which despite looking like a rejected Thunderbirds model (it's comically bad looking) is possibly one of the most solid routers I've ever owned.

My ISP gave it to me for free when we upgraded to VDSL as long as we signed up for another 18 months (I've been with them for years so that was a no-brainer).

Quite a few of the guys at work have the same model via the same route that I got mine, and we're all seriously impressed with it, although we can't resist referring to them as Fritzl Boxes. Lots of configurability on the backend too in terms of monitoring, blacklisting, timetables for when devices can and can't connect and so on - handy for children.

I have a sky hub thingy (I have to use this, sky don't allow you to use your own router) But I have 2 netgear wireless access points (I use one to connect my TV, sky box bluray and laptop wirelessly to the router, and another to connect my printer) And they are constanly losing connection to the sky hub (nothing else wireless does in the house). When Sky were using netgear equipment for their wireless router, then everything had trouble connecting wirelessly from time to time. My opinion on netgear has gone right down since owning them (I used to think they were quite good)

Malc

They are pricey as well, £160 on Amazon, look very solid and appears to the job!

You can use any router you like with sky, but they won't support it and don't make it easy to find your login details.

The oddest thing I had today was in the living room all the devices were getting IP address in the LAN range but outside of the DHCP scope.

Also they were set as having the default gateway as 192.168.0.254 when its 192.168.0.1. I have no idea what is dishing out DHCP to these devices other that the router?

I have a Netgear 8 port switch in the living room and think maybe that does some sort of DHCP if it can't get to the router. Didn't think it had any sort of function like that though

Can't you just do an ipconfig on them and see what they think their DHCP server/gateway/etc is?

I had heard of them cancelling contracts because of breaching the terms and conditions.

Anyway, I've had no problems with the sky hub at all so I see no need to change it at the moment.

Malc

All the devices in the living room are consoles or media centers. I could see on the config pages that the IP address etc weren't right. Last night I had to go into the XBox One network config and give it a manual IP then save. Then I changed it back to auto and it picked up the right info.

All very odd but back and working now!

Could not longer put up with 2 or more reboots a day and other network problems, so bought this.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Linksys-WRT1900 ... B00IGL3L2E

£200 for a home router is expensive but I waited for a few weeks after I guy I know bought one to see if he had issues

So far its really good, very powerful wireless I've been able to turn of the 2 extenders I had with no signal issues. It also supports AC wireless, although only IPad Air 2 or £70 PC USB dongles can make use of this for now.

Its also quite powerful hardware wise, 1.2GHZ CPU and 256MB of Ram, pretty big as well.

Very easy to set up and has an effective but slim web interface in terms of options, you can do everything you need but there aren't pages of options. Also has a smart phone app that if you set an account up you can configure the router from anywhere.

Only issue I have with it is that there appears to be no way of seeing how long the internet connection has been up, so I'm not sure if my random reboot issues are resolved

I have a fritz router too, 3390 in fact, also free from isp since upgrading.

It does look shit and I wasn't impressed when I opened the box, but it does a decent job and has lots of filtering etc which has been brilliant with the kids. Stops them sneaking a phone/tablet to bed to use the Internet during the night when they're supposed to be sleeping.

I'm pretty happy with mine so far although I do occasionally have to reboot it, which can be done using my phone so it's not too bad.

This one lets me restrict devices\web access and all sorts of stuff, won't need that for a couple more years hopefully!

While I'm sure that one is fine, if I was spending that much on a router I'd expect it to have the word "Draytek" written on it.

Looked at those as they are full of features, a friend who resells then put me off as he told me you are always waiting for the next firmware with them to fix problems.

Really? I just plug them in, configure them and ignore them forever.

Yeah, Drayteks are pretty much bulletproof.

Ideally, what would be the best home network solution for 4 next gen consoles, three laptops, 5 phones, 2 tablets and a Smart Tv...? Cables everywhere? We need another access point anyway because I can't get a signal in my bedroom. And if anyone suggests all those things won't be on at once, they haven't got teenagers. They'll be messaging on their phone, watching YouTube or streaming tv showds on their laptops/tablets, while get 16+ killstreaks on COD.

It was a while ago when I was told, guess they are better now? Or where always OK !?

As far as I'm aware, they've always been the best you can buy before you start tossing around silly money.

You could try a few of these for the TV and I guess you have at least one console connected to that?!

There are the fastest ones they do, you could probably getaway with the lower speed ones (500mb) which will be cheaper by 50%. You will need one attached by cable to your router then you just add them where you need them.

http://www.devolo.com/uk/Products/dLAN- ... me-network

They also do one that does Wi-Fi that you could use in your bedroom

http://www.devolo.com/uk/Products/dLAN-1200+-WiFi-ac

I don't use them as much as I used to as I've managed to cable most things in the house now. I used the 500mb ones for streaming films to a media centre and it was always fine even with large sized stuff.

For the phones\tablets it will have to be wireless the 5GHZ band will be better at downloading speed wise.

I have used the devolo kit. It is pretty good and easy to set up.

Had an odd issue tonight.

Every wireless device in the house has issues loading web pages, quite random but Java, amazon and HP were the worst

Anything wired, included a laptop that had issues on wireless had no issues

Was getting pissed off with the fact a 200 quid router was "playing up" and the fact I was having a busman's holiday instead of playing with my son. So I powered up the old router and did a return on Amazon for the new one

Same issue with the old router

The old router settings are a bit clearer in places than the new one and I noticed no DNS from my ISP, so I enter in the Google ones and the issue goes away, do the same on the new router and its fine now

DNS was not my first thought still don't get how it was an issues on wireless but on wired?

Poor wife.

Ba-da-bing.

DNS is cached by the devices (and maybe the router too) which might explain the discrepancy, but if the laptop wasn't working wirelessly and then started working when you plugged it in that knocks that idea on the head.

I know its really odd, I've questioned some of the network guys at work and they don't understand it either.

One thing to watch with these, if you ever take some from your home network to another one at somebody else's house, then they get upset with each other and the network crashes.

Probably not normal usage for these, but my dad has crap wireless in the upstairs of his house so I hook the baby monitor up via some of my Devolo plugs when we stay (he has some already)

Ended up having to rebuild his network by manually adding each device in, then when I got home had to do the same in my house with them.

Think they encrypt everything in the network when you set them up so moving them elsewhere means this needs doing again I think.

Did buy one of their wireless extender plugs for my dad and that is very good, it comes with its own SSID and password but you can change this via their management took to the same settings as your house wireless so the coverage is pretty much seamless.

I've just realised your original link has an Amazon Associates ID embedded in it, you evil man you.

Grim... auto adds them

This is true - unless they already have them in.

Info: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9273

I think it looks nice.

Only router I bought was a Netgear one for wifi when I first bought a laptop. All the others have been freebies from my ISPs.

I switch them on, type in the password and sling them behind the TV. Not had any problems really.