New wireless ADSL Modem Router needed

[Monk]

I have now established that my router  ( Netgear DG 834G v3) is to blame for dropping internet connections. I am therefore looking for a replacement with a strong signal, good protection and parental control (optional). We do use several laptops in the house, sometimes at the same time. What I am looking for is something easy to set up as I have no knowledge in this area. I wondered if anybody can reccommend something reliable that perhaps they're using and are happy with? Also, is there anything I should be aware of before I make a purchase or parhaps something I should avoid.  I am using windows 7.
Amazon has lots of different products but where do one start? I have about £70. It would be great if you could share your opinions here.

[Rik]

I don't use Win7, but I've seen a few reports of problems with wireless LAN on them. Ideally, I would have thought you want an N standard router if you're sharing the bandwidth with several others.

[Glenn]

From earlier in your other thread, Rik suggested the following;

There's no simple answer as to what's a  good router, matching it to the line is much more important these days, but Netgear, Speedtouch, 2-Wire and Billion seem to be doing well at the moment. Draytek are good, but more complex and expensive.

[klipp]

Currys has Netgear DGN2200 Wireless N300 router for £80, I picked one up quite recently.  I think it has the all important Broadcom chipset and on the box it says "live parental controls" and "supports windows 7".  Easy to use and setup as per all netgear stuff.

[Lance]

I got the DGN2200 in PC World a few months back but only paid £55 - looks like I got a bargin or the store prices are different to the online pricing. As for the router, its performing absolutely fine. There is a more fluctuation in noise margin compared to my previous 2Wire 2700HGV but nothing significant.

[Monk]

Thank you for your replies.

[davej99]

I have found the DGN2200 to be an excellent, cheap (Amazon £52.99), easy to use and, so far, much improved compared with the DG834v3. In particular the noise margin varies a lot less (~0.3dB over night) and is less spikey. It syncs a little higher and gives a lower attenuation than my old 843. The N-wireless seems quick enough (50-80Mbps), though could not get WPA2 encryption to work with an old XP laptop. Can have up to four SSID's with different encryptions to work around. Telnet is locked by default so router stats will not work out of the box. It can be unlocked and got to work. Irritation is that router reboots for many settings changes, when it does not need to, and 834 did not. So in my opinion, all changes are best done off line manually in one go if possible. I just trashed my profile accidentally with a minor change at night. Seems to raise sync by small amounts based on small changes in noise margin. In my case when above 6dB by ~0.3-.4dB it will raise sync by ~128-256kbps and drop margin by ~0.2-.3dB, give or take. My line is just on the limit of a max 8128 and is ADSLmax only, so can say nothing about long lines or ADSL2+. Overall 2200 seems like another cheap Netgear mass market router, just like its 834 series forebears, possibly with some of the intervening bugs worked out, and I can attest in my case it is mostly idiot proof, largely because use interface is very like 834 series.

Forgot to say the 2200 has a usb port to connect an external hard drive and so provide network storage/backup. Also has a power on/off button and a wireless on/off button, which makes switching to cable easy.

[Rik]

Thanks for that, Dave.

[klipp]

Actually I just spotted something weird about the DGN2200 in finally getting around to setting it up.  The auto install wizard which runs when you put in the netgear cd identified my line as PPPoE LLC, rather than PPPoA VC.  Curiously the settings it chose seemed to work fine.  Odd, and interesting.

[Lance]

Odd. I didn't use the cd to set up and recommend no one does. It's so easy to set up just by logging in to the web interface there is no need to run CDs which sometimes install additional software.

[davej99]

Actually I just spotted something weird about the DGN2200 in finally getting around to setting it up.  The auto install wizard which runs when you put in the netgear cd identified my line as PPPoE LLC, rather than PPPoA VC.  Curiously the settings it chose seemed to work fine.  Odd, and interesting.

This is a known fault I think. Set up does not detect correctly. Sorry cant find link.

[john]

I've been having a few problems with dropped connections lately and I strongly suspect that the cause may be my Netgear DG834G router. Whenever it's happened I've switched the router off for a while and it usually re-connects, not immediately but some time later. It happened again yesterday so I logged into the settings and rebooted it and it re-connected straightaway but dropped it again a few minutes later. After a couple more re-boots it's been okay since but I think I'll have to start to consider replacing it hence reading this thread.

I've looked on Amazon at the Netgear DGN2200 Wireless N300 router as suggested here and it has mixed reviews but I think most of the recent ones are mostly positive. But I've also looked at the Netgear DGND3300 RangeMax as well which appears to be similar but promises better performance and is about £35 more expensive and also has mixed reviews.

I notice that they both have a USB port for connecting external drives but the data sheet gives examples of pen drives for the DG220 but a hard drive for the DGND3300, but I'm not sure if the DG220 will take a hard drive or not.

As I have an old external 320Gb drive I would like to use this feature to create a NAS drive for use with a future Internet radio tuner.

Has anybody got experience with these routers particularly using external drives ?

Between us we've got three laptops each running Windows XP, Vista and 7.

[Lance]

I've got the 2200 and for me its been absolutely fine. I've not used the USB port but as far as I can tell there is no reason why a drive wouldn't work, although it might need to be externally powered.

[Niall]

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/Reviews.asp?ProductID=8583

I bought this to replace the same router you had. Apparently this is the new version of it, according to the Netgear site. So far it seems good, and there are more options in the menus than the old router I had. Wireless was straight forward, although I did notice that the router had wireless ON by default with no password set up, which I was very surprised at!

[john]

Thanks Niall, I think it's strange that most of the things I consider buying have either nearly all good reviews or nearly all bad but routers have very mixed reviews.
The DGN1000 seems to be the most logical replacement for the DG834G but doesn't appear to have the USB port, I'll have to decide whether that's important to me or not.

I've got the 2200 and for me its been absolutely fine. I've not used the USB port but as far as I can tell there is no reason why a drive wouldn't work, although it might need to be externally powered.

Thanks Lance, my external HD does have it's own power supply.