Netgear WNDR3400 dual band router worth it? Plus a few questions.

[G.T]

Hi all

I am thinking about upgrading my router. I have been using a trusty Linksys WRT54G for about 8 years now, but ever since my recent broadband upgrade it can't output the full speed of the broadband anymore.

I recently purchased a TP Link WR1043ND router, and it is great. But it seems to have lag spike issues with my parent's Mac and the iPads sometimes disconnect, in particular while they torrent. I've limited the connections on uTorrent to a very small minimum but it still seems much more unreliable than the trusty WRT54G.

So I am thinking of buying a Netgear WNDR3400 router. My main interest in it being it has simultaneous wireless 2.4 and 5 Ghz bands being transmitted. Since we have a crap load of wireless devices in the house I think it might be a good idea to split them (i.e. put the Xbox and my PC onto the separate 5Ghz band to hopefully prevent the spikes.)

The questions are these:

Is this a good recommended router? I'm kind of limited by choice because Novatech only sell limited amounts of routers. I've heard of horror stories with Netgears but their higher end routers appear better (mostly the crap is produced for the lower end freebie routers/modems ISPs hand out)

Is my theory of splitting the devices between the bands going to work? My parents love downloading movies at night so that can't stop. However this has 95% of the time been unnoticeable on the old WRT54G while gaming, so MUST be possible again on a much more expensive router...?

Thanks!

 

[Danoff]

If you're keeping the TP Link router, you might try dd-wrt on it before buying a new one. I was about to toss my E3000 in the trash due to general flakiness when I decided to try dd-wrt on it instead of the stock firmware. Now all of the sudden it's the most reliable router I've owned and has new features as well.

 

[G.T]

I've heard about it. I understand it's easy to flash but I'm very unsure about its usability - looks rather complicated.

Is it as simple to use as a normal firmware? For example accessing it through a local IP (192.168.1.1) and configuring it like a normal router?

And the TP Link will be exchanged for the Netgear hopefully, unless I try the DD WRT thing. Looks like there's a good version of it for the Netgear... tempting.

Reading the flashing instructions is horrifying... surely there isn't 600000 () risks involved and all these hard resets required??

 

[thechosenwonton]

I can't speak to that particular router, but dual-band wifi is the only game in town as far as I'm concerned when you have multiple devices of various wireless standards trying to connect - without dualband, if you have a Wireless G device attempt to connect, your entire router switches to wireless G to remain compatible - it can't do both at the same time, hence dualband; no firmware will fix that simple limitation.

I've got a D-Link DIR-815 and it's been very stable (after I set the DHCP lease time down to one day), no issues, and works with 2 phones, 3 laptops, and my PS3, no problem at all.

Google reviews on the router you asked about to see if its crap or not, but yes, dual-band is a must have in your situation.

 

[G.T]

^ I was tempted, but now not... Novatech want to "test" the product before they will accept a return. Very much doubt they could reproduce my issues, so I decided to go with a DDWRT flash following this video - MUCH simpler then they make it out to be:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Muv1KWxdKU

Shall keep you updated on how everything goes.

 

[nick09]

I use DD-WRT and it's awesome software. It was not hard to set up on my Asus router. You can also set which antenna sends the the data to your computer or which antenna receives data from your computer. Very customizable software indeed. Plus you can see how much bandwidth you use every month or day.

 

[Danoff]

I've heard about it. I understand it's easy to flash but I'm very unsure about its usability - looks rather complicated.

Is it as simple to use as a normal firmware? For example accessing it through a local IP (192.168.1.1) and configuring it like a normal router?

And the TP Link will be exchanged for the Netgear hopefully, unless I try the DD WRT thing. Looks like there's a good version of it for the Netgear... tempting.

Reading the flashing instructions is horrifying... surely there isn't 600000 () risks involved and all these hard resets required??

Yea they try to be intimidating with the flash instructions. Just follow the instructions to the letter, do their hard resets as they say, and you'll be fine. They're being conservative (and so should you).

Yes you access it from 192.168.1.1, and it's very similar to normal firmware interface. Very easy to configure, worked even better than the stock firmware for just plugging wires in and having things work. There are super advanced things you can do with it. I actually logged in to my router via ssh and reconfigured parts of it using the linux installation that dd-wrt runs. But that's not required.

If you want, you could buy a buffalo router, which comes with dd-wrt out of the box.

 

[G.T]

Yea they try to be intimidating with the flash instructions. Just follow the instructions to the letter, do their hard resets as they say, and you'll be fine. They're being conservative (and so should you).

Yes you access it from 192.168.1.1, and it's very similar to normal firmware interface. Very easy to configure, worked even better than the stock firmware for just plugging wires in and having things work. There are super advanced things you can do with it. I actually logged in to my router via ssh and reconfigured parts of it using the linux installation that dd-wrt runs. But that's not required.

If you want, you could buy a buffalo router, which comes with dd-wrt out of the box.

Thanks for the info. The post above yours explains I took the gamble and flashed it! The video said a hard reset wasn't required and took a gamble there again. I'm having a few speed reduction issues at the moment after a couple of hours of uptime, but I reinstalled the wireless drivers on my desktop and it seems to be fine again. My phone has the same issue now, but not sure how to sort that out. It's as if it's suck on the g band for some reason but didn't do this with the stock firmware (have to stick to mixed bands as I have a few older devices in the house.)

But as long as the PC and Xbox benefit then nothing else matters to be honest.

 

[thechosenwonton]

Like I said, if you have N and G devices in the house, and any G devices are attempting to access the router the same time as the N devices, the router switches to G only, unless dual-band.

 

[G.T]

^ This doesn't matter to me anyway, I only have 20 meg broadband and don't share anything throughout the network anyways to see a benefit. I just want to be able to fully use the bandwidth of my broadband (which it now does). The issues I was having with speed were based on the firmware, as I will describe.

I swapped to using Gargoyle, a OpenWRT-based firmware. The DDWRT version always seemed to grind the router to a halt (less than 1 meg download) after a couple of hours requiring a reboot every time. This new firmware has been pretty much rock solid for a week.