Long story short: My trusty wired Linksys G router is - I believe - beginning to fail. I have had it for over six years. About a year and a half ago I bought a TrendNet Access Point to provide wireless throughout my house because everyone has a laptop in my family.

On occasion I would have to reboot the access point but now I am finding in the last six weeks that I have to reboot my router more and more. Perhaps the AP is the cause but I don't think so.

In my research I read a real mixed bag of results when it comes Wireless N Routers so I need some solid advice.

Budget: $100 but would love to purchase for less as long as it is good. Be willing to go $125.

Thanks.

Linksys (Cisco) E2000 if you need dual band (2.4 AND 5.8)or E1000 if you need 1 band (2.4). The E1000 can be had new for about $70.. If you don't mind refurbs check these deals out http://dealnews.com/c114/Computers/Networking/b412/Linksys/

I'll look into it. Thanks.

If Gigabit Ethernet isn't a biggie for you, the Netgear N600 can be had for about 80 bucks, and delivers dual-band wireless n speeds.

I'm not dead yet!

I got the recommendation from Rick. Yes, the DIR-655 is a good wireless router. Some very nice software features. I have even used the status information to troubleshoot a problem with a Roku box that couldn't connect well, and a setting to correct it. I've used it for over a year without any problems. It's an older model so it is cheap, about $70 at Newegg.

Best to get one of the new Belkin with Mult-beam for MIMO so you can get 6dB instead of the 1.6dB which has been standard. N150 dirt cheap but signal is very strong. I know I use that for Android Tablets and Netbooks that use 802.11G @ 20MHz. If you need 802.11N @ 40MHz then the best one out there that's dirt cheap is TP-LINK Ultra Wireless Router. Tack on 3x TP-LINK 5dBi SMA ANT on it then you have one heck of Wireless Router. I know this because that's what I am using. It sports 20dB / 100mW EIRP, Gig ports with 832KB packet buffer.

I just wanted to give you guys an update. Before some you could jump in I took advantage of my local Staples who was having a tremendous sale on a Netgear N600 Dual-Band router plus an additional 20% off coupon. I actually stayed within my budget as well.

So far so good. ALL laptops are now connecting and my son's connects with the 5GHz port; glad I upgraded to the Intel 6230 wireless card.

However, what I have noticed is that I am sometimes getting lag with the wired connections; even with Chrome. FireFox still eats memory in version 6.1 but Chrome doesn't. Page loading will hang. it will happen when I am trying answer posts here at TS.

Pardon my ignorance but can a modem become a bottleneck? It is at least 7 years old, still rock solid, but I am wondering if being so old it chokes the signal connection between it and my new router?

Thoughts? Ideas?

Never heard of it, but could be possible I suppose.

never seen that happen. more likely a router failure or highjacking.
a) reload the firmware into the router
b) disable Remote Mgmt (port 8080)
c) change the router admin/pwd

that's a seperate problem

stalling durring page loading is most frequently a webserver stalling; here's why:

Code:

browser click-->request to server
   server finds page and begins reply
   (http/1.1 replies have a length code in the start of the data)
<----
browser gets the length code and begins reading
calculate newSize = lastsizeRequested - lastSizeRecvd
readAgan(newSize)
 

this will loop until newSize is zero (or stall when nothing else sent and size >0)

Now TS is(has been stable), so I would suspect some add-on or virus is playing with the data stream.

Suggest running Spybot S&D; Mode->advanced
tools->verify the Winsock stack items are all known