Wireless Router Recommendation(s)

[Hypnosan]

I am currently in the market for a new wireless router and due to the "wireless age" there is no shortage of them available, I was just hoping to get a little insight from the TS community.

I currently have eight devices that need to be networked throughout my home, three game consoles, three notebooks, and two desktops.The notebooks (WinXP, Vista, & Mac OSX) will be no more than 20ft ideally at any given time and through about two standard home walls. The desktops (WinXP) will be hardwired to the router. The wireless devices will be using the G standard but to "future-proof" a bit obviously I would like a device capable of N.

While still a novice I am no stranger to networking and would like a product that allows some degree of control over the network. As far as usage obviously gaming will be a major focus of the use but I do also download torrents quite heavily, so I would prefer something friendly to those aspects. Price isn't a huge concern but I would prefer not to go overkill.

I have used NetGear in the past and was not too pleased with the overall quality/service I received from the product, but I would not be against using a NetGear product again if it's advantages were worth it. I have also used Linksys with reasonably high success and for the most part have been pleased with their products. I have been looking into their business series routers which have just become available where I work (Best Buy) and would love any input on them.

So thank you for taking the time to check this post out and thank you all ahead of time for any info you can provide.

EDIT: Clarified gaming consoles.

 

[k.jacko]

Weird. Netgear products are streets ahead of Linksys! Although with home products there probably isn't much of a difference.
You will no doubt get umpteen different opinions here mate as to what the best make of wireless router is. You may end up wishing you never asked, lol.
All i'll say is that Netgear are good, as are most Belkin. D-Link are ok, 3-com imho are the best, but you WILL pay for it.

 

[Nodsu]

First, don't get your hopes up with N. The standard is not official yet and all those N devices currently available are just guesswork of the manufacturers. There are no guarantees that these will work in the future with official N-certified devices or any of the current N devices from other manufacturers.

All manufacturers have high end and low end product lines. You cannot trust a brand blindly.

Things that you should look for:
- two detachable antennas so you get better coverage and can fit more powerful antennas if you feel like it.
- ethenet WAN port so you are not confined to DSL or cable only
- decent brand maker who actually bothers with firmware updates, support or even usable documentation (Linksys, Netgear, D-Link, SMC, 3com (I would never, ever buy anything made by TrendNET))
- anything you buy will probably work to some extent, but usually you get what you pay for

 

[DelJo63]

I currently have eight devices that need to be networked throughout my home,
three gaming systems, three notebooks, and two desktops.
...The desktops (WinXP) will be hardwired to the router.

As far as usage obviously gaming will be a major focus of the use but I do
also download torrents quite heavily, so I would prefer something friendly
to those aspects.

With this profile and hardware, you should already experience the effects on the
network for gaming and torrents. Both of these stress networks and with your
existing hardware, you should already have serious lagging.

The good side of WiFi for you is the reduced thruput will benefit other users

 

[k.jacko]

Even though a lot of routers have the function, it may be worth using QoS to prioritise your preferred resources. Otherwise everything may get hammered down speed-wise.

 

[Hypnosan]

With this profile and hardware, you should already experience the effects on the
network for gaming and torrents. Both of these stress networks and with your
existing hardware, you should already have serious lagging.

The good side of WiFi for you is the reduced thruput will benefit other users

Actually lag has never been much of a problem for me, its generally only my fiance and myself on the network so not too many of those devices are in use at any given time. I'm on Cox's 11Mbit package so generally that's enough to spread around for what we do. I try to juggle most of the heavy drains, i.e. when we're gaming torrents are paused, etc.

Thank you all for the input so far, I'll catch up with some reading on your recommendations so far. I probably should have added this in my original post, but I'm not too concerned with brand as much as I am a quality model. So thanks again for the info so far and thanks in advance for anything else you guys can add.

 

[tipstir]

For wireless Buffalo High Speed MIMO Wireless is perfect Turbo 54G upto 125mbps throughput. That's what I use for wireless. Netgear make good switches and Linksys also makes good switches. That's it..