Costco has Linksys E3000 for $119

[Heinrich]

Best price; excellent customer support/return policy. Newegg was at $146 (with $10 gift card.) This is arguably the best consumer-level router you can buy right now. It does both 2.4/5ghz bands with dual-radios for G and N separately. This keeps your network speedy with the G devices not bringing down the N devices.

Throw-in dd-wrt and you can do bridged networking and repeating.

High recommended, I was so happy to see a huge crate of these at such a great price, I bought 2.

 

[KPACOTKA]

Why 2, as a gift, or you need two to cover entire house?

 

[Heinrich]

Yes, with dd-wrt I use the second as a wireless bridge to my HTPC and Tivo so that I don't have to get wireless adapters to each one. I can almost stream blu-ray across wirelessly but not quite. I may run a wire.

But a gigabit switch is $40-60; at $120 I get the gigabit ethernet, briding, and/or access point functions as my network changes. Much more flexible.

 

[drshivas]

B&M I assume? Can't find it on costco.com.

 

[lopgok]

But a gigabit switch is $40-60; at $120 I get the gigabit ethernet, briding, and/or access point functions as my network changes. Much more flexible.

I don't know where you get your gigabit switches, but mine are $25-$35 for 8 ports with jumbo frame support.

I just bought a linksys wrt310N for $20 after rebate. It is recertified, but it does 2.2ghz N and has a 4 port gigabit switch (though I am not sure it supports jumbo frames).
It also supports dd-wrt.

 

[Heinrich]

The 310 does 2.2ghz N but not 5 ghz N simultaneously. The E3000 has two radios and does both simultaneously.

 

[lopgok]

The 310 does 2.2ghz N but not 5 ghz N simultaneously. The E3000 has two radios and does both simultaneously.

Quite true. It is a superior router overall. It just costs 6 times as much as the one I bought,
and mine has gigabit ethernet. The linksys 600 is an ever better router but costs more.

Not having gigabit on a N router is pretty silly. You can't get your '300 mbits/second'
theoretical bandwidth with 100 mbits/sec ethernet.

 

[KPACOTKA]

For some reason most linksys routers including this have very low rating, like 3.5 stars.

 

[Heinrich]

I've seen that too. Those folks aren't putting dd-wrt on it is my guess. At Newegg and Amazon it's 4 out of 5 with hundreds of purchases.

 

[dalamchops]

consumers shouldn't expect to have to custom load a firmware for products to work properly. Recent linksys routers (last 2 years) have been absolute horrible.

 

[NutBucket]

consumers shouldn't expect to have to custom load a firmware for products to work properly.

This.

 

[Heinrich]

If you don't like it, and don't want the power that this model affords you, then don't buy it. But this router is the hands-down best consumer level router that you can buy for complex multi-access points serving up backups, gaming, and media collection. You don't have to load dd-wrt for it to "work properly" - it just gives you many enterprise level features.

 

[ClockerXP]

I don't know where you get your gigabit switches, but mine are $25-$35 for 8 ports with jumbo frame support.

I just bought a linksys wrt310N for $20 after rebate. It is recertified, but it does 2.2ghz N and has a 4 port gigabit switch (though I am not sure it supports jumbo frames).
It also supports dd-wrt.

Let me know where I can get the wrt310N for that price! I want one!

 

[killster1]

consumers shouldn't expect to have to custom load a firmware for products to work properly. Recent linksys routers (last 2 years) have been absolute horrible.

I had one and it overheated like the rest, rma and sold it, using a asus now that has same features. (cracked it open and put a heatsink on it tho since now i am paranoid of routers) Maybe you can rig a fan to operate on the usb port and cool it off hehe. These are not built like the 54wrt days.

 

[zerogear]

Ever since the new design, most Linksys router overheats much easier. And the built-in Antenna doesn't allow you to put in replacement antenna D:

 

[Compddd]

So what's the best router to get nowadays?

 

[av911]

Not having gigabit on a N router is pretty silly. You can't get your '300 mbits/second'
theoretical bandwidth with 100 mbits/sec ethernet.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but how does a WIRELESS theoretical speed have any relations with a WIRED theoretical speed?

 

[Peremptor]

So what's the best router to get nowadays?

It depends on your needs and how much you are looking to spend.

I got a cheap linksys wrt310N just like lopgok and for my purposes it's great (once you upgrade the firmware to dd-wrt of course).

 

[Zim]

So what's the best router to get nowadays?

The blue shiney one with the flashy lights. Blue is my favorite color. So is red. And green. Pretty!

 

[Zensal]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but how does a WIRELESS theoretical speed have any relations with a WIRED theoretical speed?

Where would you be getting your 300mbps from? Most people get it from a wired connection, but that would be limited to 100mbps. The only way to get your 300mbps would be from one wireless device to another wireless device, directly across the router.

Every wired to wireless or wired to wired connection, including internet, desktop, server, etc. would be limited to the slowest connection, which would be 100mbps.

 

[ed21x]

ehh... i got a recertified 310 and it was absolutely horrible... even with dd-wrt, the thing couldn't do g/n mixed mode, and when I set it to pure wireless G or N, the signal strength and speed could not match my wrt54g. It literally slowed to a crawl and eventually dropped every 20 minutes or so.

Needless to say, I returned it and got a D-link N300 which worked right out of the box after a quick MAC address change. Weird how the d-links come pre-configured at 192.168.0.1 which conflicted with my dsl model VERY solid router and does everything a router is suppose to do

 

[Lean L]

Where would you be getting your 300mbps from? Most people get it from a wired connection, but that would be limited to 100mbps. The only way to get your 300mbps would be from one wireless device to another wireless device, directly across the router.

Every wired to wireless or wired to wired connection, including internet, desktop, server, etc. would be limited to the slowest connection, which would be 100mbps.

Not to put words in his mouth but I think the person you are responding to meant to emphasize theoretical. The actual speed of wired ethernet @ a theoretical 100mb/s is prolly close to 99.9mb/s. Whereas the actual speed of wireless @ a theoretical 300mb/s is probably 80mb/s. So it's reasonable to say that for all real world purposes, a 100mb switch paired with wireless N is more than sufficient.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Wireless-N_Throughput_Testing

As you can see, the best wireless N could do when paired with gigabit ethernet is 105mb/s in these tests. It's not really a limiting factor, thus it makes sense logically and financially to market a router with wireless N and a 100mb/s switch.

 

[drshivas]

B&M I assume? Can't find it on costco.com.

Didn't find it in a MD Costco, so this must be a regional B&M deal only.

 

[Apex]

So what's the best router to get nowadays?

The Netgear WNDR37AV/WNDR3700 is pretty good.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...5-start-your-buying-netgear-wndr3700-reviewed

 

[Capt Caveman]

The Netgear WNDR37AV/WNDR3700 is pretty good.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...5-start-your-buying-netgear-wndr3700-reviewed

I believe Maximum PC ranked it as the best router.

Didn't find it in a MD Costco, so this must be a regional B&M deal only.

They have them here in MA. If I decide to finally get a BluRay player with Wifi, I'll pick one up.