I just had a client ask me what wireless router he should buy for his home. Good question. How much do you want to spend and what kind of performance are you expecting?
Your wireless router, for most people, is also doubling as a hardware firewall – albeit not the most fantastic firewall, but certainly of value.
Cheap is ok, but don’t expect blazing speeds from PC to PC in your home and you may not get the range you are looking for.
The latest specification in wireless is 802.11n (which is still a “draft” spec, for about 4 years now?) but the products on the market are pretty stable nonetheless.
D-Link has gotten better and better over the years and delivers a good product for a good price. The “n” router I show below will deliver good performance and a lot of features. D-Link calls it the DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router, and as its name implies, all wired ports – 4 for your network and 1 for your ISP or “wan” connection will operate at gigabit speeds. Don’t expect your ISP to deliver gigabit bandwidth anytime soon, though.
This means that any wired computers with gigabit networking will operate quite a bit faster than any wireless ones, but if you have appropriate “n” mode wireless adapters they should be quite fast also.
If you are in the market for a good wireless router (slash firewall), take a look at the DIR-655. About the only thing I don’t like about it is the white color – kind a looks like a NetGear product, but it reviews well.
If you like it, you won’t go wrong buying from Newegg.com.
