I'm looking for a new wireless router. It will be used to feed my desktop by wire and for my wife's soon to be bought laptop, wireless. I don't care if it's not the fastest. But I need it to be secure and have SPI and NAT. And the firewall has to be easy to set up. Any help will be appreciated. Happy Holidays. Hugger
I've used a Netgear DG834GT for years and never had a single problem. It fulfils all your requirements. The 54 is about £40 and the 108 about £70 (amazon uk) philby
My vote goes to Netgear as well. My only complaint about my DG834 WG602 combination is that they still work and don't provide me with an excuse to buy something a bit more modern. looks like the DG834GT is what you should be looking at ?
I Have been using netgear WGR614NA SP1 and Nat router for about 10 months now it has been reliable and has decent range.I am able to move about outside in my back yrd with out lose of connection.It may not be Top of netgear products but for $40.00 USD my speeds are very acceptable.It also was a piece of cake to setup and has toll free tech support for ninety days,never needed it though.
In India specially on outskirts the lines are very poor and only my cheap Netgear ADSL DG632 survives and runs reliably day in day out, I have tried D Link and Linksys and this has been the best performer of the lot so far, plus the construction quality as well as adapters are the most heavy duty in the industry.
All home grade broadband routers will have SPI/NAT, it's part of how they work as a gateway. Security is up to you, not the router. Change the default web admin password. Enable wireless security..and set it to WPA minimum, WPA2 if your clients support it. Sit back and enjoy. As for brand, DLink, Netgear, Linksys, TrendNet, Asus, BuffaloTech, whatever's available in your area, they all do OK. DLink and Linksys tend to enjoy a bit more popularity and fan club over here in the States.
Thanks to everybody for their help. YeOldeStonecat, that's good advice. Are the firewalls in all of these easy to set up? That's where I run into problems. Hugger
Generally, yes...the routers themselves are easy to setup and manage. Generally with cable internet, they're all ready to go, as most cable ISPs ship you a pure bridged modem, and most routers by default will have their WAN interface set to "Obtain Auto", which is what cable internet commonly is. With DSL....there's 1 step required..sometimes 2. First step, most DSL ISPs use PPPoE authentication for your logon...so your router needs to be programmed for that if you have a pure bridged modem from them. However....second step...more and more often DSL ISPs ship combo modem/routers (gateways) that already do the PPPoE and NAT. In which case, you generally want to avoid cascading another router behind them. In this case, a little homework is required, so you can learn how to log into your ISP supplied router/gateway...reconfigure it to run in pure bridged mode, so that your own router can do the PPPoE/NAT. Most routers now do come with a CD that has an well written installation process that holds your hand through the steps for cable and DSL. By default they all run a DHCP service, so any PCs that you plug in behind them will automatically work behind them (usually on a 192.168.0.xxx range or 192.168.1.xxx range). By default the NAT firewall is fully up, protecting all your PCs.
