Buffalo WHR-G54S help

I finally bit the bullet and went out and got a wireless router for my home over the weekend. The final straw was getting a Wii and wanting to get online with it and download games. I went to Best Buy and the salesdrone told me that Wii's were having all sorts of connection problems, and I should therefore get the buffalo model in the thread title, because it is Nintendo certified.

I was originally intending to get a netgear rangemax 240 or a D-Link 4300, but the Buffalo was $100 cheaper, and if there was a good chance I'd have issues with the more expensive router I figured it was worth a shot. I've had the thing for 2 days or so, and I'm ready to peg it into a wall, it needs constant rebootings either of the router or the desktop its connected to. As near as I can tell the darn thing just cannot handle bittorrent at all, and once I load a bittorrent client it's bye-bye surfing the web. Not only that, but it's throughput for P2P is absolutely godawful, it tops out at around 30-40k downloads, while my good-old wired switch usually hit 150k with 40k or so uploading, and it's 10-base T for pete's sake.

I just updated the firmware to the latest version on the off chance that it will magically make this thing not a piece of crap, but if it isn't better by monday it's going back to the store. My question is this: anyone have any experience getting one of these to work properly, or failing that have any experience with the two routers about and a wii? I'm guessing they'll be find, since they are both top end quality routers, but I'd like to be sure.

 

I agree with zy10guy on SOHO routers. Most all residential routers can not handle the heavy traffic that BT produces. I use Netegar's SOHO (FVS338) wired routers with a seperate AP. Do not like combo units, do not perform as well. I would go one furthers and stay away from any MIMO and 11n pre devices. If you need a wireless connection add a AP to your current wired system. Being a AP you can position it where you get the best coverage for your setup. And by all means stay away from Belkin, they have the highest failure rate if they work at all.

ISP can limit BT speeds. They know what programs use what ports and have the resources to limit them. Most BT will consume all of your bandwidth if you do not limit them.

 

Actually I did mean switch, I have an old Cisco Catalyst 1900 series switch I got for $10 to do LAN Gaming a while back and when I needed a router I just set up a DSL connection on each computer and used that. Both of the router I mentioned were tested with BT over at tomshardware and did very well, so I feel ok buying one, but I have been looking at the SOHO solutions, and if I can pick up a cheap Cisco or something on eBay I may do that. My only concern really is the Wii compatibility, and even that is less of a factor since this darn thing wasn't working this morning when I woke up and needed a reboot when I hadn't had BT on at all.

Oh, and I almost forgot, the computer I've been using is using one of the wired ports on the router, so wireless performance and connection strength isn't an issue.

 

That is one of the reasons I was switching to an actual router, when I set it up like that I was short on cash, I've been looking online and the only used wireless Cisco routers I can find are 851w's which seem like they would work fine, as would either the netgear or the D-link I posted earlier. I'll look for the products you mentioned though, thanks.

 

how do you limit bt speeds on this router. I have a roomate who is going download crazy

 

It's actually a very good choice. WHR-G54S is almost identical to famous Linksys WRT-54GL.
In order to improve performance install DD-WRT firmware and set time the router tracks lost connections for both TCP and UDP
to 20/30 seconds.
Also limit upload usage of your BT client to max 80% of your actual upload offered by your ISP.

If you decide to give up on it you can flash it back with official firmware- there will be no sign of it so you take no risk.