Do I have to buy a new router?

Hi, I have a Netgear WGR614 router, and I'm not happy with it's performance. Evey time I try to find servers on steam, the router crashes, and I have to wait severals mins to get the internet back. I think the reason why it's happening is, when it handles the IP's from the servers, and then it shuts itself off, because it gets to overloaded. I'm actually not sure what causes it, but it's very annoying! Especially when I make LAN-parties. The net crashes when we are trying to find servers, but when we finally get into one, it works perfectly, and we usually have a ping below 20.

I do only experience the problem on Steam. The router works perfectly when not using Steam.

Can you help me ?

And if it's time for a new router, which one? It should be a good one, with a long range, that should be able to handle several computers on the same time, without disconnecting from Steam when searching for servers.

 

Are you sure it's Linksys? For all I know WGR614 is Netgear router.
There are any hardware versions of this one and most of them are not suited for heavy use due to limited amount of RAM- 8MB.
That said it's really hard to say if the RAM or the firmware is the problem.
First of all update your firmware.
Only one hardware version of this router has 16MB RAM and is supported by DD-WRT. If you are lucky enough to have this one (v.8) you may want to upgrade to DD-WRT.

 

Wow, yeah, sorry! It's a netgear.

It's not the v.8 one. It's older than that!

I have tried to update the firmware - No luck

What router would you recommend?

 

What do you mean by no luck? No newer firmware?
As for new router it depends on a budget and your needs (apart from gaming) i.e. WiFi N (with 5GHz range or not) USB host/print server etc.

EDIT: I don't play steam games so I don't know much about it but have you checked if it's not a steam issue- you may need to forward a specific port or sth.

 

Take a peak at the www.smallnetbuiilder.com router table. Then see what end users have to say.

Your old router is probably over heating or too many Simultaneous Connections, some are <200. This is what kills a lot of routers. So when looking at a new make sure you get a HIGH Maximum Simultaneous Connections.

See if you can load dd-wrt firmware on you old router. It may clear the bottle neck.

 

Don't use the "check for firmware updates, go the site and download any update manually.

Some even say to only use Internet Explorer when you update it.

 

Well the way I would approach this issue would be to connect the computer via Ethernet first and then Test.. If it occurs again it would be best to bring the Router to default settings and test again. Its important to test ethernet to bypass the common issues that surrounds wireless networking ( Interference both electronic and environmental )

Essentially if the issue occurs while the router is in default settings through an ethernet connection then it could be a hardware issue.

 

What kind stream are you watching? Some router has problem with multicast packet.