What should I look for in router ?

I'm looking for a router for home so I can have another computer running on wireless with steady connection. I currently 3 year old Linksys router that very often has connection issues
The computer that will be wired to router is my gaming laptop, so obviously I don't want to loose speed because of the router, my wired connection speed is 30mbs download and 1.5mbs upload.
The wireless computer is my wifeys school laptop, she needs steady connection, she doesn't do any major file transfering, basic stuff
I'm out of practice what dual band means, usb, speeds, it's all chinese to me now
Something future proof would be nice, and maybe a budget up to $100 ?

 

well if you want futureproof i'd recommend a netgear wndr3700 which gets very good reviews and is a feature packed router. the only problem - it's about 150$ so it's out of your budget.
There's a good resource called smallnetbuilder.com which has good router reviews and explanations. i suggest you head over there to catch up on the latest buzz words

 

thx for the website i'll give it a try
$150 is too much, wifey would kick my behind for spendin that much

 

That it can run dd-wrt.

Can you find your current router from there: Router Database | www.dd-wrt.com

If it is listed as supported, consider installing dd-wrt before throwing it away. My old WRT54G is like from another planet with the custom firmware and I got VPN support also.

With stock (but latest) firmware, the router would crash every now and then especially when I used wireless and ran some p2p. Since I changed to dd-wrt I think I have rebooted the router something like 4-5 times and only 2 times were because I had some problems, rest were because I moved stuff around. I did the change back in 2004 if I remember right. Speed is enough for watching 1080p br-rip over the 54g wireless, I haven't considered upgrading to N speeds after I tried that. File transfers I still do with wired gigabit

 

Spoiler

how is it that you can watch 1080p bd rips over wifi when i can't do that over wireless-N ? any special program you're using ? it doesn't make sense to me.

 

Spoiler

It's not really possible unless you play a static scene. So if the test was some kind of 1080p tropical island video it could work but with rapidly changing action sequences even 720p can have problems on 802.11g

BTW KLF you are referring to WRT54G and gigabit Ethernet- something doesn't add up here.

 

how's the Linksys e2000/wrt320n ? I looked at linksys and their website was easy with just few models to choose from and this one seemed good at price point, would it be considered good for my needs ?
Also I see Netgear is gettin a lot of love, but their website is somewhet confusing, with a lot of models and I could not find simple comparison between the models.
Also quick question, in a $100 wireless router, what would you expect to see ?

 

Spoiler

8-port d-link gigabit switch that connects the wired computers together. It is connected to the linksys itself.


Blu-ray Disc - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Since rips are compressed even further, looking from the TPB top100: "Iron Man 2 (2010) 1080P X264 MKV AC3 + DTS NLSub" is 7.32GB size, roughly four times less than single-sided Bluray-disc.

In perfect theoretical situation a 54G might be able to stream direct Bluray but even I don't believe in that. Judging by the size (7320MB) and lenght (124min = 7440sec) bitrate of that rip is roughly 1MB/s ie 10Mbit/s. Doable, at least in my 3-room apartment.

Only 1080p movie I have is the big buck bunny My 50" plasma is only 720p so I'll rather deal with those, as well as my old htpc doesn't have power to run 1080p without lag.

 

Spoiler

Technically possible with G, but not realistically possible. G was a big improvement over B, but G and it's accompanying chipsets just can't handle that kind of sustained bandwidth without freezing up or just saying 'f it all. To stream any kind of video with a bitrate of about 5Mb/s N is needed for reliability. The lower-end N chipsets can handle 5-15Mb/s reliably. High-end N chipsets with ample memory and MIMO designs can reliably handle a 1080p BD stream, given decent signal dBi. Simultaneous dual-band N can handle WELL more than a BD stream.

 

Spoiler

I'd understand that point if you were saying you need 50Mb/s but 5Mb/s? that's 500KB/s. Even my phone downloads faster than that over 3G HSPA networks on a good day.

I did some testing with my laptop, I get 1.8MB/s (that's roughly 18Mbit) in the bedroom and 2.1MB/s in the same room with the router, downloading Big Buck Bunny.avi from my fileserver. Twice the amount needed in my previous example.

Another example, a 720p rip of Avatar is 8328MB big, it lasts 161 minutes. That makes 862KB/s, that's under 9Mbit or 0.9MB/s needed bandwidth.

Big Buck Bunny ( Big Buck Bunny) isnt apparently any more available for download. That movie lasts 10minutes and is 885MB big. That sums to 1.475MB/s, roughly 15Mbit speed required. 1080p version runs pretty well, first hiccups came at the end credits but I wouldn't build my htpc around it.

Yet again, I'mt not talking about streaming raw bluray data here. Just talking about the stuff that collects itself on your hard drive and plays itself at nights. It happens to be much-much-much more efficiently encoded.

 

E2000 is router I wanted to recommend before we derailed the thread talking nonsense
Decent hardware (good CPU, 32MB RAM) good default firmware & supports DD-WRT, Wi-Fi 2.4GHz & 5GHz (but not simultaneously)
Asus RT-N16 is worth a look- Quite fast CPU, 128MB RAM, USB, 802.11n 2.4GHz.(but not 5GHz) Asus has firmware that lacks in several ways but you can replace it with DD-WRT or Tomato. That may reduce performance a bit but you still get a good router for some $90
I admit I've copied that part about Asus from one of my previous posts

 

I'll second the E2000 is a very good choice for you. I use one often, always have a very steady connection. Firmware is simple but stable and I've had no problems with the router on a wireless laptop, 2 wired desktops and the occasional friends with their laptops & wifi cards.

 

Well...can't you stop eating out at lunch for two days and spend another $24 for the Netgear wndr3700? Superbiiz.com has it for $124. But the instant discount coupon (displayed on product page) won't last for long.

 

^^ second that