any news on the D-Link Xtreme N450?

As stated in the title... just wondering if it's been canceled or what?

 

TRENDnet was the first to announce their 450mbps router and they are going to be the first ones to deliver.
I would avoid D-Link- they are no good with current technology not to mention anything new.
Here's an article on the new TRENDnet coming in just a few days and in the article there's also a link to the other one that may interest you- explaining why those 450mbps routers and APs are so slow to arrive.

 

Been using the DIR-655 for over a year now without any problems, nor have I heard many complaints from other users.

 

First of all just hope that leslieann won't read this statement
Secondly take a look at the DIR-655 support thread- 2500 threads about this router and as you can see these are not happy users.

Back to the main subject- there are only two chipsets on the way for 450mbps routers and I'm afraid it's not gonna be soon that you will see any kind of competition or reasonable prices or at least decent choice of routers in this segment of the market.

 

For a wireless router, which companies/models would you choose (let's say budget isn't a concern)? How exactly do you determine whether one router is better than another?

 

First of all the only routers I take into consideration are SOHO solutions- $1000 professional router is probably better but in most cases not reasonable so I take it as "unlimited budget for a SOHO router".
There are several factors- first of all the hardware. You need to look up the components of the router that interests you and have a look at how powerful the CPU is, how much RAM and flash does it have.
In my book it's also very important that the router is capable of running a 3rd party firmware- you don't have to use it but it's a way out of problems if something doesn't work properly on the stock firmware. As you know 6 months between firmware updates is not a prolonged period- I wouldn't want to wait so long for something to work.
Third parameter is the firmware quality and support. Apparently you cannot really fully on DD-WRT firmware and similar solutions as they offer a lot more features and possibilities but usually at the expense of reduced performance.
So the best solution is to choose a company known for providing reliable firmwares and frequent updates and still keep the third party firmware as an insurance of sorts.
Last but not least- there are companies that I more or less trust (like Linksys) but only as long as they keep to what they are good at.
Linksys is known to work with Broadcom hardware. They know how to make the most of it, how to write and optimize fimware and so on.
That's why if you compare Linksys WRT610N v2 Asus RT-N16 and Netgear WNR3500L- that use pretty much the same hardware Linksys comes on top easily. But when Linksys tries something they are not really good with like using Atheros hardware it usually ends up pretty bad (just a few threads back a user proved to me that Linksys WAG160N does not work properly)

As for the tests smallnetbuilder performs very valuable tests- starting from routing performance, through consistency and wireless coverage and ending up with max simultaneous connections and stress tests.

At present the best SOHO router available is Netgear WNDR3700 it has excelled in all tests, has 64MB RAM, CPU of some 700MHz, gigabit Ethernet, great dual band radio, good firmware and is supported by DD-WRT. It's not that expensive either.

That said the best may not mean the most reasonable- there are other companies that offer interesting solutions for people who don't need the high end stuff. TP-LINK is interesting because it's good and cheap but still has a very good firmware support. Asus offers great hardware but rather shoddy firmware so it's basically meant for DD-WRT. Last but not least Linksys- my go-to company they offer good hardware and good firmware- Linksys E3000 (also known as WRT610N v2 is not as good as Netgear WNDR3700 but is a close second)
The reason I don't like D-LINK is that they change hardware completely between revisions- different CPUs in the same chassis with the same name.
They also use all sorts of hardware- Texas Instruments, Marvel, Atheros, Infineon, Broadcom, Realtek, Ubicom etc. which means they are never really good with firmware for any of those devices. DIR-655 uses a very good Ubicom StreamEngine 5160 and although it doesn't have enough RAM by today’s standards (has only 16MB should have at least 32MB, preferably 64MB) it would be very good if it wasn't for D-LINK's poor firmware.

PS My longest post ever it seems

 

+1

Thank you very much for the router information, downloads. I'm sure many other users will also appreciate your post!