I have recently decided that I hate linksys. Based on benchmarks, as seen :
http://www.tomsnetworking.com/lans_rout … ?chart=119
I’m thinking Netgear for future clients. But I thought I would see what everyone else has found to be STABLE. It seems like I’m always having tech support calls, where I end up having the user power cycle their linksys router, and thats all. This shouldn’t be needed.
CISCO, no substitute. It is the most STABLE router in the market.
Stablility has a price.
there have been a few threads on this topic…you may wanna check through them.
I have found linksys(cisco) routers to be the worst.
I have not tried a full on cisco router but thats not very practical for a subscriber.
you wont get around a router locking up as long as you are using one. even if you turn the SM into nat (assuming nat will work for the subscriber) and plug it into the switch, switches still tend to fail.
Its best to inform the subscriber of the known problem and the easy solution.
every broadband connection i have been on always has the “router problem”
tlsarles wrote: I'm thinking Netgear for future clients.
I have had two different Netgear routers in the past, and both gave me more problems than any Linksys router I have owned. My current Netgear dual WAN router (FVS124G) has always had lockup problems, and so far none of the firmware revisions solve it.
I had to create a watchdog program to monitor my LAN, and when the router locks up, power cycle the router via a remote control power strip.
It also doesn't do a good job of either load balancing or auto-rollover when one WAN connection goes down.
Anyone know of a dual WAN router for the SOHO environment that actually works right?
Doug
My linksys wrt54gl is scheduled for reboot every mourning at 5, no problems at all.
We use OpenWRT for our costumers who want vpn.
For SOHO, Linksys RV series is tough to beat. No wireless, but it’s not hard to add an AP.
Jerry Richardson wrote: For SOHO, Linksys RV series is tough to beat. No wireless, but it's not hard to add an AP.
I already use pair of WAP54G's as my APs so that I can use Access Point Client mode to feed another wired LAN segment, and laptops can still roam freely.
But I am specifically asking about dual WAN capabilities, which neither the RV series nor the WRT54GL support. I have both cable and DSL feeding my home, and I want to load balance them or at least have a reliable auto-rollover. My Netgear FVS124G is supposed to, but is buggy.
Doug
dhandy Mikrotik will solve your problem. The standard RB532 has 3 ethernet ports and 2 mini-pci slots, 1 compact flash port. The router os software that comes on it will do load balancing. Yuo can add a 802.11 mini-pci card and have wireless all for about $300.
RV series supports dual WAN
Jerry,
Jerry Richardson wrote: RV series supports dual WAN
Ahh, didn’t look far enough. Looks like the RV0041 does not, but some of the others do. That said, searching for reviews / posts on them, it sounds like the dual WAN handling of them is not good either, and they lock up too.
attitude0330 wrote: Mikrotik will solve your problem. The standard RB532 has 3 ethernet ports and ... it will do load balancing.
How easy is this to setup for someone with no Linux experience? I looked at the WinBox GUI via a demo login that was available, and while it look powerful, it wasn't immediately obvious how you define things like PPPoE logins, load balancing mode, etc.
Do you know of people using this for dual WAN setups successfully?
Those Mikrotik routers look pretty sweet, Thanks for the tip!
I would consider myself a beginer/intermediate linux user. So I am wondering how difficult it would be to set these things up for NAT. Also curious if you can VPN into them, so I can poke around when customers call for support
We have had excellent success with the RV series routers. Never a lock up.
As with any product, results vary 
Jerry,
Jerry Richardson wrote: We have had excellent success with the RV series routers. Never a lock up.
Do you use them in a dual WAN setup? With only a single WAN enabled, my Netgear does ok too, but that kinda defeats the purpose.
Doug
we have one set up with Dual WAN, seems to work OK.
DLink has one as well, about 150.00. That works also.
Ther is always a Soekris 4501. It has 3 Ethernet ports. So you can set it up as a Dual WAN and 1 LAN. But then that whole Linux/BSD comes back to haunt you.
I am using the Mikrotik RouterOS on a Supermicro Superserver P4 for my Core and border routers. I have three set up for load balancing to two diffarent upstream providers, and the secondary provider is set up to fail over to me to back him up. Their is a little bit of a learning curve but most of it is well documented and a large forum support. You can use WinBox or the command line. Most of the documentation is command line but its pretty simple to pick up. As far as NAT it’s real simple. If you put the system on a x86 based PC you can enable the user manager for authentication and bandwidth control as a radius server, and it will handle PPPoE, VPN, pretty much every thing you can throw at it.