Router Recommendations

[Rick_EE]

I am setting up DSL here at work.  We are getting the basic service with a dynmaic IP.  We aren't hosting anything.  I was looking at the Netgear FVS318.  Any thoughts?  Anything to look out for with the DSL hookup?  I've done the cable modem hookup at home.  Anything different?

TIA

[Ryan]

I have used a DLink unit at home and at work. It provides a four port switch, WiFi (802.11b) wireless, the WAN port for the cable or DSL, plus a serial port for external modem backup in case of broadband disruption.

I have been very pleased with it. If I were buying today, I would consider 802.11g wireless. The spec for g has not yet been finalized, so interoperability between product from different vendors might be suspect. If you are happy with a particular vendor for all your 802.11g needs, you'll probably be okay.

Make sure your unit does PPPoE (point to point over Ethernet), which is usually how dynamic DSL is done. With my unit, I had to connect the DSL modem directly to the Windows PC to setup the service, download settings, usernames, passwords, etc. Then once I had all the information, I could setup the DLink router with it. Now the router does all the connection magic, and I've offloaded from my PC all the annoying CPU cycle intensive PPPoE software Verizon provided. (There software caused so many disk rewrites, I couldn't even run Norton's scandisk utility, let alone defrag the hard drive. I'm only using one PC at home now, but I'm glad to have the router to handle the DSL connection!)

If you have software packages or utilities that need to use specific ports on the network to handle remote access, VPNs, groupware, or other similar reasons, you may want to make sure you unit allows you to open or route specific port requests to specific computers on your network.

[boomerang]

I used the exact same Netgear router at my wife's office with DSL and 3 computers.

Easiest piece of hardware I ever installed in my life. No kidding. I had it all up and running in 5 minutes.

The network was already established and working through a Linksys switch. The router was used in it's place, and of course to distribute the DSL.

I am not exaggerating on the install time. I feel it's a great piece of hardware. You should be very happy with it.

[bogi]

Buy the Linksys 4 port router. Its easy and almost everyone has one, so you can get alot of help from online forums.

[CoriBright]

Linksys 8 port router here.... and hpping to add a 802.11g Access Point so that my notebook can be used out in the yard later this year!

Linksys has good technical support IMHO... I had a problem switching to dynamic IPs at one point, and called them. You have to leave a message and then they call you back. I left message at 4pm PDT.... they called the next morning at 6am! Actually I'd fixed it by then myself, but that's pretty prompt!

So when I add the 802-11g, it will be Linksys all the way.

[Rick_EE]

I ordered the netgear. We have been happy with the other netgear products that we have. Thanks for the Input.