Gaming Help with new ADSL Router and NAS Needed

[sekhu]

So I need a new ADSL Router/Modem because my current one from my ISP requires resetting once a week at least, sometimes every fortnight. I've had it replaced 4 or 5 times, so I decided that if they can't provide a decent dsl router I'll buy my own.

This won't be my first router purchase, I already have a Netgear DG834 wired router, but I need wireless for my other devices. I will be connecting upto 8 wireless devices and 4 wired devices, if that info is of any use.

I'm looking at this this Netgear DGN2200 ADSL Wireless-N Modem Router w/ USB port unless there's any reason why I shouldn't? Supports ADSL 2, has 4 ports etc all the common stuff.

I was thinking of buying this Netgear STORA MS2000 2-bay NAS Enclosure and then adding two Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB Hard Drive SATAII 64MB Cache - OEM Caviar Green .

The router I mentioned does support an external drive, but it's limited in the brands and options that it supports so not any flash drive or external will workon the network if I was to plug one in.

Any thoughts or advice on this hardware? What are the alternatives?

Thanks in advance

 

[Am0s]

from my experiences netgear can have dodgy firmware which result in your power cycling your router at least once in a while depending if there is any storms and what not, I know of they have firmware updates which can resolve the problem, are you on bethere ISP? and if so you got the bebox? I read up on one of their forums that some person supplied their own ADSL2 router and couldn't achieve faster speeds than the bethere provided router (bebox)

If your on bethere and the router you got is the speedtouch 780 or 785 cant find the exact number then mine craps out after a while too.

regarding the nas case, what sort of requirements do you use for the internet? if its just personal use then it might be overkill and you could get a nice router like a cisco or linksys or something with the extra cash.

my 2 cents

 

[Originality]

Routers needing resetting is fairly common. Causes include power failure, overheating or overstressing (P2P activity e.g. torrents) and ISP port degradation. Most modern routers I've dealt with have a setting to automatically restart in most of those cases (doesn't work if it just freezes up). EDIT: Worth mentioning - no "brand" (Linksys, DLink, Belkin, Netgear, etc) is better than another when it comes to routers crashing/resetting. They all do it. The hard part is finding the one router (ignore brand) that does it less than the others.

I've heard Netgear NASs are well built and easy to use, but lacking in the speed department. On the other hand, since it's on a network, speed isn't so much a problem since you're limited by ethernet or wireless speeds anyway.

As for the Netgear router... well, it's probably as good as any other. Don't worry about compatibility with the USB port - that usually means that it supports devices that connect directly through USB and not through a hub, QoS/data security chip, encryption or any other of the random agents they put into specialist USB drives (the same rules applied to the Wii-drive I was trying to set up yesterday - half my drive docks failed, but I still managed to use a dismantled enclosure to get it working). It should also support a printer or webcam if you want to share one on the network. What I do advise is getting a surge protector, since that's the biggest cause of router resets in my experience (aside from badly configured torrent clients - most routers will crash if it's trying to route too many connections at once).

 

[Am0s]

netgear do have a track record for having dodgy firmware, which causes the router to freeze drop the connection etc, another way the router crashes if there are any surges/spikes, or work being done on the BT network can cause some routers to crash more often, in the most part netgear always suffered from this.

 

[Elritha]

I've had nothing but problems with Netgear routers/modems in the past. The first one would drop my DSL connection daily at a specific time, while other modems were fine. I got a replacement of the same model eventually that did the same thing. The 3rd replacement of a different model had wireless difficulties, but at least it kept the DSL connection. Eventually I got a refund after having to deal with their horrible customer support for hours.

Not all routers randomly reboot, especially those with 3rd party firmware. My Linksys WRT54GL had an up time of over 200 days at one stage. I rebooted it to upgrade the firmware. It also sees heavy torrenting, uses QoS and has adblocking built in that all stresses the routers cpu.

 

[sekhu]

well i end up not getting that router, i was told that i ought to have:

wired adsl router

 

[Originality]

For the price you're spending on your NASs, you might consider getting a small computer dedicated for that. A mini-ATX motherboard with only basic hardware (it doesn't even need a discreet graphics card) should be perfect for a media center. After that, you can use a program called FreeNAS (freenas.org) to turn the computer into a big NAS (using the unix-based OS).