I’m using wireless home routers and Access Points since a very long time, I remember when I paid up to 200€ for an early Linksys 802.11b Access Point. The only problem I have with them, is that they always die horribly after a while. Let’s go back in my router-love history…I had the following products:
- 2x Linksys WAP11: the power supply died and burned the whole PCB. They both lasted 1 year.
- Linksys WAP54G: the power supply also died after a long agony during which the wireless connection was less and less reliable. It lasted 2 years.
- D-Link DI-824VUP+: the wireless connection was never reliable and the supposed PPTP VPN-server function never worked. They stopped to support the product roughly 6 months after it was released. The biggest piece of shit I ever had. It’s still in operation as a purely Ethernet router.
- D-Link DI-524: the wireless part of the router died today. It lasted 2 years. It had a very short signal range too.
Today, I replaced the DI-524 with a brand new ZyXEL NBG334W and god is it better! Simply by looking at the Web interface and the manual, you can tell that this product is in an other class. It’s a real configuration interface, with options you need and you can also access it via Telnet. Forget Linksys’ or D-Link’s Playmobile interface. The signal strength and range are good too.
ZyXEL always had a good reputation, we used a lot of their products at work but I never tried their home products. At around 30€, it’s not that expensive. Note the nice “Guest WLAN” function.
I’m surprised that your kit didn’t come with longer warranties. The first WAP/bridge I got came with a long 5 year warranty…
It was the case for my first WAP11, they changed it 2x before I finally sold the 3rd one :p
I am using a Zyxel NBG334W and am experiencing a periodic connection drop out when a connection is not active for a length of time.
I have a web server (if you can realistically call it that
) that is connected wirelessly to the NBG router, whilst I am viewing pages on the server it is fine but after a while of not requesting pages I can’t even ping it. The strange thing is if I constantly ping the box for 60-90 seconds I suddenly get a response.
I have assumed that it is some sort of “sleep” that is being enabled but can’t seem to find any sort of inactive connection timer config in it at all. Do you have any suggestions as to what this could be, any suggestion would be greatly received as I am all out of ideas.
Thanks in advance
You should take it back to the store and get a replacement unit, this isn’t normal.