Thanks, Adam, for both your recommendations - Buffalo Tech and pricebat.ca (which I hadn't heard about before). The WHR-HP-G300N is the one I'm interested in now.
BestDirect seems to have the best price on it. Anyone have any experience with them, good or bad?
On 09/03/2010 10:31 AM, Adam Thompson wrote:
[This isn't specifically about 'N' routers, but...]
I've used the Buffalo Technology (www.buffalotech.com) routers a fair bit, and have been consistently impressed by them. They also tend to get excellent reviews.
Their "high-power" models give consistently better range than stock WRT54Gs (for example) *without* burning out the radio. I found you can get the same range out of a WRT54G simply by turning up the transmit power and adding a slightly better antenna, but then the WRT54G burns out within a year.
The Buffalo units (I think) keep the standard Broadcom reference design that everyone uses, but they add a separate RF amp on the RF output to boost power and sensitivity. (Yes, that boosts noise as well, but it doesn't seem to be a problem.)
The unit I've used is the WHR-HP-G54, which among other features can run modified firmware (DD-WRT, for example) but for simpler cases also has a physical SWITCH on the back to turn it into an AP. The single antenna provided was always good enough for my use cases.
Read all about it at http://www.buffalotech.com/products/wireless/routers-and-access-points/airst....
I don't know of any retail stores carrying it, but it's widely available online in Canada: http://www.pricebat.ca/search.php?q=WHR-HP-G54, starting at around $55.
Their 'N' models also (with one exception) can run custom firmware (again, using DD-WRT as my reference, see http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database for details) but I don't have any personal experience with those (yet). Following Consumer Reports' methodology, "reliability is predicted to be better than average based on this brand's repair history".
-Adam