Author: Richard Danter Date: To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List Subject: [Hampshire] Wireless Broadband Firewall/Router Recommendations?
Hi all,
I am on Virgin Broadband and upgraded to 20Mb a couple of months ago -
at least in theory. I have only just been sent a new cable modem since
the old one didn't go that fast and they didn't upgrade me until I
complained that I wasn't getting near what I was supposed to.
Anyway, now it seems my trusty Netgear FR114W is not able to route
traffic fast enough either. Been meaning to replace it anyway since it
does only 802.11b and most of my machines are now 802.11g.
So I am looking for any recommendations on a good replacement.
Requirements:
- Wireless at 802.11g or better
- 10/100 wired switch built in (pref at least 4 ports, 10/100/1000
would be nice)
- Must be fast enough to max out my broadband, with room to grow if
Virgin get faster
- Firewall
- VPN passthrough
- Good range on the wireless
- WPA
Of course I don't want to pay £1000's for a Cisco box aimed at routing
an entire office, this is really SOHO stuff - maybe one or two big
downloads for work whilst reading mail and surfing from a couple of
other machines.
I have been thinking about the Linksys WRT54GS-UK, anyone use one of
these? Good/bad experiences?
One thing I am noticing in my brief search so far is that nobody seems
to state their broadband throughput. They all say 10/100 connections,
but my Netgear has that! I expect that the firewall is at least part
of the problem since filtering must take some time, but my rules are
pretty trivial (allow all outgoing, block all incoming except for
specific ports which are forwarded to specific machines).
