Tech gurus - wireless routers and lots of devices

I still have a trusty old Linksys wireless-g router that is a few years old. The number of devices in the house has bloomed what with two teenagers, phones, pads, laptops, wireless printers, etc. We are seeing intermittent instability that is immediately cured when rebooting the router, and then finally can return to total stability by just turning everything off but one or two. Would it help any to upgrade to a more modern router? Is there any other way to fortify against the onslaught of devices?

I just went through this when, after years of bugging me, my father finally convinced me to sign up for Skype. My Linksys wireless G wouldn't support it, nor could I use Facetime on the iPhone.

I had my tech-guy/nephew spec a new one out for me, but someone else suggested that I just go down to Staples and get whatever they recommend for gaming.

Cradelpoint WiPipe.

sounds less like the wirless can't support the bandwidth and more like it's just glitching... could be old hardware (it does ware out) but more then likely it's just the coding...

assuming it's mechanically in good condition DDWRT will return it to rock stable performance...

DDWRT/OpenWRT is probably not a bad suggestion. Otherwise it might be a good idea to get a dual band (G and N) router/access point if you have enough devices that support N in the 5GHz band, or just get a second access point for N/5GHz only. There might just not be enough bandwidth to go around in the G band, especially if you get interference from neighbours.

Yeah the easiest solution is to get a "high end gaming" router, although an average-ish one running DD-WRT/OpenWRT is just as good and cheaper, but you'd have to reflash it yourself and do a lot of research to find a good model to use.

These days you want an 802.11n, or better yet an 802.11ac router.

glueguy wrote: I still have a trusty old Linksys wireless-g router

I chuckled when I read this. In my personal experience Linksys are not that trusty and often need to be reset.

The good doctor mentioned CradlePoint. Effective serious stuff.

Personally, I have had a D-Link unit for a year now. My small cable company provides the unit with their service at no additional charge and they support the device as well with their own customer service dept.
I suspect they went to this model because cable customers call to complain of outage and the outage is really the wifi router. With this router the cable company can see if the router is broadcasting.

jrw1621 wrote:

glueguy wrote: I still have a trusty old Linksys wireless-g router

I chuckled when I read this. In my personal experience Linksys are not that trusty and often need to be reset.

Everyone has different experiences. This one got plugged in and forgotten for its stability. Through about 5 years, a house move, a relocation within the new house, it never hiccuped. For the last couple of months, with 3 phones, two pads, a kindle or two, etc etc it's like it exceeded some limit. I've got it set to something like 50 devices so that's not it, but it is acting like we've hit a limit. Most of the time it's stable during the week, but when we're all home on the weekend it seems to destabilize.

You simply have too much loading up that band. Get a dual band router and flash it. Asus makes routers that come with DD-WRT, and they're typically pretty cheap, too. I've used a couple of them, and they rock.

The Linksys WRT54g was an awesome router, and was very stable and reliable. But they're all pretty old at this point and the new Linksys stuff is terrible in my experience. I upgraded to an Asus RT-N56u. It's pricey for a wifi router but has been awesome. Downloads never used to hit over 900 kb/sec, they're now pushing 1500 kb/sec, and that's over wireless. The old router would freeze up after a long download or Netflix or whatnot, but this one is solid as a rock. It hasn't given me any trouble in the 5 months we've been using it.

A good review of it:

http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/this-is-the-wi-fi-router-you-want/

I'd throw DD-WRT at the router you have. I've been using a Linksys WRT54GL for six years now and it's still a good setup and deals with Skype just fine.

What can cause issues is having multiple devices moving data at the same time over the wireless link. Derick's suggestion is probably the right path.

jrw1621 mentions D-link... my associate pastor finally moved to the modern world and wanted wifi in his house (more because he moved his office into his house)... anyway i'm his tech guy... anyway a friend gave me a wireless N d-link and it's menus are very well set up... but I installed DDWRT and set it up in his house... it's been over a year and i've never had a call from him... he's a super un-techy mac guy... I ask him occasionally about it and not a prob... if/when I get around to moving to N in my house I may well go that route.

on a side note... I keep my old DDWRT flassed lynksys 54gs and have all the kids stuff connected to it (Wii, nintendo DS and crap like that)... also the password is a lot easier on that one... and when the brother-in-law comes he gets that one (it's set to be highly throttled for his computer as he abuses torrents and other downloads when he's here)... so I keep it connected for control reasons

I pulled up the box for the D-Link unit that I have here at home. It is a D-Link Xtreme N Gigabit Router Model DIR-655
N+ 300
Works well for the past year.

My Xbox router (it receives signal from my main router and has its own LAN) is a DD-WRT WRT54GS V7. It's running an older build, and it's not a full build. That router is dead stable.

My main router is a Linksys WRT160N V2 running stock firmware because it's not flashable. It's gotten really flaky lately. I'm replacing it with an Asus.

Full disclosure: I do this for a living. Wifi deployments made my car payments for a while.

I've got an older g model buffalo( can't remember the exact model ) running tomato. No issues at all w/ stability. It does hicuup when my wife and I try to use the wireless at the same time and do something "heavy" like download files from work and watch video at the same time.

Linksys( pre-cisco ) was a much better product, IMO.

The D-link DIR-615 rev. C (take note of the revision number) is a cheap and common router, 802.11n. Pretty unreliable out of the box, but rock-solid-reliable with DD-WRT.