Gigabit Routers + Wifi

[Perryg114]

I am looking for a good gigabit router that either has Wifi or will let me hook my old wireless router in as a slave. I am in the process of going ethernet on everything accept my laptop. My old router is a 10/100 with a b standard Wifi. From the few gigabit routers I have seen most have Wifi as well so I could can my old router and upgrade. I want gigabit ethernet because I am transfering alot of video back and forth from one computer to another. Gigabit might also allow me to use one machine as a server. I have an HTPC and a camera security system so I am bandwidth hungry at the moment. Newegg has this Rosewill but there are only two ratings on it although both are 5 stars. I am going to put a 5 port switch in series with the router. The main system is upstairs with two or three computers plus a laptop downstairs. The three desktop machines will all be ethernet based and the laptop will be wireless most of the time.

Rosewill Router

Perry

 

[JackMDS]

You better off getting a nice Wireless Router and a good independent Giga Switch.

 

[Perryg114]

Yeah that is probably the best solution. The question is which router? The D-link router I have has been a good one. The first one was DOA and the second has lasted several years. Two out of 3 D-link adapter cards have died on me though and one of the replacements died a month after it was replaced so D-link is not on top of my list of new routers. Getting an RMA out of them from some guy in India was like pulling teeth, wisdom teeth that is.

Perry

 

[JackMDS]

My personal prefernce at this time when 802. 11n is Not yet a Standard.

Asus WL-520GU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16833320023

Inexpensive Flashable with DD-WRT*.
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Linksys WRT54GL

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16833124190

Very Solid with DD-WRT (Mediocre Wireless).

--------------------
Zyxel 550 -

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...181218&Tpk=zyxel%2b550

Not compatible with DD-WRT but as is features rich and Good Wireless.

------------------
*What is DD-WRT?

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/ind...hat_is_%22DD-WRT%22%3F

Switch, TrendNet Giga Switch - http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16817111480

 

[Perryg114]

Well I am going to need a wifi router that will also do gigabit ethernet. Most are 10/100 ethernet like the ones you sent me. I am not real concerned about the wifi speed. G wifi is plenty fast for me. Most of my cards are b cards so anything over g is overkill.

Perry

 

[xSauronx]

Originally posted by: Perryg114
Well I am going to need a wifi router that will also do gigabit ethernet.

Perry

you really wont. all that a giga router is, is a router with a giga switch instead of a fast ethernet switch. they can be a little pricey sometimes

instead you can just buy a router *and* a giga switch, and connect all of your gigabit devices to the switch.

 

[Perryg114]

Ok maybe I am not understanding. So I can keep the router I have and run it to the gigabit switch input and hook my gigabit computers to the switch so they can communicate with each other at high speed. I would probably need two switches if I keep my existing router, so one output port on my router goes to the first switch which will have the main computer hooked to it and any other computer that is upstairs with the main computer. I can have a second gigabit switch downstairs in series with the first one to run my HTPC, wife's computer, bedroom computer etc. For some reason, I was under the impression that everything has to go through the router before it went anywhere else??????

Perry

 

[Crusty]

Originally posted by: Perryg114
Ok maybe I am not understanding. So I can keep the router I have and run it to the gigabit switch input and hook my gigabit computers to the switch so they can communicate with each other at high speed. I would probably need two switches if I keep my existing router, so one output port on my router goes to the first switch which will have the main computer hooked to it and any other computer that is upstairs with the main computer. I can have a second gigabit switch downstairs in series with the first one to run my HTPC, wife's computer, bedroom computer etc. For some reason, I was under the impression that everything has to go through the router before it went anywhere else??????

Perry

You would only have to use a router if you had multiple subnets you were trying to network together. As long as all the computers are on the same subnet you will be just fine. The only traffic that will pass through your gateway/firewall(consumer routers) is traffic destined for a network that is outside your firewall, ie the Internet in your setup.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

I'm not a fan of the Rosewill stuff, they just buy and rebrand and its typically cheap stuff too. You can check the UL number on stuff and find out who REALLY made it, but thats sometimes hard to do when buying online

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewill

 

[Perryg114]

Yeah I was thinking Rosewill was an off brand. I will just keep my old D-link router and use a couple gigabit switches to network everything together within my LAN.

Thanks everyone for all the input.

Perry

 

[Perryg114]

Ok I bought a couple Netgear GS105 Gigabit switches and I hooked one up last night and it changed my IP address. Is it supposed to do that? I may have had my router power off when I hooked in the switch so maybe the switch took over. Which device is going to control the LAN IP addresses the switch or the router?

Perry

 

[drebo]

The switch does not have or control IP addresses. It simply forwards Ethernet frames.

If your router was not turned on when you unplugged and plugged your computer back in, your computer would not have been able to receive a DHCP lease from your router (the router's not turned on) and thus would have provisioned itself a link local IP address.

You need to turn your router on and plug all of your switches in, and then plug your computer in. If you do it in a different order, then you can issue the "ipconfig /release" and "ipconfig /renew" commands on the computer to refresh its IP address.

 

[Perryg114]

Ok I got things working but I am a little confused. At first my main computer was 192.168.0.100 and the others were 102 103 etc. I did some file transfers and my speed was only 100M. When I unplugged the router the transfer speed went up to 1000M and it gave me some dirty messages that the IP address became unbound. When I plugged the router back in the router shuffled my IP addresses so now my main machine is 103. They are not unbinding now even if I unplug the router. Is there a way to force the IP address of my main machine to 100? I tried to ipconfig /release and then let the router rebind and it still bound it as 103. I had all the other computers unhooked when I did this. Maybe I should leave well enough alone but I don't want my IP addresses to shuffle again. I have a camera security system connected that I can view remotely and if the IP addresses shuffle because the power goes out it is really going to mess things up. If there is a way to lock each machines IP address in the router setup that would be best.

Perry

 

[TKHDebater]

Sounds like the router is automatically assigning IP addresses. If I'm not mistaken you can turn of the DHCP feature on the router and then manually assign IPs (i.e. open up network settings, your network card, TCP/IP settings, then assign an IP address).

 

[kevnich2]

What router do you have? You mentioned you had a dlink, you can create a static DHCP (Router assigns IP address but it assigns the same IP address all the time) for machines you don't want the IP address to change for. Also, the router will have no effect on file transfer speeds if all of your wired machines are connected to a gigabit switch, the packets aren't even being sent to the router other than for the wireless. I would recommend against turning off DHCp and manually assigning your IP's as it makes it a pain

 

[Perryg114]

I finally got it sorted out. I ended up fixing the IP addresses on each machine so the router could not shuffle them. This seems to work well. Fixing things on the router end does not seem to work because the lease expires every week and it releases all the IP addresses.

Perry

 

[kevnich2]

That setup will work (though I don't recommend it but thats another story) as long as the assigned IP's are OUTSIDE of the DHCP range of your router, or else you will eventually have IP conflicts if the router dishes out an IP address that's already assigned to another computer. My router lease is 3 days but the router will still keep assigning the same IP address to that client as long as it's still there. If the machine is no longer there, after a few weeks that IP address will then get recycled.

 

[Perryg114]

So how would you solve this problem? Are you saying all I need to do is change the range that the router can assign IP address to outside of the fixed IP addresses of my machines? So if the router can assign 100-200 then I need to make my computers above or below this range or change the router settings to something outside of the IP addresses I have fixed on my computers?

Perry