StarDestroyer.Net BBS

My SMC router locked up, thus knocking out the board for about half an hour until I noticed the problem and reset the router. Does anyone have any recommendations on inexpensive but reliable routers?

I use a 4-port D-Link DI-604, and I've never had any problems with it. IIRC, it was $50 USD at Best Buy, but it's probably less now. After all, it is two years old.

Also, now that I think about it: If you're interested, I have an extra DI-604 I could give you, if you take care of the postage.

I use an 8-port Linksys BEFSR81, and I haven't had to reset it once in over a year of use. I setup the very same router for my parents' broadband connection, it has been in use for over three years without problem.

However, Cisco acquired Linksys a while back and update the line, so I'm not sure if the new BEFSR81s are as good as the old ones.

I used to have a nice Cisco 3600 but I sold it. Also a D-Link DI-604 at home with no issues, Now I have a DI-624 Wireless and it also works for me.

On the other hand I know that a lot of people have problems with D-Link.

At work we only use Cisco.

So I cannot say other than that the DI-604 is cheap and worked for me so try it out?

I like my Linksys. Haven't touched it since I bought it.

Got a Sitecom DC-201 which I think it quite good, since things like DMZ, port forwarding, virtual server etc are very easy to configure in its menu, unlike some others. A few months ago I suddenly got mysterious malfunctions, which forced me to reset the thing, and later on if two PCs were on, one of them would lose internet access (REALLY nice if you have a server running ). For weeks I couldn't find the source of it, all PCs were fine and the problems kept getting worse. Then I remembered what daddy told me, that over 80% of the malfunctions in electronics were not hardware defects, but rather problems with connectors or cables. So I pulled all cables out, spraydusted the connectors, straightened all cables, and plugged everything back in. No problems since. Quite interesting that such strange problems can be caused by cables/connectors.

Would this have something to do with where the board went for the last half-hour?

It went down for Five Mins ....

and that was announced in the OT forum

antitrek wrote:It went down for Five Mins ....

Must have been me, then.

and that was announced in the OT forum

Missed it. There wasn't much warning, and I wasn't here at the time.

Darth Wong wrote:My SMC router locked up, thus knocking out the board for about half an hour until I noticed the problem and reset the router. Does anyone have any recommendations on inexpensive but reliable routers?

My US Robotics router has been going strong since I got it. No lockups.

There's always Freesco if you have a spare Pentium-I or something like that lying around. Plus it's not proprietary so you can make sure it's doing what you want it to.

I was using a nokia MW1122 which was ok apart from the fact that every few months it would completely erase it's memory, meaning I'd need to hook up a serial cable, telnet in and reflash the fucker. It also had a tendancy to forget how to forward UDP every now and then, it's NAT used to drive me up the wall. I've switched to a Dynalink RTA220 with UPnP IGD. Solved all the problems I was having. It's been going since I plugged it in without any problems.

Crayz9000 wrote:There's always Freesco if you have a spare Pentium-I or something like that lying around. Plus it's not proprietary so you can make sure it's doing what you want it to.

What hardware do you use for that? An ADSL PCI card?

Spyder wrote:What hardware do you use for that? An ADSL PCI card?

Nah, too complicated. Just a couple PCI Ethernet cards, 10 or 100 megabit cards work nicely. Dunno about gigabit, I haven't tried it. As for ADSL, use an external modem.

I'm running it right now on a 486DX/33 with a couple ISA cards -- I think they're both Netgear cards. I had to set the IRQs using the DOS utility first, since Freesco doesn't do plug-n-play ISA but it was a relatively minor hassle.

You could also try using OpenBSD as your router/firewall

I've had nothing but good experience with LinkSys routers.

My Linksys has been humming along with no problems for a year and a half, maybe two years now.

phongn wrote:You could also try using OpenBSD as your router/firewall

But can you run it off a single 1.44 MB floppy disk?

Alas, no.

Well, I'd say SMC but you've had a bad experience with yours. Most, actually all my peers and I are running simple SMC's and we've had good experience. My only complaint with mine is that the power cord is easy to knock lose. But since I'm not doing anything important it is a minor issue.