[RamGuy]

So I just managed to brick my Netgear WNDR3700!
Been running it for several months now, and it's been doing fairly okay.

My network is quite simple and straight forward, the router have to utilize my 25/25mbit fibre optical Internet solution, and managed to push out maximum local performance between my four computers (2x notebooks with Intel Centrino 6300 AGN, and 2x desktop computers with Intel Pro/1000 ET Dual Server NIC) which I have a rather active connection in-between all four of them.

Especially my one desktop computer with the dual NIC is hosting my 4x 2TB RAID10 network storage.. So the LAN throughput should be able to fully utilize the dual gigabit aggregation for optimum LOCAL performance.



The WAN performance isn't really that big of a deal, as long as it's capable utilizing my 25/25mbit line, might upgrade it to 100/100mbit later so I guess it should be able to handle that as well in order be somewhat "future proof".


Other than that I'm hosting quite a few game sessions online, as well as running lots of torrent connections so a router capable of handling lots of connections and action without struggling is always nice.



The big question is whether I should get another WNDR3700 / WNDR37AV from Netgear, or look at something else like the Linksys / Cisco WRT610 / E3000 or the Asus RT-16N?

That's the top three / premium routers currently on the market, aren't they? In regards of hardware and performance those should be the top three overall routers? Might toss in DIR-825 Rev2 as well, but I don't like D-Link at all, and considering the hardware is almost identical with the WNDR3700 / WNDR37AV and still it's performance seems much poorer it seems like D-Link just can't get their heads around their router line-up?


Looking at the raw specifications I guess WNDR3700 / WNDR37AV and Asus RT-16N has to be considered most powerful out of the lot?

Netgear topping the CPU charts with the Atheros AR7161 680MHz compared to Asus with it's Broadcom 4718A clocked at 533MHz?

On the other hands Asus have an edge with 128MB RAM versus 64MB on the Netgear, as well as 32MB flash compared to 8MB?


The Broadcom wireless radio / chip also seems to play along better with my Intel 6300 AGN NIC's as well, my older WRT320N (with the same NIC as the RT-16n? Did provide better coverage and stability than WNDR3700 and it's Atheros AR9280 radio ever have).

We've also have this eight internal antennas on the Netgear compared to three larger external antennas on the Asus.


The WNDR3700 isn't a fully Atheros solution as it features a *choke* Realtek *choke* gigabit switch whereas RT16-N sticks with Broadcom all the way and feature a Broadcom gigabit switch.




Last but not least the WNDR3700 / WNDR37AV works really poor with third part firmware, DD-WRT is really struggling with the wireless performance and stability, along with the overall performance is reduced compared with the stock firmware, OpenWRT works slightly better but it's still overall worse than the stock firmware and Tomato isn't supported at all.

The RT-16N on the other hand seems to have full DD-WRT, OpenWRT and Tomato support.. All working better than the stock firmware?



For my needs third party firmwares aren't really required, but I tend to like them much better than stock firmware which often doesn't feature customization possibilities at all.






So which one do you think should suit me and my usage the best? WNDR3700 / WNDR37AV, WRT610N / E3000 or RT-16N or perhaps something different?


EDIT:

I have to mention something odd about the WNDR3700, it doesn't really seem to struggle much with my heavy connection activity, but for some reason the WAN latency tends to go up every time there is a truckload of connections going on? So there isn't any bandwidth problems but my game sessions suddenly go form 40ms to 250ms in a few seconds if there are some heavy workload on uTorrent going on while gaming, WRT320 didn't have this issue back in the day? Might it be something with the WNDR3700?

[RamGuy]

I should also mention I don't really care about dual-band wireless.. For my experience, in my neighbourhood I get better performance, throughput, stability and coverage with plain "old" 2.4GHz 803.11n anyway!

[JHSPerc]

Sounds to me like you need a Cisco 1941W

While costly, you can customize it to suit your needs and it's more future proof then anything I can think of.