I finally figured it was about time to upgrade to an 802.11g router now that I’m using the wireless on the iBook more and more, but it was with some hesitation. I wanted a nice, stable wireless router, but the impression I had been getting from some of the forums I visit is that none of the various consumer-level brands and models were really all that reliable. Some people had no problems at all, but many others had stories of lockups and other strange behaviours under load.
There was a recommendation that often came up when people had these complaints, though: try a third-party firmware. I managed to find a compatible Linksys model today (not all revisions will work) and immediately loaded DD-WRT onto it fairly painlessly, and now I just have to use it and see how well it works.
Besides the (hopeful) stability, it adds a few other features I’ll use:
– Static DHCP assignment, so I can use fixed IP addresses (which makes port forwarding a lot easier) without having to configure each system.
– Local DNS resolution for those DHCP assignments, so I can refer to each system by its name without having to set up the local ‘hosts’ table on each system.
– QoS features, so time-sensitive game data doesn’t get buried by other traffic.