Paul Begley Blog

My trusty Linksys WRT54G running Tomato firmware appeared to be dying.  My upload speed, as measured by speedtest.net, was in the range of Kbps instead of Mbps.  Download speeds were inconsistent, in the rage of 10 Mbps to 14 Mbps.

I researched a ton of routers, and my criteria was to have two radios, support 802.11N, and QoS.  I also wanted it to support bridging, AP, and act as a repeater.  Devices I considered, included Netgear, Cisco E4200, and the Buffalo N300.

I’m delighted with the Buffalo N300, which I picked up from Amazon for $65.  Setup was very easy.  I didn’t use the automated install software, I just connected to the router directly and configured the router since I was familiar with the DD-WRT software (v24SP2-MULTI (03/21/11) std). 

The router web interface was a bit sluggish initially, but after the initial configuration was completed, and it was running for 15 minutes it became much more responsive.

I haven’t used any of the client connection features, and connected manually.  All our wireless devices connected seamlessly, and one test call on our VoIP phone worked.  I won’t have time to test our Roku and Netflix streaming until the weekend, and will test VoIP calls, including international, later this week.

Initial speedtest.net results below:

Before – Linksys WRT54G

After – Buffalo N300