a bit OT: which soho nat router

[Aled Morris]

Chris Whitehouse wrote:

> Hi
>
> I wonder if anyone can recommend a hardware modem/router/switch with 
> wireless to share a 2Mb/s ADSL line. Most of them do NAT DHCP basic 
> firewall etc but I am looking for one which will allow me to allocate 
> bandwidth by giving anything on the ethernet ports priority and 
> allowing the wireless connection full bandwidth when the ethernet 
> ports are not using it. 4 ports is plenty,


The problem (in the one-IP-address-shared-with-NAT case) is that the ISP 
sending you the 2Mbps data can't differentiate your wireless connected 
clients from your wired, and so can't do bandwidth allocation.

For a router I'd recommend a Cisco 857W at around £260 as the 
Linksys/D-link/Netgear cheapo units are a bit crap.

> budget is restricted and for various reasons a pc based router is not 
> an option.

ah.  Maybe a Linksys, D-link or Netgear would be what you're looking for :-)

Seriously, I don't think there's much to choose between the Linksys 
WAG354G (£63), D-link DSL-G604T (£62) or Netgear DG834G.(£70)  I haven't 
used the lesser brands (Draytek, Zyxel, Belkin, Thomson etc.)

Aled