Jackson.MacKenzie said:
Hi all!
I'm getting FiOS in our house and they have this promotion where they're giving us a free "actiontec" router with the purchase. I'm trying desperately to convince my parents that we would be so much better off buying all linksys or netgear products, even though it's free, but they won't believe me.
The reviews I've read of the product are awful and its not linksys, netgear, or microsoft. And its the type of router thats just good enough for a normal user but to the techgeek it is INTOLLLERABLE!
What are your thoughts on this matter? Should we stick with this 3rd party weird router, even though it's free, or spend the extra $50 and invest in a good linksys router?
The only problem is that your router likely supports fiber. Your internet connection is fiber. You need a fiber port.
No Linksys routers will support fiber, and no D-Link residential routers support fiber. This means you need to spend around $100 on a fiber converter (I'm not exactly sure what kind of fiber verizion is using). Ontop of this, another $100 for a decent router. That's 200$ right their.
But, look further into the Actiontec router, it's this model MI424-WR. I read a bit on it, and besides a few people having torrent problems with multiple computers torrenting.
Infact, this router in order to do what it has to, has to have more power than any of the residential d-link or linksys routers. And upon closer inspection, this router also appears to run OpenRG / OpenSMB which is the same thing the 200$ and over linksys routers running.
Not only does this actiontec appear to have a better OS and hardware than anything else for a decent price, it's free. Give it a shot.
This thing even runs at 10 times the speed of my high end 800$ Cisco routers I use at home as well (10BaseT Cisco router [Cisco 831-K9] vs 100BaseFX ? Actiontec)
Just some hardware comparasion on this router vs some others
Linksys WRT54G (Standard home wifi router): 50$
Linksys RV082 (Linksys high end buisenss router): 300$
Cisco 831-K9: 600$
Actiontec MI424-WR: Free
Processors
Linksys WRT54G: 200mhz mips? broadcom BCM5352
Linksys RV082: 266mhz ARM intel x-scale
Cisco 831-K9: 66mhz Motorola RISC
Actiontec MI424-WR: 533mhz ARM intel x-scale
RAM
Linksys WRT54G: 8 meg
Linksys RV082: 32 meg SDRAM
Cisco 831-K9: 64 meg SDRAM (48 on older ones)
Actiontec MI424-WR: 32 meg SDRAM
Flash
Linksys WRT54G: 4 meg
Linksys RV082: 8 meg
Cisco 831-K9: 16 meg (12 meg older models)
Actiontec MI424-WR: 8 meg
Operating System
Linksys WRT54G: VXWorks
Linksys RV082: OpenRG (Linux 2.4 kernel)
Cisco 831-K9: Cisco IOS 12.X (Support for 12.4)
Actiontec MI424-WR: OpenRG (Linux 2.4 kernel)
Now if your fammilar with these OS's, you know that VXWorks is crap. OpenRG is a far more stable OS, and I noticed that the actiontec has a newer build of OpenRG. Cisco IOS is the most stable, but comes with a big price tag.
Routing speeds
Linksys WRT54G: 30 meg(ish)
Linksys RV082: Almost 100 meg
Cisco 831-K9: 10 meg*
Actiontec MI424-WR: 100 meg
These speeds are a bit rough. Cisco one will route at it's full speed under virtually any conditions, however the others will drop down when strict firewalls and filtering aer used.
About port forwarding, if your a real geek, if you telnet into the router, run the shell, im sure these things will run iptables for port forwarding. In here you can fully customize the port forwarding and routing.