Best in "class"

Lets face it, us folks shopping for routers in this price range are looking for value. For the price, you cant beat the DLink-2310 wireless router. After hearing all the bantering back and forth about what brand was the best I decided to try 3 of the major brands in my "price" range ($50-65). I bought the DLink 2310(49.99), Linksys 54GS(54.99) and the Netgear WGT624(59.99). Now to be fair all these router are in the same "class" low budget home routers. The Linksys did differ from the others in that it was 54Mbs as opposed to 108Mbs like the others. Keep in mind that the 54 and 108Mbs throughput respectively are for router to wireless device speed. You will never see that type of speed because you cable or dsl cant come close to 54Mbs speeds, so its really more hype than anything else when you see those numbers.

NOw, I hooked up all three routers and to my surprise the vaunted Linksys routers disconnected freqently. This was shocking as I fully expected the industrial looking blue looking router to "rout" the other 3 manufacturers.

I then hooked up the DLink, fired it up, and reset my cable modem. Again to my surprise the DLink held a stronger signal than the Linksys at almost double the range. Brain boggled I figured I had the setting wrong on the Linksys thinking there was no way the performance could be that inferior to the cheaper DLink. Well I checked all the setting making sure the "super G" was turned on locked in on channel 11 like the DLink, still got the same stinky performance.

My last trial was the netgear. Now this was an interesting because the Netgear's range was well beyond the DLinks already respectable range and speed was actually the same as my desktop, virturally no speed loss whatsoever compared to the wired cable connection of my desktop. Now that impressive. The funny part of my "test" was at very close range(within 5ft or less) the Netgear router disconnected when transferring big files from my desktop.

So my conclusion ironically enough was that the cheapest router, the DLink actually performed the best overall. I'll also note that the DLink when stood up on its stand is pretty handsome as well.