Stable Router

[Mojo]

Looking for recommendations on a router that won't time my connections after several hours and needs to be reset every few days. I don't mind shelling out $400~ or whatever it takes to get something good. Wireless is required, but the requirements on the wireless are less demanding. None of the critical connections will go through that, they will all be wired. I'm just at a loss as to what to look at because I'm not an expert in the matter. I've gone as far as to buy a consumer grade router which I can flash DD-WRT, but I haven't gotten around to actually doing so. I just tried the new router I got stock and the connections were timed out after less than 8 hours.

[Caiyuo]

Is this uncommon for consumer-level then? I don't know what kind of applications necessitate that or if it's common, but I recall dd-wrt lets you specify the time before UDP and TCP timeout manually. Not sure if there's a maximum for it below what you're interested in.

[rezn0r]

if you want to spend the money, something like a Fortigate-40C (~$380) will do anything you need. it's also probably real overkill if you are talking about home routers and dd-wrt w/torrents or whatever. you could get away with a $50 (or less) router with dd-wrt and have all of its features. my last two routers have been higher-end home routers which were $120-150, with dd-wrt on them, and i really had no complaints at all. i guess it really depends on what you need to use it for, because $400 is most likely massive overspending.

that being said i use a Fortiwifi-80CM for my work which is about 35 users online + our servers and it feels like overkill. but they are awesome devices.

at home i'm currently on a linksys e4500 (stock) and i haven't had to reboot it once since i got it, which was a few months ago. before that i was on a linksys wrt610n v2 with dd-wrt on it, and the only time it was rebooted was when power went out, literally. both were fine for what i do, and that's an awful lot of traffic in and out of the house.

[Mojo]

I've lost as much as $400 in potential revenue when the connections have timed out. I'm not well versed enough in networking to truly know what the minimum I need is (or to properly diagnose the source of this problem), I'm just tired of having this occur so frequently. The rebooting of the router isn't always necessary, but if the connections have timed out the damage has been done essentially.

[Niya]

A company that pretty much no one knows about but that builds cheap yet powerful and stable routers is Mikrotik. Since WIFI is a must you might want to look at the RB751U-2HnD or RB751G-2HnD (only difference is that the latter has gigabit LAN). They cost 60/80$ and the basic setup is already pre-configured and pretty simple, but if you like to "tinker" with options, RouterOS has TONS of them. Some parts aren't as user-friendly and "easy" as in other routers, like port forwards, but the wiki and forums come with lots of examples and helpful ppl.

We have a RB750 (pure router, no WIFI) at work and it has been running for ~1y now. Only time when you have to reboot is for firmware updates or if you want to add/remove a plugin/add-on.

The ONLY drawback of the small RBs that i know of is that the used capacitors are a bit temperature-sensitive. When they get too hot they like to "pop", so better keep the router vertical and in a not too warm spot.

[rezn0r]

didn't realize you were running a business, ignore most of what i said about dd-wrt & home routers. my only professional experience is with Fortinet devices and a little Sonicwall, i recommend Fortinet but if you can get away with something like Niya posted it's always good to save money. if you end up wanting to look into Fortinet products their support is great and would probably work with you on deciding which device to use, maybe even let you test one. the key to their stuff is using the right firmware, and there is a bit of a learning curve. of course there are also hundreds of other devices out there so maybe someone else can recommend some more options. good luck.

[Pikarya]

Tried putting a cooling unit near the router? 99% of routers in the $120.00 ranges are overclocked on purpose to weaken the lifespan of the equipment. Same scenario with cheaper (non-flagship) LCD's. Cheap caps equal blown caps and most people would rather just go and buy a new one instead of getting them fixed.

In DDWRT you can declock most routers so they will operate cooler. I did this mod to my Cisco router (along with DDWRT flashing) and it runs better than most of the enterprise equipment I've worked with in the past.

http://www.instructables.com/id/WRT160N-Fan-Mod/