School me on wireless routers.

[tango5]

Ok guys, right now i have a Cisco/Linksys wireless router. It has worked awesome for the past few years, but within the last 8-12 months we have increased our wireless devices to about 9 or 10 in our home. I have noticed that connection time is lagging with this many devices connected. What is a better wireless router that will handle this much connection/volume? Thanks in advance folks!

[speedrrracer]

Well, you can get better routers than yours, but you will still only have so much bandwith.

It's like having 9 or 10 kids all trying to drink from the same drinking fountain -- just not enough water coming out for everyone to get a mouth on some.

If you had said that some of your devices were getting dropped / failing to connect, then maybe I'd blame the router right off the bat, but if you have that many devices all successfully getting data (even if it's slow and choppy) then it could be argued that your router is doing a fine job juggling that many demands.

So my first recommendation would be to swap that drinking fountain for a fire hose, if you can. Can you get fiber optic where you live? If not, cable is usually the next best / easiest, so can you get a cable plan / better cable plan that offers more bandwith?

[briguy73]

If you've had it for a few years, it is possible that it is just starting to wear out. I typically need to replace mine every two years. I've had a lot of luck with Netgear routers. Don't go cheap - spend over $100 and you should have one that will last, have a good range, and have advanced features if you need them!

[high_revs]

what kind of linksys/cisco router do you have tango?

i was on wrt54g for YEARS, and it was stable. i bought a second used second off ebay as a wireless bridged repeater. about 4-6 weeks later, everthing comes to a crawl. i used ddwrt firmware as that's been very stable for me over the stock firmware since 2007 or 2008. i rewired for ethernet to relocate the router in center of house to fix coverage issues. i just tested the wrt54gs again the other night and they are bad now. wifi died or needed rebooting after just 5 mins in the new location. i replaced both with a asus rt-n56u.

going back in time, i could've probably saved my original wrt54 by just putting ddwrt on it (or other flavors like openwrt, tomato, etc.) . might be worth a shot. i know the first one i had kept on needing reboots before even its first year, and the stock firmware was never really stable. aftermarket firmware might be worth a shot since you're replacing anyway (in case it doesn't work or you brick it).

also, might help if you describe what issues you have. if you have 9 people streaming at the same time, yeah, performance will suffer as you only have so much bandwidth.

[tango5]

Not all devices are streaming. They are connected but sit idle. I'll try the suggestions to see if it helps before I call and see about a larger bandwidth or router. Thanks guys for the help!