Need advice on a high-end consumer router

Long time, no post..

I'm in need of a little advice. My sister lives in a large student dorm that's been having internet problems as long as they can remember. I went to check, and their current network is a total mess consisting of a giant clusterf- of multiple switches, routers and whatnot strung together. I'd like to help them by fixing the network and wireless in one go.

What I'd like to do is buy a single passive 10/100 switch for the physical connections, and re-do the wireless with two wireless access points (it's a long corridor, one W-AP will not manage), one of which will also serve as router for the cable/DSL internet.

There are at least 15 physical connections but also anywhere between 10-20 mobile phones, laptops etc that want in on the wireless. Finding a cheap 19" passive switch is easy, but I need some advice on a router that can handle this amount of devices.

- Sjaak

Have you considered pfSense? Build an Atom box, install pfSense, enjoy.

Recycling an old rig as router was suggested by a friend too, but I need it to be extremely noob-friendly. I don't ever want to have to return to fix it for them basically, in case of failure simply resetting the routers must be enough.

pfSense can be basically set and forgot about it.

Hey Sjaak, long time no see

I'd suggest something like a Linksys WRT610N or D-Link DIR-825 with DD-WRT on it. The latter is more powerful, but only certain hardware revisions are supported DD-WRT.

As for the n00b friendliness of DD-WRT, my girlfriend is quite happy using the web interface to reboot our router when our ridiculous apartment broadband craps out.

The belkin is available here for €79 (~100$), but I can't find that linksys model for sale anywhere. Does the belkin have the..'power'...to handle 30 devices worth of facebook, torrent and mail traffic? (and how do you tell?)

*and yes, its been a very long time

Facebook and mail very probably, but if a large proportion of those people started torrenting I don't think any high end home router on the market would be up to the job.

There are WRT builds for x86 (which might make for a more powerful n00b friendly solution), though I haven't ever installed one.

BTW, speaking of switches, there was a pretty yummy Dell switch down there on the Classifieds.

It's a bit far away though

A couple of these should do the trick. I'm running a WZR-HP-G300NH managing 5 systems streaming videos on all at the same time with no issues plus some phones. It's a rockn' good time. I'm sure the one in the link being twice as powerful could handle what you're looking to do. Depending the number of systems on each, from the sound of it, you may be able to get away with three of these 600's with some subnetting and static addresses assigned by the routers via MAC addresses. Definitely need to have a cable connection to manage that bandwidth though.

Edit: As a matter of fact, I'd venture a DOCSIS 3.0 Motorola modem which will handle that number of connections much better than what the cable co. will provide, that's for sure. Look for a surfboard 6120.

Thanks