Simply The Best And Nothing Less

I have been generally happy with my Gamer’s Lounge from D-Link for a couple of years now. Unfortunately, I am running entirely too much off it these day and it appears that it is suffering from a real overload. I end up having to reboot it at least once a day. I know for a fact that it is not related to DHCP resets or anything of that sort. No, it seems to either be a NAT table overflow or simply too much going on for the router’s resources.

I need a real router, one that can take a “digital spanking” - no kidding. It needs to be able to hand all that a solid 20/20 FiOS connection can throw at it. I need to easily be able to rock out with one home-plug enabled DVR, two wireless notebooks, a Wi-Fi connected Intel Mac, a dedicated home server running all of the time, another smaller PC dedicated to streaming Ustream and my main desktop machine running most of the day all day with a heavy network load.

Here is a basic break down:

• 3 wireless devices - one or two on simultaneous, moderate network load.
• 1 “Home-Plugged” (I set it up) HD-DVR from Directv.
• 3 CAT5/6′ed PCs, two of them serving as servers.

So where does this leave me? Honestly I do not think it will take more more than a good SoHo router/Wi-Fi access point to do the job. I have had this needing to restart the router issue for awhile now, long before I daisy-chained my FiOS Actiontec piece of junk to my existing router. Yes, the FiOS modem/router is acting exclusively as a Fiber modem at this time. It’s got a nasty problem with its NAT capabilities, so I was actually seeing better performance by simply using my older D-Link.

Routers I am considering?

• Netopia 3387WG (VGx or ENT) - Not for the kiddies, this router is pretty heavy duty. Telnet exclusively for the ENT version, but overall it rates really hight for SoHo use.
• DrayTek Vigor2910G (DrayTek 2820n) - Loving this router. Looks like just the ticket, again being highly rated with features on its features. Also has everything I am looking for, including support for up to75 LAN clients (via other means of connectivity, of course)

My gut is telling me to go with the Draytek, but really want to make sure I have simple, no nonsense access to LAN DHCP IP reservations within the router’s configuration. Yeah, this may seem lazy to those of you big into heavy networking, but for a variety of reasons I do not want static IPs with my router’s DHCP turned off.

What I will no longer purchase is residential crap from Linksys, Netgear or even D-Link. I want the router equivalent of a HungryMan dinner, but for heavily networked geeks. No more Lean Cuisine nonsense for this guy.

So which is it? Any experience with the two routers above? Any idea about doing LAN IP reservations as described previously with either? Have a better alternative that is not me building my own or buying more consumer junk? Please, hit the comments and share your experiences.