I've been using a NetGear Rangemax for a number of years now - my house has sound dampening insulation in the walls, and that seems to impact range with most routers.
When I got the NetGear, it was purely for range... and the RangeMax does deliver on that promise. However now and then I'd have to unplug it to do a hard reset because it's connection with the cable modem would get funky and it wouldn't connect. Or often I'd have to http to the web admin to release/renew the IP from the cable modem. I assumed this was more of a Comcast issue.
But a few months ago I got a Macbook Pro, and life with NetGear went downhill. Hitting any sort of site with video, or downloading a large file caused the router to totally lock up. And it got to the point where I couldn't take it anymore.
So I decided to give the Linksys WRT54G2 a try. What I find confusing about the Linksys WRT series routers is just the naming conventions... there's so many, it's hard to discern what a higher model adds, and reviews seem to fluctuate. E.g. often the lower end Linksys routers seem to score better than the higher end.
But the WRT54G2 at Amazon has 300+ 5/5 ratings, so figured it was a safe bet.
Setup was a breeze, 5 minutes and was up and running. Range is as good if not better than the MIMO based NetGear RangeMax (I believe the WRT54G2 is MIMO as well). Haven't had to release/renew the IP from Comcast like I've had to do with the NetGear.
Absolutely no problems with the Macbook, and no impact with XBOX Live gaming (I play Call Of Duty 4 and 5 online). I also run Windows Vista and Windows XP boxes on the network.
I used to be a big fan of NetGear, but if you go on their hosted discussion forums - there's tons of people asking how to solve this Macbook locking up the router issue as it spans many of their products. It's very dissapointing to see that they haven't updated the router's firmware (for the RangeMax, there hasn't been an update since 2006).Get more detail about Linksys WRT54G2 Wireless-G Broadband Router.
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