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Wireless Routers

Generally, older gear based on Airgo Networks technology outpaced draft-n lines in our tests. However, draft-n equipment may be upgradable to the final 802.11n spec, whereas products using proprietary chips will never be. Products in the chart are listed alphabetically and not ranked by PCW Rating.

Yardena Arar

Friday, August 25, 2006, 12:00 PM PDT
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Name PCW Rating
Wireless router
Asus 240 MIMO Wireless Router
• Wireless chip set: Airgo True MIMO Gen3
• Encryption: 128-bit WEP, WPA/WPA2 Personal, Radius support
• Auto channel selection: Yes
• Mounting options: Horizontal, vertical, wall
• Price when rated: $120
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The Asus offers top-rated performance and nice design at a great price, but is hampered by setup and encryption problems and subpar documentation.
(Last Rated: August 25, 2006)
Full ReviewTest Report
Pending
Belkin N1 Wireless Router
• Wireless chip set: Atheros XSPAN (draft-n)
• Encryption: 128-bit WEP, WPA/WPA2 Personal and Enterprise, Radius support
• Auto channel selection: No
• Mounting options: Horizontal, vertical, wall
• Price when rated: $150
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This router is far and away the best of our test group in design and ease of use, and it has excellent features. But it stumbled badly in long- and midrange performance tests.
(Last Rated: August 25, 2006)
Full ReviewTest Report
Pending
Buffalo AirStation Nfiniti Wireless-N Router/Access Point
• Wireless chip set: Broadcom Intensi-fi (draft-n)
• Encryption: 128-bit WEP and WPA Personal
• Auto channel selection: No
• Mounting options: Vertical
• Price when rated: $149
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The Buffalo matched the mediocre test performance of other draft-n routers we tested. It also lacks some key features, and has a confusing interface.
(Last Rated: August 25, 2006)
Full ReviewTest Report
Pending
Linksys Wireless-N Broadband Router
• Wireless chip set: Broadcom Intensi-fi (draft-n)
• Encryption: 128-bit WEP, WPA/WPA2 Personal and Enterprise, Radius support
• Auto channel selection: Yes
• Mounting options: Horizontal, vertical
• Price when rated: $150
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This draft-n router has the best features of the group we tested, plus excellent documentation and setup. But its test performance did not live up to its billing.
(Last Rated: August 25, 2006)
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Pending
Netgear RangeMax 240 Wireless Router
• Wireless chip set: Airgo True MIMO Gen3
• 128-bit WEP, WPA/WPA2 Personal
• Auto channel selection: Yes
• Mounting options: Horizontal, vertical
• Price when rated: $119
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The RangeMax 240 is a great router, with excellent performance and very good features, usability, and design. But its Airgo technology will never be upgradable to the 802.11n standard.
(Last Rated: August 25, 2006)
Full ReviewTest Report
Pending
Netgear RangeMax Next Wireless Router
• Wireless chip set: Broadcom Intensi-fi (draft-n)
• 128-bit WEP, WPA/WPA2 Personal
• Auto channel selection: Yes
• Mounting options: Horizontal (causes poor antenna placement), vertical
• Price when rated: $129
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If you want to buy a draft-n router now, the RangeMax Next is your best choice, with very good features, setup, and ease of use, and reasonable performance.
(Last Rated: August 25, 2006)
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Pending
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We tested each router and corresponding PC Card adapter in a series of short-range, medium-range, and long-range tests conducted in a suburban home. In the close-range tests, we set the router up in a home office and put the client approximately 6 feet away in the same room. In the medium-range tests, the router remained in the office while the client was stationed two rooms away. In the long-range tests, the router remained in the office while the client was set up in the backyard, about 60 feet away. Our server test bed, which was connected to the router via ethernet, was an ABS 3-GHz Pentium 4 system running Suse Linux 9.2. Our client test beds were identical IBM ThinkPad T43 notebook PCs with their internal Wi-Fi cards removed. We ran a script that contained a series of uploads and downloads of a 106MB file using the Windows FTP client. We ran our tests multiple times over several different days.

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