Hardware Router Chart – June 2006 Update

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Tim Higgins

New Chart Added; More Routers, too!

This month’s Router Chart update adds four new routers, including three draft 802.11n products. We tested both the Linksys WRT54G V5 and WRT54GL as part of our Yes, the Linksys WRT54G V5 Really Is a Lousy Router article. Both came in at the bottom of the Total Simultaneous Throughput chart and in the middle of the WAN to LAN and LAN to WAN throughput charts.

The fastest of the draft 11n routers was the Netgear WNR854T, with 116 Mbps of Total Simultaneous Throughput. While good, this router still didn’t beat the current top three fastest routers, the Netgear WPNT834 RangeMax 240, D-Link DGL-4300 Wireless 108G Gaming and D-Link DI-634M Wireless 108G MIMO routers.

The other draft 11n router, the Buffalo Technology WZR-G300N didn’t do as well, not even breaking the 100 Mbps mark for Total Simultaneous Throughput. This is due to its use of Broadcom’s aging BCM4704 processor.

We would have had a third draft 11n router to add, but the Netgear WNR834B bricked on us when left on overnight. But we’ll get another one from Netgear and add it in next month’s update.

Due to popular demand, we’ve added a new chart for Maximum Simultaneous Connections, an important router performance spec for gaming and P2P filesharing applications. Once again, none of the routers added this month beat out the current top-performers, the Netgear RangeMax 240 and D-Link DGL-4300.

By the way, our thanks to everyone for their questions, comments and suggestions in the Forumz. We’re hard at work on implementing many of your suggestions and product test requests. Keep ’em coming!

You can access the updated chart here.

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