Need Suggestions For A New Router For My Office

As the topic states, I am looking for product suggestions for a new business grade router. I do not want to set up a DHCP server, as I am on the road too much to maintain it. However, that said I want to move away from Linksys and D-Link routers, they seem to bog down and drop connections too often. Unless some one has experience with their newer routers I would like to avoid the consumer routers and move towards the business ones.

Any suggestions? Wired or wireless does not matter, I have been using an Apple Airport Extreme base station for a wireless router (only 4 people use it out of the 15 in my office) and we never have any problems with it. Not sure if we are going to keep it or not.

Edit: I should add somethings to this. I currently have a 24 port gigabit 3COM switch, my Internet provider is Verizon, I have their FiOS with speeds up to 20 up 20 down with a static IP for my FTP enabled NAS. I plan to keep my gigabit switch as we transfer large InDesign Packages back and forth. Packages can be upwards of 2GB.

how about a sonicwall TZ190w or TZW190 ?

Sonicwall 190 seems to be b/g only. We have a few MacBook Pros and Dell laptops that are N compatible, I would like to keep using N it is nice and fast. Good looking out though, also those might be slight high on my price range chart, but I could stretch the budget if I have to.

keep the airport extreme. grab the non-wifi 190 and call it a day. we use the TZ190 pretty much with all of our clients. i even have one here, the sonicwall point to point VPN is priceless. i use it to stay connected with my clients when i am at home.

How is the setup with SonicWall products? I am not an IT guy by any means, however I have never had to call support to set up a router before. Also I see no Mac VPN support, is there any with this particular Sonicwall router. Also I see that it has a 3G port, we really do not have much need for that and hate to pay for a service we will not use.

Anyone have any opinions on Cisco routers, Newegg has a few for the $400-$600 range.

its not tough to setup at all, and sonicwall will walk you through everything if you call them.

for mac VPN you could always run a s2k box with RAS, and install digitunnel on the macs.

Id also have to recommend Sonicwall as well. Not sure what model was used at my previous place of employment but they where awesome, especially the VPN integration like TurboMirage mentioned.

As for Cisco, well they are pretty much the cream of the crop for enterprise networking. The level of skill needed to set one up depends on the model.

Alright you guys and some other friends are really pushing me to get a SonicWall router. I am looking at the TZ180. I think it is going to meet my needs the best of the routers they offer, and fall well within my price range leaving me room to add more storage to our RAID setup.

However, I am confused at the difference between these two routers, SonicWall sales support has been slow to respond to me. Any help I could get would be great.

Dell : SonicWALL TZ 180 TotalSecure 25 : Networking - Enterprise Class : Small & Medium Business

Dell : SonicWALL TotalSecure 10 Series TZ 180 Security Appliance : Networking - Enterprise Class : Small & Medium Business

IIRC i believe it is the amount of licenses that come with it.

Licenses? What do I need Licenses for a router for? Or is this specifically for the VPN? If that is the case only four of us need to use the VPN.

no it can only have X amount of devices connected to it via dhcp. if you go over the limit those additional devices dont get IPs. you can buy more though. just call sonicwall they can explain it better than i. thats why i suggested the 190 because it has unlimited.

why don't you reflash a lynksys router if you have one... and more than likely, if you are like the rest of the world, you can come across a lynksys wrt54g. Go to dd-wrt.com and read up on it.I used to have alot of router problems, especially using the bandwith I use with all the downloads and gaming. Once you reflash it, you've got a router equivelent to a $600 business router for only 50 bucks. Very stable, reliable, and all around great. Very easy to reflash, just follow the directions on the dd-wrt.com site. even if you mess up, it is fixable... so its idiot proof. The settings you will have access to afterwards are very extensive. You can do alot with it, possibilites are endless.

I promise you this... you will almost never drop connection or get bogged down. Its very stable... and I truely hated lynksys before i did this. Most other routers are the same, unless you spend a fortune, but why bother. its not the hardware... its the software.

I had a friend that had this and it worked very well:
Belkin : N1 Wireless Router

We do not have a full time IT guy at my company. It is upon everyone to be their own IT person. We are a small shop and for the moment we need to keep it that way. So that rules out anything that does not have official support.
I have tried many Linksys routers, D-Link and even the belkin from my house at the office. The problem is that we all transfer and access large files over our network at the same time as well as send large emails, have an NAS, and run a FTP server. At home my roommate set up a Linux file server/DHCP server/Firewall and it kills every router I have ever owned. I am looking for something that has that kind of power for routing with a proper support channel.

sonicwall or cisco bar none then.

most idiots can use a sonicwall. most experts cant use a cisco, especially a pix.

reflash it with dd-wrt. at least check out the site and its capabilites. www.dd-wrt.com

I was going to suggest Cisco next. They are really good. I used to set up offices for my mom's boyfriend's company. He worked for a carpet install company as the vp and i used the Cisco vpn routers in all the offices. They have ones that can handle much larger bandwidths than home grade routers.

Do you need a router or a switch ??
If you need a switch, I like netgears prosafe products pretty reasonable about $189 for a fully managed switch with built in DHCP server, QOS, etc....

I have a 3Com gigabit switch already. I just would like to have good supported router instead of a DHCP server in the office.