I have a complicated setup here at the Castle of Confusion, what with a Rogers Modem leading to a Linksys router leading to a D-Link Wireless router leading to most of the computers in the house. On Friday, the D-Link more or less died. Not for the first time. But for the final time.
Sooooo, it was time to replace it. Putting it into the hands of my hardware guru Patrick, the decision was made and it will be an all Linksys router house from now on. I replaced the D-Link with a Linksys WRT350N. This simultaneously gets me access to version N wireless technology and upgrades the internal network to 1 gigabit speed (yes, I had to upgrade two cards at the same time).
The new router sprouts THREE antennae, one of which serves the dual function of being Norad's southernmost station. Just kidding. It DOES have some heat issues, but I've redone the office and it has plenty of space around it. That and a couple of external terabytes of storage in the same area. I'm now approaching three TB around the office and I suspect that will be enough to see my way through the end of this year and well into 2009.
A lot of that storage is for overnight backing up. The new TEN-fold increase in speed really means I don't make much in the way of judgements in what to back up overnight anymore. All of it goes to one or the other of the external boxes each night. That gives me a two-day grace period for material I just make one backup of. The daily changed stuff gets separate daily folders on each volume, so I have 14 distinct days worth of backups, plus the occasional monthly snapshots that move off to DVD. I'm starting to feel a lot safer already.
I've even pulled out the laptop a couple of times. Even though it only has version G networking, it's proven to be able to connect at the full speed it's capable of anywhere in the house. Even in the backyard, not that I spend time out there in that grass pollen-laden environment.
All in all, I hate spending money. I'm a known skinflint. But for a couple hundred bucks, this is one sweet router.
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