Very bad reviews here
Check out stuff by Routerboard:
http://routerboard.com/pricelist.php?started_from_home=1
fairly inexpensive, configurable OS.
Alot of their models due lack the 4port+wifi that you may want in a home enviroment.
If that’s the case check out the Ubiquiti PowerAP N
http://www.ubnt.com/powerapn
N wireless + 5 100mbit switch
@Matt Horner
Thank you very, very much. The Tomato Speedmod with the tc-atm patches did the trick. Huge improvement over the original tomato qos. As soon as i hit enter on that one command line (… overhead xy atm), pings go way down. It’s like night and day.
I can also keep my wrt54gl now and dont have to buy a new one. yay!
So Jeff, do you still like this thing?
I just got the Buffalo, but I’m disappointed. Unless I’m missing something, it seems to be 2.4GHz only. I expected a cutting-edge N router in late 2010 to have 5GHz support. I’m going to be returning it for something with better radios.
Geoff, great article, but you left out OpenWRT in your discussion, a bit unfair IMHO.
Whilst firmwares such as DD-WRT are great, polished, ‘consumer’ oriented firmwares, OpenWRT is more aimed at hackers and router builders. Seeing as your blog is aimed at developers it is strange that you did not mention it.
OpenWRT comes as binary releases and also a fully modular build system with complete control of such things as target platform, kernel version, software packages (ipkg). There are hundreds of prebuilt packages available and you can easily ad your own. Hardware support is superb: http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start and extends far beyond routers to all manner of embedded devices.
Also, Comcast have chosen to base their IPv6 software on it:
Following this blog post’s glaring endorsement of the combination of the Buffalo router with DD-WRT I bought this unit and immediately ran into all sorts of performance problems after flashing it with the official Buffalo-endorsed build of DD-WRT. It seems the PPPoE client built into DD-WRT is buggy, causing the speed of my normally fast internet connection to drop by a factor of 10!
Details can be found here: http://forums.buffalotech.com/t5/Wireless/WZR-HP-G300NH-super-slow-with-DD-WRT/m-p/47300#M7478
I also tried re-flashing the router with the non-branded build of DD-WRT, which appears to be identical to the Buffalo-branded version except for the logo. Same disappointing results.
The Buffalo tech support guy was very polite, understanding but ultimately unable to offer any help beyond the advice not to use DD-WRT and to stick to the native firmware instead. He said DD-WRT has “numerous problems” and is not recommended for use. It’s unfortunate then that Buffalo touts it as a valid option on its website.
The problem with the native “user friendly” firmware is that it is anything but, i.e. every minor change requires a restart of the router, which takes between 30 seconds to a couple of minutes to complete because the firmware insists on scheduling its restarts instead of effecting them immediately.
Overall, I am extremely disappointed with this router. After killing 1.5 days tinkering with it I reverted to my old Linksys because I don’t want to waste any more time on something this flaky.
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linksys E3000 @ 480MHz, 64MB RAM
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Asus RT-N16 with double the ram…
So yeah I bought this router on the strength of this blog post. Should have read the comments in more detail first 
My initial requirement was more power; our old wrt54g didn’t cover the whole house. Additionally I liked the idea of sharing a USB disk and upnp.
In practice (using the Buffalo ddwrt default firmware)
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Wifi is less reliable (connections drop) and the same or perhaps slightly less range than the Linksys. Note that on Atheros the power isn’t tunable in the firmware; there is a separate hardware amplifier.
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USB mounts OK but there is no Samba support, only FTP
So it is essentially worse than the 54g. What is most disappointing is that the product claims (e.g. sharing) are not for the DDWRT firmware but for the terrible looking alternative “Easy to use” firmware - which is actually what I’m running at the moment (which does work provide disk sharing etc).
Might try OpenWRT at some point.
I initially ordered the Buffalo Nfiniti, but came back to this thread since the shop used a lot of time delivering the thing. I’ve cancelled the order now after reading these comments, and ordered the Netgear WNDR3700 instead. I can’t find a bad review on it anywhere
Jeff,
I purchased a Netgear WNDR3700 to replace a WRT54G that would flake out and lose all its settings about once a month. I'm running it with the native firmware and couldn't be happier with it. It is a very powerful router for the network I have set up ( Five devices at most, all but one connected via wireless.) However, this has been adequate for my father to use a VPN to his work through the router, as well as supporting my own VPN needs for my tech job. We even have a wireless printer attached now. The only feature that I would really like to have that might make me flash DD-WRT onto the router is Non-WDS bridging.
I suppose my advice to you and to my fellow readers would be to not mess with success every once and a while, even though that is essentially what developers and engineers make their living doing. Sometimes the best device you own is the one that just works without having to fool with it every-time someone sneezes.
Jeff,
I just purchased the Buffalo Nfiniti Wireless-N High Power Router and flashed it with DD-WRT. It works great and I really like all the features. Thanks for the great post.
PS namebench made my lookups 42% faster!
This router has issues with wifi availability in many situations. High traffic, or high connection counts, or heavy bandwidth usage all can cause the router to start showing latency and packetloss on wifi<->internet traffic. At the same time wifi<->router and router<->internet traffic will have no problems, so this is obviously something internal to the networking hardware.
I greatly regret buying this router.
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Buffalo_WZR-HP-G300NH#Fix_for_WiFi_Dropouts helps a little