Can someone explain Dual-Band to me? Also explain to me why I need it?
Dual-band simultaneously broadcasts your wireless signal over two different frequencies. You need this if you already have a lot of wireless electronics in your house that cause interference OR if you live in an area saturated with wireless routers/modems.
For you computer geeks out there, this router has DD-WRT installed. I have this router and it gives pretty good coverage.
Keep the reviews coming. I’m ready to buy if it’s as good or better than other routers (specifically with signal strength…)
Keep in mind that this is DUAL Band…
That means you get both Rubber & Elastic.
I have this exact router and had nothing but problems with it. You can plop dd-wrt or openwrt ( Buffalo WZR-HP-AG300H [Old OpenWrt Wiki] ) on it, but that doesn’t change the fact that the thing has the ability to transmit about 20 feet before it gets flaky. In my house it was through one wall and you could only get the 5GHz signal in a few spots even at 25 feet.
The stock firmware was awful when I last tried it (about a year ago). The thing has a friggin’ 680MHz processor but it was still chugging with the stock firmware. A million options, most of them not possible to disable, and full of memory leaks.
So if you need a router? This may do it but it won’t do it well, and especially not without custom firmware. This router is not for the casual user because you pretty much have to install custom firmware, and isn’t good enough for the enthusiast. I wouldn’t recommend it!
Edit: This review on amazon reflects my issues as well: http://www.amazon.com/review/R8LB3FLBXK1LF
I’ve had this router for about a year. It’s pretty great.
I’ve got OpenWRT installed on it, which is great for tinkerers (much better package management, etc than DD-WRT). The DD-WRT firmware ain’t bad though, as long as you don’t use the shell too much.
This router has a relatively large amount of flash storage and RAM (32MB and 128MB respectively). If you hook up a USB hard drive to it and install OpenWRT, and configure the USB drive as an overlay drive, it actually makes for a pretty convenient Linux box to have around the house.
Note that if you do install OpenWRT, you’ll need to install the Attitude Adjustment beta version. (The Backfire stable version does not support this router’s chipset.)
The price is $133 but also bear in mind that’s a third-party seller and not Amazon themselves. The independent sellers frequently have inflated prices, especially on discontinued models such as this router.
I am in the market for a gigabit router but I don’t think this is it. There seem to be a lot of informed one-star reviews panning the performance.
I’m going to take a risk on one, because even if it doesn’t perform any better than my current Cisco Ashtray, I can use it for tinkering purposes.
I have this router with the latest DD-WRT, paid a lot more for it a year ago, works well, for this price it’s a steal. The original DD-WRT software that was made for this router had some serious issues, just upgrade the firmware to the latest DD-WRT from the DD-WRT community site and you’ll be good to go.
I guess I’ll try it out…
Hmmm, I’ve been watching this one on Newegg for a while. It’s $107.99 over there.
Buffalo tech support is excellent. I called them for help with my current router and it was the best vendor support I have ever received. They are based in the US and were extremely well-versed on their products and troubleshooting methods. I’m in for one.
Wow, I have a feeling this bad boy is going to sell out!
DO NOT BUY. These are terrible routers at any price.
I purchased two of these shortly after they were released, and they were nothing but a headache. They are buggy and require frequent reboots. They do not run a stock build of DD-WRT. Furthermore, Buffalo customer support is terrible. Despite having numerous bugs and issues, firmware updates from Buffalo were few, far between, and never addressed the issues that plague this router.
Fair warning.
my current router is also my modem. is this router a modem as well?
No, that it doesn’t do. Just a straight-up Wireless Router.
I couldn’t even find any modems on their site.
Would this eliminate my microwave deadspot? Every time I reheat my McDonalds fries in my microwave it knocks out my Roku, laptops, kids laptops, tablets, streaming movies on my BD players etc.
i have this router & have not have had any problems with latest firmware installed. paid $100 for it around the beginning of 2012.