2Wire 2700 finally dead, I need a new router!

sesselpupser

sesselpupser

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I honestly couldn't be happier to report that my woeful 2Wire 2700 HGV died today. I've always hated that piece of

Anyway so I need a new router, today. I'm pretty sure I just have to go to PC World/Currys/Comet/Dixons/Electronics Boutique/Argos or whichever of these still exist and pick up the best they have at a hugely exaggerated price, but I'm wondering if you guys can inform me as to which brands are any good, and which features I should try and get? My Dad wants to be able to use VPN, so something quite VPN friendly would be a huge plus. We also have a Homeplug network but I guess a LAN port is all that requires to work. UPNP; deal breaker? We didn't have it with the 2wire but I suspect that made a lot of things much more of a hassle than they had to be, I might be wrong though.

Price should be £reasonable please.

Thanks guys!
 
I've had pretty good experiences with Netgear as well as RCA. My RCA routers are still kickin' since 2008. 👍
 
It looks like there are incarnations of the Tomato firmware that support VPNs and UPnP. Pick up a compatible router, install and configure, profit.
 
Thanks for the suggestions guys, in the end it came down to either a Netgear or TP-Link. I studied the boxes for both thoroughly and the fact that the Netgear didn't mention VPN at all made me go with the TP-Link, I've got TP-Link Homeplug adaptors all over the house (well, we have four of them anyway) and a wi-fi card made by them too (which I no longer use but it was great while it was necessary) so I figured it might be sensible to keep it all in the product family. So far I'm mightily impressed by the software, but coming from a 2700 that's hardly difficult.

TB, I found an old 2wire 2701 so if I can flash the firmware onto that I might give that a shot and see what fun, if any, can be had with it. Edit: No joy, it's not Broadcom.

Hilariously, while phoning to get the PPPoA details from BT they mentioned we really actually can get fibre broadband in our area, but it turns out it's apparently only fibre optic up until the 'box in the street' (as they called it), then it travels the last few hundred metres on copper. Can they really get 40Mbit/s on copper? I thought it was fibre optic to the 'box in the street' anyway? In any case, if we go for that we'll need a new router again... One supplied by BT. Shudder.
 
Interesting, I would've thought it would throttle the bandwidth anyway, but the fact that you need a router designed specifically for fibre - even though it's still RJ45 and copper, not optical as I assumed it was - suggests they use a different, er... I don't know, *mumbles* method? My knowledge of telecoms engineering just ran out.

Thanks for those links though, interesting reading.
 

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