I find it disturbing that a supposedly perfectly functioning piece of hardware was replaced without reason. Yes, it's just $80 and he's a geek. But he never explained what was wrong with it other than it gave him the jeebies because the hardware was 3 years old and the firmware one year old. Looks like a geek status symbol thing to me.
- hardware that can't keep up - an older WRT54GL class device will have trouble routing more than 20-25Mbit/s, which is getting pretty close to what is available from consumer level internet service
- Local speed. Gigabit wired and N-wireless are both valid reasons to upgrade, if you're going from 10/100 and G-wireless.
- Power usage - if you need gigabit networking and have very few devices, it makes sense to not run an older router and a gig switch - consolidating to one device is power efficient and probably pulls less power than older devices.
There are probably plenty of other reasons, but these came to mind immediately.
I read it like an infomercial, wondering the whole time what kind of pricing structure he uses and how he establishes the relationships with the vendors; does he initiate or do they contact him first? I just assumed that part of the story was fabricated and included so it didn't read so much like an infomercial. Maybe I'm too cynical.
I do agree with you on that one. You have to realize that Buffalo has a business relationship with DD-WRT. DD-WRT licenses their firmware to Buffalo. So part of the promotion dove-tails a lot with Buffalo. But, there are two different manufacturers here, but the Netgear is priced as more expensive.
Yes, the hardware isn't very old at three years, but one year without security patches is a pretty long time, considering that most people rely on their router for DNS-caching and such.
I felt the same way at first, but later he finally mentioned a problem: He was having range issues.
He never says that's why he did it, and it appears he just got tired of everything being exactly the same. He even complains that there were no firmware updates. But he did have at least 1 problem that he was confident the new router would solve.
Speaking of range issues: Is there a good way to do multi-WAP installs in a house? My router is situated right in the center of the house, and the fridge blocks out the backyard.
1) Easiest, most bullet-proof solution is to wire a central router to more routers acting as wireless gateways. If the stock firmware doesn't support this, dd-wrt does with ease.
