[Harro]

I would like to upgrade my home network from the 1/10/100 to 10/100/1000.
My home is all hardwired with cat 5. My internet is on a smc commerical biz modem with speeds of 50 down, 3 up. It has lan connection of 1000, but then slows down with my old linksys wireless router, which has 4, 10/100 lan ports, then connects to my 16 port netgear switch, which in turn is the connect to a 16 port patch cable box then distributed throughout the house.

So the questions I have are:
Which router do you think are the best? or most reliable? or both?
Which switches are considered good.

I am not looking to spend thousands on this but looking for a reasonable price products which will perform. I have about 10 computers on the network , but not all are on full time and accessing the network, but at peak times the network can slow down.

If anyone has some thoughts on this it would help my confusion greatly after spending 5 days going through reviews and reads on switches and routers.

BTW wireless access is not that important to me at this time but I still need it also .

[darkscout]

Why do you need a new router?

Make sure it supports jumbo frames, other than that the standard companies.

[Orclas]

Why do you need a new router?

Make sure it supports jumbo frames, other than that the standard companies.

Presumably since it does not have Gbit ports. Some older routers also simply do not have the processing capacity for high network loads, slowing down the WAN-LAN throughput.

To the OP:

First, I hope you mean CAT5E, since CAT5 only supports 100Mbit. Beyond that, I don't have any solid advice to give, except that Small Net Builder is a good place to filter out some top candidates for purchase. Particularly have a look at their charts to figure which parameters are the most important for you.

[gabbott]

Presumably since it does not have Gbit ports. Some older routers also simply do not have the processing capacity for high network loads, slowing down the WAN-LAN throughput.

True, but I don't think the OP has gigabit internet service, so that high volume traffic wouldnt be passing from LAN-WAN. If anything, they just need to get a gigabit switch for the LAN side. (EDIT: although reading the OP post again, they have a 50meg connection it looks like so yeah, throughput could suffer on some older consumer routers that dont have the cpu power to handle it). I've always liked the HP procurve unmanaged switches, but these days, any of the name brand manufacturer switches are decent. I've gotten a couple trendnet green gige switches.. they are pretty cheap and have worked well for me. For a router, I've always liked to build my own and run pfsense.

[darkscout]

Presumably since it does not have Gbit ports. Some older routers also simply do not have the processing capacity for high network loads, slowing down the WAN-LAN throughput.

50 'down' connection as advertised in the states is 50 Mb. His router has more than enough umph to get it through.

And you can sometimes get lucky and push Cat5 beyond it's specs. It won't be consistent but it might work.

[Harro]

Thanks for the replies.
Yes Orclas the cabling is Cat5e.
After reading more I think these choices would be ok, maybe a tad more than what I wanted to spend but the routers and switches haven't been updated in about 6 years,
Linksys Router

TRENDnet 8 port switch

and another for future expansion

TRENDnet 5 port switch

I am hoping that with these I can stop some of the bottle necks.

[darkscout]

Jesus. Why do you need that? WAY over priced and WAY more than what you need.

Not only that. Once again, why do you need a new router? If you want to upgrade to N I understand but there are much cheaper alternatives.

[problaze]

Yeah that router is overkill and as even the feedback says it supports tech not even released so who knows if it is actually "taken up or not" you may buy into a futureless device instead!

Simply go for a router supported by DD-WRT, I personally went for a TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND (here),

it works great and I have had no problems, gigabit all round although it is restricted to 2.4ghz spectrum I don't suffer from interference much. The upgrade path was a simple firmware patch through web interface too! It also supports the USB protocol even though this isn't stated clearly on dd-wrt's site!

I also have 4 gigabit tp-link switches (self managed) these work brilliantly too with simple status lights and plug/play functionality! Also PoE too so easy placement if required
5port (here)
8port (here)

While Cat5e does support 1000mbps ethernet I would suggest to go for cat6 as the standard especially thanks to router tech is moving on all ready...On main lines between router-switch try to use shielded cable this should help ensure no interference on cabling a pet peve of mine if your running cabling near electrical cable!

hope this helps!

[Orclas]

True, but I don't think the OP has gigabit internet service, so that high volume traffic wouldnt be passing from LAN-WAN. If anything, they just need to get a gigabit switch for the LAN side. (EDIT: although reading the OP post again, they have a 50meg connection it looks like so yeah, throughput could suffer on some older consumer routers that dont have the cpu power to handle it). I've always liked the HP procurve unmanaged switches, but these days, any of the name brand manufacturer switches are decent. I've gotten a couple trendnet green gige switches.. they are pretty cheap and have worked well for me. For a router, I've always liked to build my own and run pfsense.

Aye, it's also about managing simoultaneous connections and such. When I did my first torrent downloading some 6-7 years ago, I soon realized that my router could not handle the large number of connections it involved.

To OP: I agree that the E4200 is probably an overkill, although I don't agree that DD-WRT is of any particular value to folks who don't like to fiddle around too much themselves (and I believe you're one of them).

This chart gives a decent overview of WAN-LAN throughput price vs performance and should provide a few ideas. Without knowing for sure, I believe a router which has solid WAN-LAN performance will also have the same for LAN-LAN. I myself have good experience from Netgear WNDR3700 (version 2 obviously called N600) and D-link DIR-655.