Which of these routers will you pick for using with HDD media center?

[pwangdel]

Greetings:

I would like to stream movies from an external USB HD to a Hi-Def HDMI HDD Media center Patriot Box Office via ethernet cable. For unknown reason, my Media center can see my network share drives PC connecting to a Belkin F5D7231-4 router but I am unable to access them even after I enter the admin user id and pwd and the share drives permission is set such that everyone can access to them. To work around this problem, I am thinking of getting a new router with an USB port and hook up the external USB HD directly to the router thus bypassing my PC. My choice has been narrowed down to Belkin F5D8235-4, D-Link DIR-655 and Linksys WRT610N. If it were you which one will you pick?

- My budget is $120 max (including a gift card of $54 from Best Buy).
- All my 3 laptop is Wireless G. My desktop, HDD Media Player, Blu-ray is wired to the router.
- My coverage range is about 25ft x 15ft
- My cable modem is Surfboard SB6120.
- I prefer a router manufacture that still has customer support in the US if at all possible.

Any help to pick up the best bang for the buck router would be greatly appreciated.

[ocgw]

Greetings:

I would like to stream movies from an external USB HD to a Hi-Def HDMI HDD Media center Patriot Box Office via ethernet cable. For unknown reason, my Media center can see my network share drives PC connecting to a Belkin F5D7231-4 router but I am unable to access them even after I enter the admin user id and pwd and the share drives permission is set such that everyone can access to them. To work around this problem, I am thinking of getting a new router with an USB port and hook up the external USB HD directly to the router thus bypassing my PC. My choice has been narrowed down to Belkin F5D8235-4, D-Link DIR-655 and Linksys WRT610N. If it were you which one will you pick?

- My budget is $120 max (including a gift card of $54 from Best Buy).
- All my 3 laptop is Wireless G. My desktop, HDD Media Player, Blu-ray is wired to the router.
- My coverage range is about 25ft x 15ft
- My cable modem is Surfboard SB6120.
- I prefer a router manufacture that still has customer support in the US if at all possible.

Any help to pick up the best bang for the buck router would be greatly appreciated.

Makes no sense to buy a new router if there is nothing wrong w/ your old one, 10/100 routers will not be bottlenecks for some time

Upgrade your "intranet" (home network) to gigabit performance relatively cheap w gigabit switches after the router

I stream blu rays all over my house thru gigabit switches AFTER the modem/router

I have a 8-port and a 5-port gigabit switch by D-Link, they both are reviewed @ newegg w/ an average of 5 eggs

I paid $25USD for my 5-port, now they are giving them away for under $5USD, if I were you i would buy a couple before they are sold out

D-Link 5-port gigabit switch $4 (5 eggs @ newegg from 132 reviews)

47mb/s sustained on my system

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833127085

ocgw

peace

[jagabo]

Do you have a mixed XP/Vista/Win7 network? MS changed the way sharing works in Win7. Another way to encourage you to upgrade all systems to Win7. You can make simple shares work again though. Disable the password requirement in Win7, allow anonymous access to shares, and enable the Guest account.

[ocgw]

Do you have a mixed XP/Vista/Win7 network? MS changed the way sharing works in Win7. Another way to encourage you to upgrade all systems to Win7. You can make simple shares work again though. Disable the password requirement in Win7, allow anonymous access to shares, and enable the Guest account.

In my experience changing the password from the 1 that Windows 7 provides causes problems even if I wait to after all the PC's are in the same homegroup to change the password

ocgw

peace

[redwudz]

I had to disable PW sharing in W7 also to get sharing to work easily with the other PCs. I don't use PWs anyway on my PCs as I'm the only one that uses them. I set all sharing permissions on all the PCs. I have a gigabit router and four gigabit switches and everything works fine. Usually a ~45 - 70MB/s transfer rate throughout the LAN system. XP, Vista and W7 PCs connected. I block internet access with the router for my three video server PCs (Vista) and have the router firewall and Comodo to protect the others, so I see no need for PWs.