ZyXEL X-550 Xtrememimo 802.11G MIMO Wireless Broadband Router by ZYXEL
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Digital camera reviews of ZyXEL X-550 Xtrememimo 802.11G MIMO Wireless Broadband Router
Digital camera Review: Best router I have purchased so far
Summary: 5 Stars
I've been through a bunch of routers and found various faults with them. The last purchase was a Belkin Pre-N wireless router which had terrific wireless range, but rotten firewall and routing capabilities. It now serves as a wireless access point.
So here's my caveat - I can't comment on the wireless performance as I don't have it turned on. I did like the fact that the wireless functionality is turned off with a dip switch however.
I came to the Zyxel after reading that it has a large NAT table, which in simple terms means it can handle lots of connections if, say, one were to use peer to peer software that talked to a lot of other systems. This has so far proven to be true and the router has been solid in terms of performance while using said software.
The other thing I read is that the Zyxel has quality of service built in to it by virtue of the Ubicom StreamEngine technology. The idea apparently is that StreamEngine is intelligent enough to prioritize your VOIP and other traffic at the expense of less critical types of traffic, thus ensuring your conversations over your Vonage line (for example) stay clear. I am still a little unclear as to how well this really works. The router interface is mostly quite clear and easy to use, and the StreamEngine sections is the same.
There are some irritations however. For example, Comcast has deployed "PowerBoost" recently, a technology which apparently gives you extra burst speeds when downloading large amounts of data. I've seen this in action using the speed tests at Broadbandreports.com - my 8192 down connection appears to double depending upon the testing locale I choose. However, when I enable StreamEngine this niceness seems to go away. Frankly it isn't a very big deal as 8192 kb/s down is pretty good anyway, but I am not entirely clear what effect this has on the upstream bandwidth as well.
Upstream bandwidth has to be much better managed as it is considerably less generous (768k). Even though my Vonage line apparently only needs 90k for good performance, either I am not getting what I ought to or there are some serious network problems hitting me occasionally. If you want a telephone line that gives you adequate call quality all the time you are better off with a POTS line, but I can get the functionality of my ninety dollar a month POTS line from Vonage for about a third of the price, plus free calls to my parents in the UK. For that price I will take the rough spots.
Back to the subject which is the router. The StreamEngine function works by testing your upstream bandwidth when it starts up and shows a measured upstream throughput. It can take a good while to do this and holds up traffic (i.e. no Internet activity while it does it). The calculated value has varied wildly, quite honestly. I have seen ranges from a few hundred k to over twenty thousand! Putting in the actual value from the provider doesn't seem to have made a whole bunch of difference as I still suffer from occasional poor voice quality.
Don't get me wrong, I may just not have quite figured out the best way to use this yet and as a router I like it very much - highly recommend it in fact. Also you need to think about the fact that any issues I have with VOIP may be affected by all sorts of things - the time of day; equipment problems with the ISP, or the VOIP vendor, or both; and so on.
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ADDENDUM:
An unreleased version of firmware for this router obtained from the Zyxel forum of the previously mentioned [...] seems to work very well indeed. I don't know if that was the fix, or if my VOIP provider has resolved some network issues, but the router and my VOIP service have been very good since. Still a highly recommended buy. I can see myself keeping this device in service even after the 802.11n standard is ratified, and just purchasing another box to replace my wireless AP.
Digital camera Review: Best router I've had in a long time
Summary: 5 Stars
By far, this is the best router I've had in a long time. My previous router, the D-Link DI-624 WirelessG, was unstable, had a poor signal range, and over-all proved to be a tremendous headache. I decided it was time to replace it, and after a great deal of research, purchased the Zyxel X-550 XtremeMimo 802.11G.
Firstly, there was one quirk on setup that I feel needs to be mentioned. I had an issue where my wireless clients were receiving the wrong Gateway address. Everything else was just fine, but for some reason they received a completely different IP for the gateway. The LAN clients, in contrast, had no such issues. This was solved by simply changing the network IP distributed by the router. Very strange issue, but it was ultimately easily solved.
Beyond that one issue though, this router has been fantastic! Excellent wireless signal strength, range, and speed. To put it in perspective, with the old DI-624, I was lucky to get one bar of signal strength, with a speed of 2MB/s, at a range of 20feet, through one wall. Now with the X-550, I'm getting a full five bars, 35MB/s, through three walls, fifty feet away!
The rest of the router, so far, is equally superb. The firewall was very easy to set-up and configure, as was the Mac filtering, routing tables, and firewall exceptions. Up time has been superb as well. No crashes in the month I've been using it.
Overall, I could easily recommend this router to anyone who needs a stronger, faster, better wireless router in their home. It is simply a great router at an equally great price.
Digital camera Review: Broken after 18 mos
Summary: 2 Stars
This router was great while it worked: MAC address filtering, WPA encryption, good signal thoughout our house, fairly easy to configure.
As reported by many owners on New Egg's site, though, this wireless router shipped with defective power supplies. Mine was one of them. Bad capacitors that burst. Zyxel was responsive and sent the power supply without having me RMA mine back.
Nevertheless, now, after trying to configure it to work with a new DSL modem, it has frozen up. Did a firmware upgrade and now the router won't open a webpage for configuration. It won't even do a manual reset! So, my next wireless router will probably be a Linksys.
Digital camera Review: Buy this wireless router
Summary: 5 Stars
This thing is great! Setup was a breeze, the connection is fast, and I haven't had any connectivity problems at all. It was worth every penny.Digital camera Review: Do NOT buy for a Mac only network
Summary: 1 Stars
After much frustration with trying to setup the router through Safari on the Mac, I finally switched on the PC. Aahhh. It actually does work well after all.
Almost all of the setup options kept producing errors when trying to setup on the Mac, but worked smoothly on the PC. Very annoying.