Quote from Poole:
I have been working in IT my whole life
this is the best value for money super stable router you can get for home/small business (exlcuding proper enterprise level products, which will cost you $2k+)
http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Sate...833289&pagename=Linksys/Common/VisitorWrapper
linksys RV 082
I've been using a Linksys RV082 for some time now with Verizon DSL on one WAN and RoadRunner cable (RR) on the other. Until recently this worked great with Interactive Brokers (IB) Traders Work Station (TWS). About a month ago, however, TWS began to freeze immediately when using RR through the router and after about 15 minutes when using DSL through the router. I then tested both connections through a Linksys WRT54G and they performed similarly, the only difference being that TWS stayed up a little longer when connected to DSL through the WRT54G. Interestingly, TWS ran fine when RR was connected directly to the machine on which I run it, but failed immediately when I enabled Windows firewall (I'm running XP Pro SP2); connected directly, of course, I've got no protection whatsoever, so this is not a solution.
Many long discussions with Linksys high-level tech support have led them to conclude that packet-shaping instituted by RR may be the problem with them, but they have no explanation for why the DSL won't work, because Verizon apparently isn't using packet-shaping. In any event Linksys sent me a new RV082 just to be sure my original router hadn't failed. The problems on the new router were the same as on the old. To their credit, they've offered to give me a full refund on the original RV082, which I had for roughly 3 years, because they can't come up with a solution here.
Meanwhile, IB tech support has been virtually useless except to assure me that they've changed nothing in their data delivery to TWS since the time things were running smoothly via the 082. I'm hoping to get some further confirmation from them on this soon and to get them to tell me of router manufacturers that they know TWS works with.
With all this said, I'm wondering whether anyone in this group, which seems to include some real IT professionals, has any thoughts as to what the best solution to my problems here is. From what I've read, it seems like upgrading to another consumer-class router (I was thinking of getting Netgear's load-balancing model) may not solve the problems I'm having with this at all. Then again, I can't help but wonder whether a commercial-class router, which I won't have a clue how to set up, is going to be any better.
Naturally, I'd greatly appreciate any thinking on how to get this best resolved from anyone with experience in this area.
Many thanks in advance for any help that anyone can offer here...