Modem / router recomendation

Hi All,

I have quite a large network at my home / office supporting all the usual stuff plus CCTV, audio distribution, VOIP, and a number of workstations and printers. The network includes 4 switches and and 5 clustered WAPs

I live out in the sticks and ADSL2+ via BT is the best I can get and provides about 9.5meg despite my very long line. I am currently using a Billion 8800NL with the Wi-Fi switched off as it seems to manage to sync faster than anything else I have tried and hangs onto the long line 24/7. However I suspect I am pushing the Billion's switch, router and firewall beyond its comfort zone with the amount of traffic it is having to deal with especially on the LAN side.

Can anyone recommend a semi commercial modem / switch / router with good long line performance, relatively straight forward set-up but most importantly, robust and powerful router and switch sections?

I don't need Wi-Fi but accept that I may have to just turn it off as most better routers seem to include it. I am also not adverse to splitting the modem away from a separate router / firewall.

Thanks in anticipation.

The router only has to handle a maximum of the line speed so should be fine.

If you want to take the LAN traffic load off then the cheapest way to do it would be to buy a standard gigabit switch, plug all of the devices into the switch and have one lead from switch to router - the only traffic the router then has to deal with is WAN, DNS and DHCP.

Hi Ian,

That is the current setup, Billion > 48 port switch > 24 port switch > 12 port switch.
Only one Ethernet cable from the Billion.

Am I wrong in thinking that the Billion is still doing all the LAN 'routing' ?

The switches should be doing all the internal packet switching if they are proper switch devices. You should find if you transfer a file between 2 devices that the LAN light on the router should not activate as it should not see any of the traffic.

Great thank you Ian. I'll test it out this evening. its certainly a proper switch!

Thanks for the lesson, I'll have to look elsewhere for bottlenecks!

One improvement I could suggest, if equipment locations permit, would be to connect the 12 port switch straight to the 48 rather than via the 24.


I run a Modem, which connects direct to the router, the router then feeds a single link to a 24 port managed switch which itself is connected to 3 WAPs which also have 4 port switch capability too. The router works fine - just handing traffic to and from te outside world and providing teh DHCP server capability.