Re: I'll add my £0.02 worth
I'd say there is a market for routers that are supported with security and bug fixes as my next router won't be a Netgear after that experience.
Well you do have DD-WRT and OpenWRT as options for WNDR3700 iirc v3 was the odd one out with Broadcom instead of Atheros chipset (along with v1 the one with less (8MB) flash so might not fit full-feature firmware.
Some routers (from Buffalo for example) come from factory with DD-WRT.
Asus is rather well supported by Merlin which gets updated and patched very frequently. Merlin is based on latest GPL'd Asuswrt firmware.
Also point to make with the recommendation to buy old Cisco kit from eBay, yeah its great but if you want one with throughput to match your VM cable (assuming XL) it won't be cheap, whereas for example the recent Asus seem to push through 800-900+Mbits, obviously dropping fair bit if you use features that turn hw acceleration off. Even if it dropped to say half, you're still not likely (at least in UK) to find many residential connections where it isn't enough.
If you look at cisco router performance you'll see that you have to go for fairly recent or higher end kit to get 100Mbit/s. The figures are for routing. Once you add services (firewall,QoS,PAT,NAT,etc) the throughput drops sharp. You're also very likely to end up losing CEF and starting to process switch.
A small PC with some intel gige cards and pfsense/ipfire would make more sense for home/smb.
Or again consumer router as mentioned above (Asus probably easiest as Merlin is just as easy to load than stock asus update, although DD-WRT has gotten lot better over time) that has decent support outside vendor.
Dsiclaimer: I run way too much old cisco kit in my home and I really should replace it with something more sensible...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
