I hate the supplied Tiscali router. It sucks. Port forwarding is stupid, there’s no DynDNS support, and overall it’s just a cheap piece of crud.

So, I decided to go and buy a new one. I needed to ideally stick to a budget of around £50, so I had a search around.

It wasn’t easy to find a router for under £50. I found out that routers are much more expensive than you think. I was rather surprised to be honest. If I’d have upped my budget  to £60 I would have probably found the task much easier – and I was thinking of doing so, until I found this.

Its a D-Link DSL-2640B ADSL2+ Wireless B/G Router. It was £45.84, but Base (the Amazon reseller) was offering free shipping. I took the offer and ordered it right away.

It arrived bright and early this morning (delivery took 6 days – which isn’t too bad as delivery was free), so I unboxed it and got the install CD going. I followed the instructions on the disc, and it was going fine within a couple of minutes.

The router comes with an install CD, an ethernet cable, 2 ADSL filters, and the power adapter.

When it was working, I then did 2 firmware updates which supposedly improved stability and added a couple of new features. Haven’t noticed much difference, but it was working fine anyway so that was no issue to me.

I’ve tested port forwarding, using other DNS servers, and using DynDNS and they all work a treat. Wireless range isn’t the best but it is fast and reliable and I’m not getting any connection drops which is great.

I have noticed that it does get quite hot, but it hasn’t overheated or anything like that so I’m guessing it isn’t going to be a problem.

Overall, I’m really impressed. I got it for £50 with change to spare, so it proves you can get a decent router for under £50. I would recommend this to anyone who needs a good router but who needs to watch the pennies a little. It totally thrashes the Tiscali router, and I’m really happy I bought it.

Nice work D-Link, and thanks to Base for the free delivery which meant I got it for under £50! 🙂