Belkin N600 Wireless Dual-Band N+ Router with Parental Controls, HD Video Streaming, & 300 Mbps (Latest Gen) $40 FS

Quote from gargigulos : What is this flash tomato and dd-wrt you speak of and how can it improve my routing experience?

I'll do this from memory, so it might not be 100%. Some time ago, linksys developed some router software using open source and released it to the public. Some enterprising folks took that code and spiffed it up to include many features usually found in expensive commercial routers. There are a number of variants, called tomato, dd-wrt and openwrt. If your router model is supported by one or more, you can shoot the supplied router firmware and flash it with one of the alternative firmwares.

You'll end up with a ton of options, lots of control over how the router works, and the code is updated regularly so you're not dependent on the router manufacturer to fix bugs and add features.

A great example of this is that my girlfriend has a pair of cisco routers and the firmware on them sucks. If you set them to auto channel, both of them will pick channel 6 and interfere with each other. They also limit your selection of channel if you don't use auto. Flashed with dd-wrt the auto function works correctly and the routers pick different channels, and I can pick any channel I want manually.

There is even some scuttlebutt that the router manufacturers all produce one or more models intended for end users to flash with alternative firmware; they're usually cheap and buggy but come to life with new firmware. I have a bunch of those I bought for ~$10-20. Some manufacturers have even produced a basic reference model and installed dd-wrt on it at the factory.

Google each firmware name and your router model to see if there is a firmware for it. Flashing it is easy if you can follow directions step by step.

Sadly, I don't believe there are any alternative firmwares for this particular router.

And 1saleaday does suck on returns. I won't buy anything of substance from them, so I can throw it out if its no good. Bought several items from them that were supposed to be new but were obviously used. They wanted me to pay to ship them back, saying they'd look it over and decide if they'd issue a refund. Usually they just dump it on the manufacturer to fix via warranty. So I haven't bought from them since.