SumnerH said:
I'll be the dissenting voice: wireless routers are almost completely a commodity, there's no way I'd drop more than about $60 on one unless I was planning on flashing it with custom firmware and using it for more than just a router. The problems you saw with the 655 are weird, and possibly indicative of something else screwy in your setup; it's not a great router, but it really shouldn't be routinely locking up the way you're talking about--you should be trying to figure out why that was happening, if it's on your client side then throwing more money at a high-end router isn't going to help.
Do you have a friend with an N router you can borrow for a day or two to see if it's a client-side issue?
I spent probably 5 or so hours already over the course the last few weeks going through the settings and adjusting and it just got to the point where it was no worth my time anymore while its still able to be RMA'ed. Got to the point where I'm not sure what else to check. Scanned the wifi to make sure I was on a clear channel, isolated from any possible interference, isolated it so it was just a single machine connected, connected to just the cable modem to rule out a Comcast issue, played with QOS, disabled any firewalls settings, played with the traffic shaping settings, etc.... I bought it from newegg (love neweggs customer service) so they are going to give me a straight up refund which I'll apply to the new router. I don't have a N router I can plug it but once I went back to my old Linksys G router the network was rock solid again. I know wireless can be finicky so if it was just that I could buy that its a setting issue but the fact that the hardwired speeds were throttled as well (tested it straight to the cable modem, then to the 655 with just the pc attached and saw a huge dropoff). Also its not really that it locks up solid instead the speed just drops down so its all of a sudden 1999 again.
I'm also hearing better things about ASUS than anyone else so I might look there. I live on the internet and use it extensively for work so I don't mind going above budget a bit for something solid with good range (2000 sqft house and I like being able to stream the sox games on my phone while mowing the lawn). After I started this thread the ASUS N66U caught my eye so I may end up there.
Edit - Dammit 2 days earlier and Newegg would have sent me a free wireless bridge with it.