Router Advice Please

[oneballnoa]

Hello

I'm pretty clueless as to routers. I recently upgraded to 15/3 roadrunner. I'm on a really bad belkin g router right now with a belkin usb adapter and it is really inconsistent and slow. So I'm shopping for a new one but I'm not sure whats best for me.

Internet is used heavily for filesharing, no gaming, no phone line. The computer is about 75 feet (downstairs) from the router location. Only one computer will be using the wireless, occasionally 2 max. I'm looking to spend under $100, preferably under $80. My questions are do I need N? Will it make a big difference? I saw a recommendation of d-link dir-625, but then I saw a lot of bad reviews for it. A lot of people also recommend linksys for stability and I know it can use Tomato, but I'm not sure if I need that for my simple needs. So basically for speed and stability what are some recommendations? And what adapter should I use with it? Is a PCI card better than a USB adapter? Thanks a lot. I know there won't be one answer for this, but any recommendations are appreciated.

Noah

[YeOldeStonecat]

Internet is used heavily for filesharing, but I'm not sure if I need that for my simple needs. So basically for speed and stability what are some recommendations?

"used heavily for filesharing" is not a simple need. Most home grade routers simply crumble under the heavy loads of p2p/torrent traffic. Causing massive slowdowns and lockups. What kills the routers is the many concurrent sessions which p2p/torrent traffic puts on them.

For under 80 dollars, you'll be hard pressed to find an off the shelf router which will perform well for you. Best bet is to look at some routers which support 3rd party firmware like dd-wrt or tomato. They do help a little bit. Each of those does have an HCL on their website which will show you what models are supported by the firmware, as they cannot be installed on just any router.
http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index
http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato