hey all. i'm trying to figure out what's wrong with a new router i bought. (or more accurately, what's wrong with how i'm configuring it.)
i purchased an SMC7004VBR to replace a Linksys BEFSR41v3 that was giving me trouble for weeks. after much faithful service sharing my DSL connection, the Linksys decided to get screwed, and kept dropping connections to the computers on the LAN, and generally, it sucked.
this new SMC, however, isn't a whole lot better. it's not dropping my connections, but web browsing normally is ridiculous. totally intermittent, i'd say half the time i click on a link it works perfectly, the other half of the time it sits there doing nothing until it times out. the log on the status page of the config site is giving me a FLOOD of blocked attempts from all different IPs on port 135, mostly, but on some other ports, too.
why is this happening? SMC tech support was pretty unhelpful - i updated the firmware, to no avail. the guy told me to return the router and get a new one, but i really, really don't think it's a hardware problem .. BECAUSE .. when i set up my computer as a DMZ, it works perfectly. no stalled internet, no connection drops, no problems whatsoever. (except torrents are slow as hell, but that's something to worry about later... right?) opening all the ports isn't really much of a solution. in any case, that makes me think that the problem is that the firewall is blocking ports that I need in order to perform basic internet functions. am i doing something wrong? anybody??
help! haha. should i just go get a new router? if so ... i'd like some recommendations. i just want a good, stable, 4-port router that i can do port forwarding and your average basic stuff. i'd be very hesitant about going back to a linksys, because their tech support was god-awful. i hardly ever need tech support, but when it's as bad as theirs was, it kinda sours me on the whole deal. is netgear a bad idea??
any advice would be oh-so-very appreciated.
tweaks.
hardware
prices 
