Maximum PC

I've always liked the Linksys WRT54GL. It's cheap and can be flashed with Tomato or DD-WRT. I've recently found a gateway / broadband router that has been suggested to me by various people. I'm wondering what would be the best bet - what would give me the most for the money. The gateway provided by my ISP has problems occasionally - if that helps with the decision.

Here is the Gateway / Broadband router -
http://www.expansys-usa.com/billion-bip ... paign=base

Here is the Linksys -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833124190

This is an excellent question.

In reality they are the same type of device except it's just one has the additional hardware to be a modem.

Both are "gateways" in that they are routers and will get you from your local network to the internet. They are both firewalls and look to be similar in that regard. They both do NAT/PAT but also more than that with packet inspection and I saw some other things like DOS protection.

Two things to note. Number one, using your ISP's modem can often make support calls MUCH MUCH MUCH easier. Many times they will not support you to the same extent using your own device vs. theirs. Sometimes they will not even support you at all because they will just flat out blame your nonstandard equipment just so they can quickly close a ticket. if you are having trouble with your ISP's device make them replace it. That is another plus of having theirs.

Secondly since both devices are similar I would default to Linksys/Cisco. We all know that they make good devices (most of the time) and there is the fact Cisco has hand a hand in almost every network innovation one way or the other for decades. This gives them an edge no one has. Now we could argue if that advantage leaks out to Linksys or not but at least you have a chance of it instead of none at all.

Linksys for the win in this situation. Netgear and D-link also make many good devices if you are not stuck on Cisco. I use a Netgear WNDR3700V2 for my firewall/security device with Open-WRT on it.