You’ve been getting by with the cheapie router you bought two years ago, so why should you upgrade now? Performance. And features. We asked seven manufacturers to send us the best consumer routers in their stables regardless of price tags.

In most cases, that meant a simultaneous dual-band router capable of running 802.11n wireless networks using the typical 2.4GHz frequency band and the less-crowded 5GHz band, plus a guest network that isolates its clients from your primary LAN. In all cases, it meant a router with an integrated four-port gigabit switch and at least one USB port for sharing a printer or a storage device over the network (some have two USB ports to support both functions). In an interesting twist, however, no one submitted a product using a three-stream wireless chipset promising raw throughput of 450Mb/s.

We’re absolutely fine with that, because our first experience with this bleeding-edge standard, courtesy of Trendnet’s single-band TEW-691GR, left a bitter taste on our tongues. The TEW-691GR was very fast, but only at very close range. As we observed in our review, you can’t buy a USB Wi-Fi adapter with three antennas today, so much of that extra bandwidth is effectively wasted.

So who’s got the best offering, an established name or a scrappy challenger?

More info here: http://gizmodo.com/5675479/the-ultimate-router-battle