WRVS4400N Top Notch Consumer Router / Switch - Fiction?

I think it was three or so years ago that I first went shopping for a top-notch gigabit wireless router/switch for home. I wanted VPN tunneling or at least pass-through, gigabit switching on the 4 ports, wireless n (preferably dual band) and the works. I wanted it to be fast (using a high speed business- class connection at home serving content back to my office at work) and I wanted it to be reliable.

So, I got what seemed to be the cream of the crop at the time, a Linksys WRVS4400N. If you know anything about this model, you know what a disaster it turned out to be - garbage firmware, constant reboots, terrible support, none of the features worked.

I fiddled with it for over a year, including one warranty replacement, before giving up, throwing it in the trash (literally) and thinking, maybe I'll try a "gamer" unit... so I got a Dlink 4500 with the crappy OLED display. It was faster. Most of the advertised features work. But, it wasn't reliable - lots of software bugs, each new firmware would break something new, terrible support, and almost daily power cycling because it would freeze.

That's because the Netgear WNDR3700 had shown up and was going to be the cat's meow. It was fast, seemed to run cool versus the previous two, had a reasonably fast UI and was bonafide dual band. Looked great. But as before... I made the mistake of putting it on autopilot with firmware updates, and the factory firmware was replaced by a series of increasingly unstable builds. Now, several of the features I bought it for don't work, the 5GHz band is dying, support is terrible, recent FW seems to have broken VPN passthrough and yet again I go online and see a five star router now turning into a 2.5 star clunker.

Are gigabit consumer routers uniformly junk? They all launch with great expectations, then fall flat on their face within 12 months, their fall from grace bracketed by atrocious support on one side and terrible firmware developers on the other. I've tried three top models from three of the largest manufacturers over the last four years and have had the same experience each time. Meanwhile, I go back to my $40 WRT54G and it just works.

My question: if I'm looking for something fast, reliable and not prone to getting in my way, do I need to simply call it a day and go up a few rungs on the ladder? Maybe a Sonicwall TZ2xx unit? (I've installed these in field offices for years, they work great.) Or a used Cisco Aironet plus a switch? Photo printers occasionally aside, I've never had so many problems with "premium" consumer electronics products as I do with gigabit wireless routers....