We've had horrible times with the Netgear and Linksys models used at work. Our wireless access is mostly for occasional access so we do use the SoHo models, not the high end mesh kit.

We only had one particular Netgear model and I can't quite recall what exactly its problem was, but it was bad enough that we just dumped all of them after 6 months. Our Linksys models were the older blue WRTxxx models running DD-WRT because the OEM firmware could not handle a heavy load, however occasional. They worked well for ~3 years, then we had 10 die within a 12 month span.

Our Proxim equipment has been behaving very well over the years, but it has a price tag to match the performance.