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Clevinger
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 3765
Location: Austin
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 Posted: 06/09/04 - 10:42 Post subject: Wireless Networking
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I'm thinking about setting up wireless networking at my new place and I'm pretty unfamiliar with the whole thing.
What kind of options are there out there and how do they compare quality and cost-wise?
My place is pretty spread out and the network would need to cover 3 or 4 computers spaced throughout the house and possibly on different floors.
Also how would this compare to having a standard network with all the cables and crap running everywhere?
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kireol
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 02 Aug 2003
Posts: 9517
Location: Royal Oak, MI
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Posted: 06/09/04 - 10:54 Post subject:
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you probably want a -g. good range. decent speeds. as long as you arent xfering dvds and stuff and need it xfered from 1 pc to the next in 20 minutes and dont mind waiting 45, then yer good. any game or browsing or p2p will do just fine. wired is cheaper. but might as well go -g so you dont have to run wires and cap laptop yer stuff. make sure you use wep or whatever that secuirty is, to at least make it semi secure.
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sinrakin
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 7044
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Posted: 06/09/04 - 11:02 Post subject:
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Not too much to say, you kind of have to try it and see if it works for you. If you can cover your whole house with one wireless router, you're in good shape. If not, you'd have to do some research.
Basically, you neead to buy:
- a wireless router
- 802.11 cards for any PCs or laptops that don't have built in wireless
Most (all?) wireless routers will also have a few (3-4) utp ports, so you might as well run any computers that are right next to the router on ethernet - no point in using more wireless bandwidth if you don't need to.
Your main choice is band: 802.11b (11 Mb/sec), or 802.11a or 802.11g (both 54 Mb/sec). I think 802.11a has kind of gone away at this point, so I don't think I'd recommend that. If you've got a laptop with built-in wireless, it's almost certainly 802.11b, and any public access point you go to (Starbucks or whatever) will be 802.11b, so make sure the card you get at least handles that. I'm pretty sure most 802.11g also handle 802.11b though. There's not a huge reason to go with 802.11g at home though - even 802.11b is much faster than your cable or DSL bandwidth, so you don't really get any speedup from it, unless you're doing PC to PC stuff over your home LAN. But if you can get it for reasonable price and it handles 802.11b as well, might as well go for it.
Oh, you should also make sure the access point you get supports WPA (Wifi protected access) which is the next level of encryption after WEP, which any idiot can break in a short time and then access your network if he's nearby. The new ones support it, you might see some older ones being sold that don't.
I can't give real brand recommendations, mostly because I've heard bad stories about almost every brand out there. The ones I've personally had bad luck with have been Netgear, Linksys, and Dlink. I've had reasonably good luck with SMC and Proxim, but I think it's sort of the luck of the draw.
| Quote: | | Also how would this compare to having a standard network with all the cables and crap running everywhere? |
There would be fewer cables 
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Owyyn
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 2900
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Posted: 06/09/04 - 11:07 Post subject:
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Anyone know if the USB wireless adapters are any good? I wanna put my cars computer on a wireless network, but it's a mini-itx board so I don't have any room for more PCI cards.
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themy
Sir Postalot
Joined: 14 Oct 2002
Posts: 1153
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Posted: 06/09/04 - 11:11 Post subject:
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the new 108 MBs are out now, getting them for my house now. only problem is that we need 10 wireless access points set to multi point to send wireless throughout my house lol.
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sinrakin
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 7044
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Posted: 06/09/04 - 11:13 Post subject:
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i haven't actually done any throughput or latency tests with USB adapters, but we use them here quite a bit and they seem fine.
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