802.11b/g or router?

[Peacemaker]

what do you guys think? With my new rig I need to stay connected to the net. Should I get 802.11 or a router and some cable? Which is less expensive? Can 802.11 get inturupted by say a thunder storm? Im thinking of brining the Cable modem to my new rig and then getting 802.11 to hook up this one.

[Corrosion]

Wireless SUCKS, much slower speeds than cable connected.

[Rayder]

We've got a router.

[Setari]

ive got a router...its wireless but the comp im on is connected straight to it....h/o something's screwy with it...the connection isnt very stable and i cant d/l anything over 10 mb while being plugged into the router. :(

[Hamma]

Dont bother with wireless - its a pain right now. It still needs to be perfected, it isnt that great for gaming either.

[Squick]

Wireless is fine, in my benchmarks I have found 802.11g to be exactly 1/2 as fast as 100bt.

Get a Linksys 802.11g wireless router. You will have four physical network jacks and you can do wireless on top of that.

Here is the wireless router ($88):
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=447401

Here is the same router without wireless ($53)
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=196823

I would do wired to your stationary desktops unless they are a pain to wire. As for speeds, don't forget that your cable modem is at a very max about 400K/sec, most are still 200K/sec. So even 802.11b (the older, slower standard) will be more then sufficient for web access.

So Corrosion, do you care to expand on your heaps of helpful information?

Squick

[Rayder]

Squick, act like I'm a complete and ignorant fool went it comes to this kind of thing. Explain that to me in lamens terms.

[Peacemaker]

The only thing is that with routers Ive heard that they fuck with everything about the systems and its very hard to get everything working properly. Can I just make the router open? I dont want it confusing my IPs and stuff.

[Rayder]

It fucked my Half-Life up.

[Peacemaker]

I was also thinkin maybe I could just not use a router. Make a 2 machine lan. The old computer not being directly connected. Then I could use this one as a small storage area. Just lookin for ways to not wreck my gaming but still get em both connected.

[Rbstr]

get a wired router, they are much better than 802.11g, 2x as fast as the maximum speed of the wireless, no matter what, and no need to wory about people steeling your connection. They are all faster than your internet connection though, so i't doesn't make the big of a difference, except wired is prone to interference and other bad stuff.

Hamma can you move this to the tech forum?

[Peacemaker]

Yea but I dont want the router to fuck with my system. I also just remembered that I cant do a 2 machine LAN cause this machine has 98 on it. I dont think u can do that with XP and 98. I cant stress enough that I dont want to fuck it up with a router.

[1024]

wireless is slow for gaming. go hardwire.

[Sputty]

Dont bother with wireless - its a pain right now. It still needs to be perfected, it isnt that great for gaming either.
Yep.
BTW, wireless mouse and keyboards need a mini nuclear generator to last long

[1024]

ya, and the radiation really starts to bite after a while.

[Squick]

Yall are starting to make me wonder if you have ever even used wireless anything.

My wireless keyboard has lasted me over a year, and I have not even touched the single triple A battery in it. My wireless mouse has a cradle that I drop it into every couple weeks to charge.

As for gaming, how much bandwidth do you guys think gaming takes? If you think wireless is not fast enough, neither is your cable modem, nor is 36 T-1 lines! A 802.11g connection is the same speed as 36 T-1 lines, that is the same as a T-3 connection... More bandwidth then most small colleges have! Also from my direct observation, as in the router sitting next to me, and the g card in my laptop, not some hearsay, it is exactly half as fast as 100 base T, I was able to transfer at 5 megaBYTES a second... 600 megs of data took just over two minutes to transfer, on a T-1 that would have taken 52 minutes, on the very fastest cable modem out there that would have taken 25 minutes. The only thing I can think is some people have heard that wireless can be unreliable, 802.11a was unreliable because it was a 5.4ghz signal instead of the more stable 2.4 with signal hopping.

And to address your last fear, that a router will mess with your connection. It will! If you are plugged straight into your cable modem right now, you are at an extreme risk of being hacked unless you have absolutely every Microsoft patch. A router negates 99.9% of those vulnerabilities. And if you really want to be totally open, you can enable something called "DMZ" on your router, which will forward everything from the outside to you, then all your game hosting will work just fine.

I recommend you go to a site like www.tomshardware.com (http://www.tomshardware.com) or www.anandtech.com (http://www.anandtech.com) and read up from knowledgeable sources, not this hearsay.

And lastly, like I mentioned, if you don't mind paying the extra $30, get the Linksys wireless one I mentioned, if you do not want to use wireless then you can use the four ports on it, but you have wireless as an option.

Squick

[Rbstr]

wireless keyboards and mice are not at issuw here, they are ok (but msot wirless mice has a very low sampling rate and thats not good for FPS's ) but wirless routers are slower than wired, they are both faster than broadband but you want your lan to be fast for future upgrades and fast lan gaming, the connection can be "stolen" from then fairly easily and they are a hassle beccasue the signel is not that reliable indoors with all the obstructions, and interference with other radio things.
Now if you have a laptop or are planing on buying one get the above mentioned router that does wireless and wired so you can wire you PC's and have you laptops anyware.

[Squick]

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by wireless routers being slower then wired Rbstr? If he wants to just use the wired ports, then he will have 10/100 fully switched network access, with wireless being available to him. If he is looking for the very fastest then we are all steering him wrong by even looking at 100bt, gigabit is very cheap now in days, and from my experience is at least four times faster then 100bt:

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=561060
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=521943

And if he is concerned about security the Linksys router can do WPA for unbreakable encryption, or WEP+MAC filtering for a level of security that no hacker would bother with. And lastly, I have four different 2.4 ghz cordless phones, three microwaves, and a gaggle of other electronics, yet my wireless router is in my basement by my cable modem, and I get full 54mbit on the fourth floor of my house, or even out by my pool... That is with a stock 0.5dbi antenna... For another $80 he could upgrade to an 11 dbi antenna and provide wireless for half his city :D

I know I am sounding like a wireless salesman... But I don't think anyone here is using wireless and is bashing it from hearsay. I am using wireless, it works great for everything. If you can not punch holes in your walls or want to be bothered with running wire, do wireless. If absolute speed is your only concern, go gigabit.

Squick

[Rbstr]

It is slower than 100mbit Ethernet! thats why its advertized at 54mbits, its still a 46mbit difference. I can't see how they are equal in speed. yes the cable modem provides a bottle neck, but having a fast lan is very nice, especialy if you have to do a reformat or get a new HD that you need to refill with your data. I have had a lot of friends that have had trouble with wirless at there houses, you may be lucky and have a house that doen't interfear but slot of places get spoty reception.

Gigabit is >* but they don't make home user routers that are avalible at regular places or we would be using it. I can't wait for 1000mbits.

[Smaug]

What squick is saying is that the particular router that he posted a link to had both wireless and wired combatibility, with an antena and a 4 port switch built in for 30 bucks than the wired only router. So if peacemaker is planing on experimenting with both that would be the choice router.

[Daleon]

rofl@wireless being equal to 36 T-1's. 802.11g is 54 mbps, not mBps. Ethernet is 10/100/1000 mbps. Most common 100. There is a new wireless .11g coming soon thats like a muxed version and can do 108. But generally its half the speed at best of wired ethernet and still not even in the same neighborhood as a T-3.

As for original poster, don't be so freaking paranoid about routers. 99% of ppl on the net these days are using one, they are everywhere geez. Setting up something like ICS (internet connection sharing) or some other proxy software is dumb.

[Squick]

What speed do you think a T1 is Daleon? 1.5 megabit... At every client of mine that has a full T, they get under 200 kilobytes per second. So again I will say, my personal expereince is getting five megabytes per second, 5000 kilobytes a second, 40mbps.

A T3 is rated at 45 megabit, but I have never been able to accurately test that speed at any of my clients because of two reasons... Firstly the connection is already heavily in use 24/7, and second because I do not know of any speed tester that can accurately test past ~2.5 megabit.

So can you tell me why you are rofl@wireless beign equal to 36 T-1's? People seem to have some idealized view of T1s and T3s... They are not grossly fast... As a matter of fact it is quite frustrating to pay $1,800 a month for the same speed connection you are getting at home for $45. (Downstream of course, not upstream)

And the new muxed 802.11g that you are talking about is already available in the non-standard version on the Netgear and Dcom models.

[Squick]

Speaking of the 100 megabit 802.11g, you might find this article interesting:
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7681

It could certainly cause a problem if you are in a large office building, or in an appt complex and you are using one of the 11 dbi antennas. But I'm an ass, so if I had one of the $2,000 a month lofts in downtown Manhatten I would prolly get 20 or 30 of them, each with 900 dbi antennas and make sure that every channel in the city was unusable :D

[Daleon]

Squick, all I do every day all day is deal with high end leased lines for companies like Shell International, IBM, Bellsouth, Cingular, etc etc etc. I've been in telecommunications for over 10 years. The company I work for is even a primarily wireless data communication software maker, so I know wireless better than most.

So when I say "rofl@wireless being equal to 36 T-1's" I mean it as, thats freaking rediculous. T-3's are small backbones, as very few ppl actually go up to OC48 size. I can PROMISE you you are NOT getting 40 mbps / 5 mBps from your freaking cable/dsl unless you are on like one of the few 100 base cable trials in very few spots around the country. I'm on Comcast cable which is about the cable companies around and its just now moving to 3 mbps, which ofcourse you only get if no one else in your neighborhood is using it.

Try going to http://www.dslreports.com and run the speed tests there. Or go to fileplanet and download a 200 meg demo. By your calculations you can download it in 40 seconds.

I also have pretty much a personal T-1 at work, its for my department which I am it really. So no, the d/l speed can even be less than cable/dsl. NOT by much, and its designed for 2 way speed and not just high downloads. Try running http or ftp servers on your home server and start pushing some serious bandwidth upstream.

I never said wireless 802.11g sucked. I like it plenty and it gets the job done when you don't feel like running wire. But its not as good as 100base, simple as that.

[Squick]

I am in much the same situation as you Daleon, I am the senior network security consultant for my company. I think it is just a misunderstanding. I never meant that I am getting 45 megabits to the internet, I meant to another computer within my network; so prooving that the internal network speeds of 802.11g are very close to what they are rated at. I am one of the 3 mbps cable modem people. I just wanted to give some frame of reference to the people that do not have a conception of speed; the "advice" given by the first 10 posters or so are claiming that wireless is no good for gaming, well at 30 feet I get 0.0005% packet loss, you get 100 times that on even a good cable modem, so the only other possible explanation to their claims would be speed, so that is why I used the comparison of 54 megabit vs your internet connection.

Have you ever benchmarked the 108 "Super-G" 802.11g from either D-Link or Netgear? I have read a few reviews and they seem to be more powerfull then a normal 802.11g set, but I did not see any speed comparisons. Because if it truely is twice what normal 802.11g is, then you should get darn close to the same as wired speeds.

Squick

[TheRagingGerbil]

Im running all netgear stuff (802.11B) and have never had it go out...well except when the power went out gut that another story.

I've got three comps and a handheld usually connect and I don't see any slow down in page loading from my comp that is cabled to the router verses my wireless rigs.

I've run PS on all my machines as well, works just fine.


***EDIT***
Oh, something you have got to do the moment you install your wireless router is set up your security. For the netgear stuff, this is doen by accessing the IP of the router through your browser.

I set up my router and immediately saw activity on the wireless port, this was before I had activated anything else. I opened the security and saw a machine named "tlyman" pioggybacking off my router. I opened the my network and saw his/her printer was shared, so I printed some porn and disconnected him.

[Peacemaker]

Squicks router looks as if it would completly suit my needs. Especialy if I can turn of the security when I want. Is it quick/ easy to turn off the security? Like could I have it normaly running on security mode and then when I wanna play a game or something open it up? I know you can find the port numbers too and tell it to open them up. How hard is it to do that stuff?

[Squick]

Squicks router looks as if it would completly suit my needs. Especialy if I can turn of the security when I want. Is it quick/ easy to turn off the security? Like could I have it normaly running on security mode and then when I wanna play a game or something open it up? I know you can find the port numbers too and tell it to open them up. How hard is it to do that stuff?
Oh yeah, it is super fast... You can switch from DMZ-mode to full security in under five seconds.

Playing games won't be your problem, you won't have to do a thing to play 99.9% of games out there. Hosting will be though... Do you ever host games like Quake3 servers, or Counterstrike servers? And you are correct, you need to find the ports for those servers. The quickest way to find the port is go to Google, and search for "firewall port XXX" where XXX is the name of the game you want to find the port on. (without the quotes)

And make sure you enable "WEP." It is super easy to enable and will give a pretty high level of security for almost no work what so ever. WEP just basically puts a password on your router that people will have to know before they can use the wireless part of it; your computer will remmember that password so you won't have to keep entering it every day.

Squick

[Peacemaker]

Since im not really worried about hackers Ive decided to go with a switch and put a firewall on the computers individualy. Its waaaay cheaper and alot easyer.

[Biohazzard56]

I just got the 802.11g router installed, its good for gaming but im far away from the router so im going to need a signal booster. Its been up for almost and hour now with no hickups. My download speeds are the only problem

[Daleon]

With wireless it all depends on your environment. Homes can be full of 2.4 ghz phones and other interference. But 99% of the time its not an issue. Signal strength can sometimes be. I have a friend who has to have 3 base stations to cover all of his house, though its a big place.

I doubt the new 802.11g's are all that stable at 108 speed connection. One thing about wireless is the bandwidth can fluctuate. Plus this "combining" of two data streams into one is nothing new. They've been doing it since 28.8 modems. I remember the old "Shotgun" modems. When I worked for mindspring we would all laugh everytime someone called up with one of those. DSL is trying to currently do the same thing, muxing as many as 4 dsl lines into one. Its just smoke and unreliable tech most of the time.

[Biohazzard56]

our 802.11g setup is working great, staying up for 4 hours straight thats very impressive compaired to my experiences with 802.11b