wireless internet

[lee92 2]

i know there are some computer literate people on here, so i figured this would be a good start. i'm looking to get a wireless router for my laptop for when i go home this summer. only thing is, i don't know what a good-quality one would be, the price range, and if i need any accessories for it to run. i have wireless on my computer, so thats no problem. i'm just not sure what to look for in the router, and whether i need and special disks/cards that need to be inserted in the laptop for it to work, or if they come with the router. any help would be appreciated.

[Guest Muck]

No extra card is necessary if you have one in your laptop. Only a router. I've had a lot of success with my Linksys.

[Cheesehead 0]

No extra card is necessary if you have one in your laptop. Only a router. I've had a lot of success with my Linksys.

thats what we have at my house. works fine most of the time

[Cheechoo 0]

Neatgear RangeMax! Much better range than most other routers, so you can use you're laptop anywhere in the house.

[Lester8 11]

The power adaptor for my Linksys WRT54G (pre-cisco, original version) burned out a couple weeks ago. I haven't found a replacement adaptor, but started using a newer WRT54G V5. There are supposed to be a ton of issues with V5s but the firmware's updated and it has been stable.

[WAMPS19 0]

The WRT54G is only 50 bucks at BB and CC and in my opinion is the best brand out there.

[lee92 2]

what about speed though? i've seen cheap ones that run aroun 54mbps, and others running at 108mbps. whats a good range to look for?

[Cheechoo 0]

Go with 108 unless you want to feel like you've time-travelled back to dial-up modem days. But it depends on the adapter you have in your laptop. If the adapter can't handle more than 54mbps, a three-trillion mbps router won't help you.

[Guest Muck]

Go with 108 unless you want to feel like you've time-travelled back to dial-up modem days. But it depends on the adapter you have in your laptop. If the adapter can't handle more than 54mbps, a three-trillion mbps router won't help you.

Agreed.

Netgear (as someone mentioned prior) is a good product too. I have the original Linksys as well, WRT54G. It's done great. :D

[stunner 0]

i have a linksys too but i have problems sometimes, connection drops, just doesn't seem to be a solid connection. almost all of my friends use d-link routers and have no problems. maybe im just not setting mine up properly...

[CaptainFalcon15 0]

Anything netgear

ive gone 15 days + without losing connection to my laptop (i.e. aim/msn never signed off)

and its very secure...its your decision whether to encrypt the connection too

[Vapor 0]

Go with 108 unless you want to feel like you've time-travelled back to dial-up modem days. But it depends on the adapter you have in your laptop. If the adapter can't handle more than 54mbps, a three-trillion mbps router won't help you.

ummm, no. 54mb (802.11G) is the current standard. It will not feel like a fax modem (56k) at all. The G standard will give you 54 megabits per second (at optimum range, which is about 10 feet ;)). The newest kid on the block is 802.11N. It is not a standard yet. It has not been ratified by the IEEE, so manufactuers are calling their boxes PRE-N. They claim they can rach speeds faster than a wired router, which is true (within optimum conditions). They also claim they can go 700 FEET. Which is almost triple of what a current G router can go. I would go with a Pre-N router, I sugesst the Belkin 802.11N Pre-N router. It will cost you about 150 bucks, and it is backwords compatible with 802.11G, 802.11A, and 802.11B. If you do not plan on upgrading your wireless card, chechoo is right, just get an 802.11G router. I would suggest Netgear over Linksys.

A word to the wise, turn on WPA. Around my house there are 5 wireless networks (all encrypted in WEP) and it took me about 6 hours total to crack the wep and have full access to their system (of course I did nothing malicious).

[bullet1 0]

Wow, not much to say after that, but I have owned Netgear and Linksys stuff and had good luck with all of it.

[Chopper C. 0]

I also recommend the WRT54G. Don't be fooled into buying the model with the "speed booster" unless all of your pcs are going to be running speed booster compatible hardware. The speed booster is to improve pc to pc uploads/downloads only.

I would also suggest that you do some research on securing your wireless network. Nothing is "un-crackable," however, you may as well make it a little challenging for the other guy.

Good luck!

[lee92 2]

alright, i went to future shop today and picked up the wireless router. the guy working there said that the linksys wireless-g broadband router with speedbooster was the best one and the fastest, which is what i wanted, but after setting it up, it just doesn't seem all that fast. its faster than dial up, but not as fast as being plugged straight into the high-speed. i had no problems with both wireless and nonwireless at school. is it the router, or did i not hook it up correctly, or is this just as good as it gets? also, it has kicked me off msn a couple times too, although the connection says 'excellent'.

[Vapor 0]

well i had a long response with a lot of details all typed up, and i reloaded by accident. So here is the readers digest version...

to try to fix the droping problem, change channels...

log into your router... go to a browser, and type in http://192.168.1.1 the default login is admin/admin. Go to the wireless option, and then go to channel, try channel 7 or 8. A chorless fan that operates on the 2.4 ghz band will interfere with your network.

Now... you got the speedbooster router, which claims (unoffically) to achive speeds of 125 mb/s via channel bonding, frame bursting, and some wierd compression. Is it true? Ehhhh, who knows. The question is, what are you using on your pc? Are you using an 802.11b chip, 802.11g? did you just buy it? Need more information before I can tell exactly why your getting such poor preformance.

Hypothetically, you should be getting faster speeds then on a 10/100 ethernet network.

[lee92 2]

well i had a long response with a lot of details all typed up, and i reloaded by accident. So here is the readers digest version...

to try to fix the droping problem, change channels...

log into your router... go to a browser, and type in http://192.168.1.1 the default login is admin/admin. Go to the wireless option, and then go to channel, try channel 7 or 8. A chorless fan that operates on the 2.4 ghz band will interfere with your network.

Now... you got the speedbooster router, which claims (unoffically) to achive speeds of 125 mb/s via channel bonding, frame bursting, and some wierd compression. Is it true? Ehhhh, who knows. The question is, what are you using on your pc? Are you using an 802.11b chip, 802.11g? did you just buy it? Need more information before I can tell exactly why your getting such poor preformance.

Hypothetically, you should be getting faster speeds then on a 10/100 ethernet network.

http://www.staples.ca/ENG/Catalog/cat_sku....&affixedcode=WW

that would be the laptop i've got...compaq. not even a year old, picked it up in september.

[Vapor 0]

it says tou have 54g with speedbooster support, which means, theoretically, you should achieve speeds faster than your wired netowrk, 125 megabits rather than 100.