can wireless be as good as wired?

howhao

Senior member
Dec 20, 2001
622
0
0
i like the convenience of wireless networking...i walk around the house with my laptop a lot. however, i've always been anal about using wireless with my desktop because i do a lot of work with my desktop and i need it to have a stable connection that deosn't drop or fade periodically.

however, i think that wireless technology has improved, and the MIMO stuff seems to have surpassed the 100mbps mark, so since I just moved and my desk is located where it is quite far from the router, i'm starting to think whether going completely wireless could be an alternative.

if you feel strongly about the fact that you cannot tell the difference between wireless and wired, i'd like to hear about your setup. please help....

i hate the latency when i try to load a page and it takes a while on wireless...but i have an old router - netgear 802.11b, so things might've changed?


thanks, and as soon as i get some responses, i'm headed to fry's.
 

skyking

Lifer
Nov 21, 2001
22,548
5,595
146
For a permanent situation on a fixed desktop, I would still run a wire. I really don't care about claims of performance and reliability, because they all have one thing in common: they are measured against a wired up connection.
There simply is no comparison for reliability. I have had wireless links that ran fine for months and months.
It still does not compare to a properly wired situation, which will go until a NIC fails or the cable gets physically damaged by some event.
 

Kelemvor

Lifer
May 23, 2002
16,928
8
81
Plus the fact that wired is never affected by cordless phones, microwaves, etc like wireless could be. I too use wired for all my desktops (I wired up my whole house) and just use wireless for the laptop that I might want to move around with.

But with the 802.11N stuff coming out and the MIMO stuff out there, it's definitely getting better and better. But of course there's always gigabit for wired which is even better.
 

brshoemak

Member
Feb 11, 2005
166
4
81
you won't see a benefit switching to CAT6 unless you are running all gigabit NIC's with a gigabit switch and ONLY for network transfers between computers in your local network.

Even if you switched to CAT6 (or even CAT7) with gigabit hardware your internet connection will always be the limit of your internet speed. The fastest consumer level high-speed internet is Verizon's FIOS (Fiber Optic) which is still "only" i think 16MB/s down.

Stick with wires, CAT5 is fine for internet usage.
 

silverdj

Senior member
Feb 26, 2006
275
0
0
I have a wireless network at my house and my desktop is a little ways away from the router and everyday I think about throwing my computer through the window because of the slow and unstable speed. I really want to wire it to the router, but I still live with the parents and they are not fond of having cables running through the house. I am not an expert on anything at all to be honest, but how hard would it be and how much would it cost to just run a cat5 cable through the attic and into the home office? I have live in a one story house and I think the distance is about 70' away from my room where my computer is. Thanks in advance for any help.
 

Dravic

Senior member
May 18, 2000
892
0
76
I have my gaming desktop on the second floor and opposite side of the house. I had issue with my 2.4ghz phones so i switch them to 5ghz phones.

I pull 8-10mbps (fios, get all 15mbps on wired boxes) from my desktop and play BF2, wow, quake4, cod2 etc etc etc with great latency (15ms for BF2 servers) all the time.

I use a belkin g router (acess point only) and a buffalo g ethernet converter. The buffalo ethernet converter was a big step up in connectivity and thoughput.

wpa tkip encrypted
 

senterprises

Junior Member
Aug 12, 2006
13
0
0
I have a wired and wireless system, our flat has 4 laptops and two desktops. We have a new wireless router but it behaves unreliably with some of the laptops, when copying between computers it sometimes drops the connection if someone else also starts to copy. I just keep the wired for when i want to copy, and when i want it to work 100% eg. online games.
 

Leros

Lifer
Jul 11, 2004
21,867
7
81
Wireless is fine for browsing the internet. But for large file transfers or gaming, you can't beat wired. My desktop and server are wired, my laptop is wireless.