Help me with my home wireless network

[philosofool]

About seven years ago, I set up my first home wireless network with an Apple Airport Express. At the time, I had one laptop and the A.E. let me control my stereo there by letting me get rid of needless discs.

Since then, I've added a lot. I have an iPad, a laptop, a desktop (currently plugged into the router) and a Roku. I have a wife with a laptop, an iPad, and an iPhone. Once in a blue moon, we turn on the Wii. And I have guests, like my in laws, who will be here this week for Christmas, that bring their own 802.11 devices.

That Apple AE wasn't cutting it. I think that model maxed out at five devices. The previous tennant in my place left an old Netgear Wireless router, model WVR614, v. 6, that I recently hooked up to replace it. But this new network is still having issues dropping devices and not reconnecting them until it's rebooted.

The relatives are descending for the holidays any day now. I just want enough wireless connectivity that people aren't asking me to reboot the wireless network while I'm trying to stuff the suckling pig.

Suggestions about what I might do? I've been thinking about creating another network for my guests to use by one of the following means:

-connect the old airport to the Netgear and create a second wireless network.
-connect a very old Airport Extreme and do the same.
-create an ad hoc network using the wireless card on my desktop.

Other solutions? Anyone using a netgear router like mine and know of something that might improve the router's performance?

 

[Kartajan]

if you just need internet access for your guests, connecting your AE as your main network, and connecting either secondary router's "UPLINK" or "WAN" port to it would give you a second network for them to connect to. A potential pitfall of this situation would be the potential for the 2 networks to "bump heads" as far as both of them fighting over the same radio space. (make sure they are on different channels).

The best thing i would recommend is to put as much as possible hard wired, and turn off wireless for those devices in order to minimize your impact on what is going over the air.

If I was in your place, I would probably start shopping for a single wireless router that met all of your connectivity needs, and a dumb switch to cover any hardwired needs that were not met by the better wireless router...