Powerline adapter vs wifi

[Doppel]

Trying to decide whether I should get a wifi card (my other thread involved a poorly performing wifi usb dongle) for a desktop or go with a [cheap] powerline adapter.

Wifi is predicable and reliable, although not spectacularly fast.

It seems the powerline adapters can work well but may be even more prone to variables. In my case this is a fairly new house, and I can plug both ends into sockets, but these sockets are not on the same circuit. One plug may be a GFCI.

 

[Blastman]

Aren’t you using wireless g right now?

 

[Doppel]

Aren’t you using wireless g right now?

My house has a G router. I know it needs an upgrade, but the thing is still so damn stable, even if not fast, I've really been dragging my heels on replacing it.

 

[greenhawk]

depends on what you want to do with it. Assumeing the house power points are all on the same circuit (easily checked by looking in the meter box at the ciruit breakers, if only one with "power" or "power points" then you are right. Also can check to see if the meter is singal phase or three phase. the first is a guarentte of it working ).


Now it depends on intended use. The powerline items I had worked well, was more stable and even had a better ping. That being said, going cheap will not help as you get the original slow speed, similar to going wireless but only using the "a" version.

Other decisions include what else do you want on the network? if a network at all? any portable device is only good for wireless after all

I am currently trying to convert my gf over to powerline as her appartment must have a few neibours with wireless as well as perodically she can not use the internet/network. Could be dieing hardware but the network can be seen, just not used, regardless of settings.

 

[dealguru]

My house has a G router. I know it needs an upgrade, but the thing is still so damn stable, even if not fast, I've really been dragging my heels on replacing it.

If it's still working, why change? I also have a very old G router that I still use. My brother has a new router (same brand but upgraded model) and mine is much stable.

 

[JackMDS]

Get yourself a Nice Dual Band Router and replace the current Router with it.

My current preference is - http://www.amazon.com/RT-N66U-Dual-B.../dp/B006QB1RPY

Connect the old Router as an Access Point.

Using Wireless Cable/DSL Routers (or Modem/Wireless Router) as a Switch with an Access Point - http://www.ezlan.net/router_AP.html

Configure one Wireless to CH -1, and the other to CH -11.

The rest of the configuration is up to the way you want to use the Wireless network.

You can give the Wireless the same or different SSIDs, Passwords, and transmission bands.

As an example, I set the Dual Band Wireless to connect only a/n, and the old Wireless to g only and same SSID and password.

 

[Doppel]

If it's still working, why change? I also have a very old G router that I still use. My brother has a new router (same brand but upgraded model) and mine is much stable.

It struggles a bit with range. It's a linksys wrt54G. It's been a great router, but I can only speed test to my full 20 mbps download speeds when devices are very, very close to it.

JackMDSI have the router in center of the house, so a new one will cover my entire house fine I think. Is it possible to use something like the wrt54g router as an access point without being hardwired? i.e. if I install tomato or some such on it it can connect to the primary router and offer up its ports for wired devices? That would work okay for me I think, as long as latency is okay, because the particular setup I'm looking for would have almost line of site from the wrt54g to the new router.

 

[Blastman]

Wireless n is really a huge upgrade from g, so you might consider that route. Most users aren’t transferring files between computers so they just generally need decent enough speeds for todays faster internet speeds and that's where n is way better than g in range and speed.

I've got an Asus N13 N300 USB adapter connected to some Cisco wireless router. I'm in the basement 20ft away with 2 walls, floor + furnace in between me and the router which is on the main floor. I have 5 bars and my connection bounces around from 58,72,86, 130 depending on interference but usually is at 86-130. This is 2.4Ghz/20Mhz. The internet is 25/3 (down/up) and I can always max that out easily using speedtest.net on n.

For fun, I tried lowering my adapter to g to see what speeds I could get. Connected at 48 but could only get around 12mbps download on speedtest. So even though I'm pretty close to the router, g isn't near fast enough to get me my full internet speeds.

Even just a single band n wifi router would probably improve things tremendously. Although, if you have a huge amount of other n routers around you might consider a dual band.

 

[JackMDS]

JackMDSI have the router in center of the house, so a new one will cover my entire house fine I think. Is it possible to use something like the wrt54g router as an access point without being hardwired? i.e. if I install tomato or some such on it it can connect to the primary router and offer up its ports for wired devices? That would work okay for me I think, as long as latency is okay, because the particular setup I'm looking for would have almost line of site from the wrt54g to the new router.

Yeah it is possible.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Client_Bridged

 

[Doppel]

Yeah it is possible.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Client_Bridged

Oh, look at that. Thanks