To wireless or not... (network noob)

[Dman877]

Ok so we have adelphia cable and we had it hooked up through a linksys router/firewall thingy but the linksys crapped the bucket. Since I was hard up for some internet fun I went to target and bought the only thing they had which was a motorola router/firewall. Now the motorola has 4 ports for cat5 and also has wireless capability.

Here's our setup, the modem/router is downstairs in my parents office where they have 2 comps hooked up directly to the router. My room is on the other side of the house and I have 2 (sometimes 3) computers hooked up to a 3com 4 port switch (I think that's the right term...) which is then hooked up through a single cat5 cable to one of the ports on the motorola downstairs.

Now my question is, would I be better off getting wireless network cards for my secondary/tertiary boxes then running through a switch? My ping in CS runs from 70's - 150's in most servers and I'm pretty sure it was better then that before I put the switch in (when I had my gaming box hooked straight to the router instead of through a switch).

Is wireless the same speed as standard cat5 connections? What is a good wireless card to get? I have a little flexibility here because I can always use the cat5 I already have in place for my gaming box (if indeed cat5 is faster) and wireless for my internet surfing/utility box...

How is the software situation? Does wireless require a lot of software installation/config with windows xp or is it pretty much plug and play?

 

[nweaver]

Wireless is slower, and has more overhead (from Encryption, etc).

If given the chance (i.e. cable already pulled/run) I will always go wired, esp with a desktop. My laptop almost always is wireless, because I carry it around and do things all over with it, and it can be a pain to switch when in the middle of something.

 

[JackMDS]

May be this can Help.

Link to: Wireless What Should I Get?

:sun:

 

[Dman877]

Would there be a notable difference in download/web surfing speeds going from cat5 to wireless? or is this a latency thing? (clarify slower nweaver )

 

[nweaver]

Slower, i.e. 54 Mb/s versus 100 Mb/s. May not make a difference if your wireless connection is reliable, but if it negotiates down to 1 or 5 Mb/s then you may have slower downloads. For web surfing, I doubt it will make any difference.

 

[ktwebb]

Originally posted by: Dman877
Would there be a notable difference in download/web surfing speeds going from cat5 to wireless? or is this a latency thing? (clarify slower nweaver )

No, and no. Your internet connection is slower than either a wired or wireless link so there is no speed increase/decrease when browsing the web, or downloads from the internet. The only different you'll see in speed is if you are transferring data from one machine to the other. And that would be a significant difference. Wired is faster for file transfers. If you wireless client to wireless router association (link) is solid then there wouldn't be any difference in latency between your wired or wireless clients IF your the only one using the Access Point (the wireless peace of the Router) If you have a cat5 run then you use that. That one is a no brainer. WIreless is nice but imperfect. Too many variables. It can work fine for gaming but is affected by things your copper cable (cat5) is not. Stay wired. You'll not see any benefit from going wireleess except for mobility.

 

[Dman877]

Thanks for the help guys, guess I'll stick to the wires .

 

[slyedog]

except for my laptop to move around the room, i go strictly wired

 

[JackMDS]

Wired or Wireless is irrelevant, what is relevant is what you are doing with your Network, and decision has to be made accordingly.

:sun:

 

[Hossenfeffer]

Yeah, personally, if I -can- go wired, especially with a desktop, I do it.

 

[halfadder]

Use cat5 unless you *need* wireless. I have two wireless access points at home, but still prefer a hard line, it's always faster.

Old fashioned 100BaseT always benchmarks faster than SuperG 108mbit wireless. And it's way faster than 802.11g.