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To wireless or not to wireless ... i did it, here's the results

J

joecool

Platinum Member
so, i'm jonesin' for a wireless network, mostly 'cause it's a cool new gadget to play with, but also to get rid of a few of the rats nest of wires in my office. right now i have an smc wired 4-port router but i have 5 network devices. soon to add a 6th (a wired print server, wireless are just too much $). i can either add a switch ($10) or go wireless and put wireless nics in two of my pc's. the wireless solution is more expensive (~$100) but like i said i want a new toy and it would eliminate a few wires. however it seems like wireless is also a source of frustration for many - dropped connections, conflicts with other household items (like my 2.4GHz cordless phone system), etc. so, ater's, tell me - should i go for it? or should i save my hard earned $ for other toys?

thanks,

joe
 
If they're all in the same room, or are not going to ever be moved, then I'd just get another switch, and hard-wire them.

If however you have a laptop which you would use around the house, or something you want to move where you cannot run wires, then I would (and have) gone wireless.

I personally have had bad experiences with D-Link and Netgear, and great experiences with US Robotics, but some have had better experience with D-Link/Netgear products.


Confused
 
Mountain Climbing is a source of frustration to most people but some love it.

So is Horse Riding Scuba Diving, Opera Music. Etc., etc. :thumbsup::thumbsdown::thumbsup::thumbsdown:???

You have to decide if you are Cool or Not.😉

For most people Wireless works well. However you?re YMMV.

Link to: Wireless What Should I Get?

P.S. If you are the Hacker Type you might want to take a look at the Linksys 802.11g Wireless Router. It is very popular among people who like Hack.

With a third party Hacked firmware it is very versatile: http://docs.sveasoft.com/SV-Guide.html

:sun:
 
i went for it, bought a netgear 11G router and wireless nic. plugged everything in last night, i like the look of the router and the gui, seems like it provides a reasonable amount of customization but is easy to use, kind of wish it had more in the way of content filtering, but my kids are still a few years away from that. one thing i did was to disable broadcasting my ssid, which had some interesting effects on the wireless nic ...

the nic setup was kind of funky. first off i had to go get a driver update to even get wpa, then on the web site they described the two versions of the card incorrectly - mine said v2 on the card but matched their picture of their v1 chip. i went with the v2 driver and that seemed to work. the netgear app that can be used to discover and connect to wireless networks has some issues, in my opinion. first off it doesn't seem to support wpa at all - there was no place to enter the ssid, it couldn't find my network (tho it did find several others!) and there was no place to enter the wpa password. using the winxp wireless setup i was finally able to find where to enter the ssid but it was really buried in the advanced driver properties and none of netgears documentation told where/how to enter it. cool thing was, once i entered that, windows found my router and gave me a place to enter my wpa password. once i set that up everything worked great, with the router and the wireless pc in the same room the signal showed strong and everything worked great!

on a funny side note, i also found three other wireless networks (neighbors), two were protected by wep but one was wide open and i was able to connect and surf through their router, albeit rather slowly. this was all in a basement office so i'm curious to see if it'll be faster upstairs. of course, i'll be trying that tonight ... !

bottom line:
- i really like the netgear router. it looks sharp, the setup wizard configured it for my broadband without any trouble, and the configuration works well. i particularly liked the status lights on the front - no boring, square lights with unreadable print to tell you what they are. nice, big, icon-style lights that tell you what they are - 1,2,3,4 for wired connections, "i" for internet, and a broadcast signal for wireless. spiffy! however, i don't like the fact that the antenna isn't removable. since i'm in the basement i anticipate needing a better antenna to get a clear signal to the whole house, with this router i'm just sol. one nice thing, even tho the router was sitting right next to my 19" tube monitor the signal was clear, no interference that i could tell.
- the pci card was a little frustrating, wasn't clear that i had to go get a driver update to get wpa (was release months ago, why wasn't it on the cd in the box?), netgears wireless app needs some major help. good news is winxp did great, had no problem connecting to two different networks (!) and smooth sailing after that. netgear looses points here, i can see why non-techies don't use wpa when it's such a pain to set up.

all that said, i creamed the right side rear view mirror backing my car out of the garage today ... so i'll be returning all this cool hardware so i can buy an new rier view mirror. dam!!!
 
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