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Wireless Routers

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texasboy:
Still working off my very old Netgear 54 Mbps (probably 4 years old) to provide service to other users in the household. Working well and no problems. Has anything really improved to warrant a new router?? When I brought this subject up many moons ago,systems were quite happy with the router I have. Main PC running off ethernet broadband  cable. Had reduced speed to 2-4 Mb speed, but server updated to 10 Mb free. Virginmedia has now 50Mb available.
Any thoughts people??
cheers

billyfridge:
I got a Linksys router, had it for about 18months, works fine, and provides a firewall. I'm on Virgin Media, dunno about the 50mb though. I don't need it, but my son will, if I gotta pay extra, my son will have to pay it he does a lot of downloading [rolleyes]

Quantum:
All routers provide internal firewalls.

You need to either look in to 802.11G with very good antennas to provide about 54 Mbps, 802.11G+ which is a proprietary system so you need the right cards and router to prove 104 Mbps or you need to look in to 802.11n draft 2 which will provide 200 - 300 Mbps.

Make sure you get cards which can receive the right sort of signal and provide them with higher dB(i) antennas if they need it, read a few reviews of the router beforehand to gauge it's wireless quality.

texasboy:
Had a good read through info on the web regarding 802.11n routers. They have had many problems over these ;
last couple of years. Many have come and gone. The main problem seems to be the interference they cause to other routers within range and their ability to use both range widths effectfully. The price range is also high.
cheers

Quantum:

--- Quote from: texasboy on April 19, 2009, 08:43:58 am ---Had a good read through info on the web regarding 802.11n routers. They have had many problems over these ;
last couple of years. Many have come and gone. The main problem seems to be the interference they cause to other routers within range and their ability to use both range widths effectfully. The price range is also high.
cheers

--- End quote ---

We got fairly standard 802.11n router for about £75, it has 2 omni-directional antennas and 1 focused antenna. Every review said it had fantastic wireless range, we don't even use it's n capability because the cards are a little too expensive atm, but it's good to know we'll be able to upgrade in the future. Before that we'd already upgraded the antennas on the PCs, they were £5, more than doubled the signal reception and were very versatile as they came off a wire from the PC and had a magnet base so we could stick them in a better receiving position (right between the back of a PC and the wall leads to poor signal quality).

Draft 2 of the 802.11n specification, which routers are generally on at the moment, means the router will search the bandwidth spectrum and try and avoid frequencies which interfere with other wireless settings. But as it stands if there are many wireless signals in the same area then the noise interferes with each other anyway unless your on a signal band 4 away from any of the others (pretty unlikely as there are 13 choices in Europe). Also, many companies provide firmware updates come out when the new drafts of standards come out so that they better comply and resolve such issues, I know the linksys routers (we have one) firmware are licensed in GPL and so people write custom firmware for them to improve particular settings.

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