Absolutely no complaints with the present Netgear system which I have had in place for almost 2 years. Very reliable and with 2 laptops and another pc running on it, is more than sufficient. My question is. Are the latest routers worthwhile upgrading to? Is there much of an increase in speed (using broadband) and any recommendations.
cheers
Hmm, you're unlikely to see any increases in speeds when it comes to broadband usage. The typical broadband connection is 8mb/s | 0.5 mb/s, most wireless routers are 802.11g which is a maximum transfer rate of 54 mb/s, which is well above the needed 8, however most wireless connections rarely make this speed, but even under a weak connection you'll often find yourself getting more than 8. The only real time you need a faster connection is when you are transferring files from one computer to another, in which case the faster the better.
802.11g+ provides 108 mb/s but I think this is a proprietary standard and therefore some routers will support it and some won't, I don't think it's IEEE ratified. Some routers advertise themselves as 802.11n offering speeds of 300 mb/s+, now this is somewhat a con, as 802.11n has not be ratified by the IEEE, but rather, draft 1 and draft 2 have, however there will at least be a draft 3 before finalization. Companies employing this standard are causing some real problems, as in certain circumstances 802.11n can kill wireless networks running on 802.11g, b and a.
But in short, if it's to speed up broadband, it's likely unworth it.
