Wireless network advice
 

Hi everyone,

Thought I would use the expertise here to get some advice. I'm a fairly educated computer user who is by no means an expert. I am moving later this month to a two-family house from my 1-bedroom. My folks are going to live on the second floor and I am going to live on the first with my wife. We are both using Road Runer cable internet connection and I am now wondering if we can save money by setting up our own wireless network.

I need advice on feasability, hardware (which cards, router are best, will I need a signal booster) and alternatives. Any advice would be welcome.

start with a Cable/DSL router like a Linksys, DLink, or SMC.

there are NIC (network interface cards) that can go into laptops or desktops as needed, but keep in mind that wifi will be slower than wired.

Isn't WiFi slower than wired just on network transfers and stuff?

I know for pings in games my wireless has been fantastic, but the router is in the same room as me. Distance does have a big impact on the speed of the wireless though.

Wireless can be either 54 megabit a second (802.1a/g), 11 megabit a second (802.11b). As long as you have a slower internet connection (mines 3 megabit) you won't have any bottle neck so you will notice no real difference being wired or wireless. for transferring files between computers on your network, a 54 megabit connection will run less than half as fast as a 100 megabit wired connection, and an 11 megabit connection will run about 5% of a 100 megabit wired (wireless has more overhead then 100 wired, so it is less than half). As for range, range has no impact on speed; interference does, the more interference, the slower the speed has to be for a good connection.

wireless spec is about 115 meters, so you should be just fine being a floor away, however, most antennas’ are not truly unidirectional, they form a donut shape around the antenna, so if the antenna is directly above or below the second computers antenna, it will get low or no signal. To fix this, either make sure they are not directly above one another, or angle the routers antenna at a 45 degree angle away from the second antenna.

You will also want to experiment with placement, inside of walls are lots of things that can block or reduce signal strength, it is easiest to guess and check good locations rather than mapping it all out.

just be sure to put some wireless protection. be sure to change the ssid, ipadd of the router, password and so on.

Please do note that all WiFi gear lists the radio data rate. Actual network througput is typicly half the radio rate.

just got mine up and running this week....Linksys with
speedbooster....work shop is 65 feet away and could not
get over 11 megabit...the problem is the water heater,
dryer, washing machine, and the refrig---all in a line between the shop and the router...(they don't like metal
or 2.4 mhz phones).

raised the router and moved the usb adapter and can now
get around 24 to 36 megabits....

the strange part is that I don't seem much difference between the two machines..(the other is running 100 meg)...I still have a 100 foot patch cable coming, because the wireless router can be wired or wireless or both...

Microsoft has some pretty good advice on installs....

I really like the Motorola WR850G router. It's fast, reliable, and hasn't given me one speck of trouble since I bought it. It's also got all the standard WEP security goodies as well as MAC filtering, which only allows the wireless devices that you specify to get access to the network.

I have no idea if you will need a signal booster - that depends entirely on the construction of the house and the distances involved. Keep in mind that only one of the computers needs to be wireless- the other should be wired since it'll be next to the router.

This means you can make a directional antenna (look up "cantenna" on google) if you need better signal. My guess is unless your house is freaking huge or someone did something weird like line the walls with reynold's wrap, you'll be fine with the out of the box equipment.

Your alternatives are:

1) run an actual wired cat5, cat5e or cat6 network. This will probably involve drilling a hole to get from 1st floor to 2nd floor, but if you're real clever you can probably avoid it. I once ran a cat5 cable through the central air vents. Note that if you do this you may need to use plenum rated cable to stay within fire codes. And it might just be flat out illegal, but then again, who's going to know ;)

2) they do have a system that networks computers through the home's electrical wiring.

It, however, is a pile of crap and is generally considerably slower than a modem. Stay away.