Hi
I am looking to buy a wireless router for my laptop to share the connection with the broadband on my PC, but am wondering which one is better for me? 54Mbps or 300Mbps? Am quite clueless when it comes to these technical details.
I will use the internet for browsing but mainly for playing online poker. Can anybody advise please?
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The 300Mbps will obviously be faster, but only if you laptop's wireless card can take advantage of the increased speed. Do you know the type of wireless card you have (i.e. 802.11 g or 802.11 n ) or the model?
If there is a not a substantial difference in price I'd go with the 300Mbps router to future proof your network. -
Frankly, just get a reliable wireless-g (54Mbps) router; my suggestion would be the WRT54GL. For your usage, you won't notice the speed difference between it and a 300Mbps router (wireless-n). With some 300Mbps routers you *might* notice a range boost, but unless you live in a huge house or have walls made of lead, that possible extra range will almost certainly be useless.
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Thanks, well, I don't have a wireless card on my laptop but the product I am looking to buy offers a USB dongle. I also live in a small flat.
Will the one with 54Mbps be good enough for playing online poker? -
Absolutely. 54Mbps is almost certainly much faster than your internet connection (the limiting factor here) and no online poker game that I've ever seen would stress anything but the slowest dial-up internet connections.
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Great! Thank you, I'll go with that one.
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CyberVisions Martian Notebook Overlord
I've recommended and installed N networks and devices for clients since they came out, and I have a Dual-Band N network myself. In every network I've setup, clients have seen an immediate increase in speed and signal quality. And the increased flexibility of Dual-Band that essentially gives you 2 networks in one is great for those systems that have dual purpose data requirements, such as media streaming and regular low-priority data flow (kids downloading MP3's, etc.).
It makes no difference what you're doing either - you'll see the speed increase just in regular browsing on the 'net or in online gaming. And range? Makes no difference, though further away is better as it gives you better signal at range.
Even if you get a system with only internal Wireless G capability, you can always get an N adapter - USB, card slot, or a media adapter for even better connection results since they use the system ethernet port as well as the radio connection. The key to getting the best performance out of an N network is to have both router and adapter matched - that is, both the same brand and standard.
If you want to stay in the Stone Age, go with Wireless G (54mbps max speed) or move into the real world with an N device (200mbps+). It is most certainly not "useless". -
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The OP lives in a small apartment with a non-spectacular internet connection. He will therefore not notice any range increase or speed boost going from G to N, only a lighter wallet. N has its place (I use it myself) but is definetly not needed, or even beneficial, to everyone. -
Unless you're going to be moving a lot of very, very large files around within your own subnetwork wirelessly (e.g., sending all 10,000 of Grandma's recipes for fruitcake from the wireless laptop in the kitchen to the wireless laptop in the .... well, you pick the location
), you're really not going to notice much benefit from 300Mbps over the 54Mbps of a wireless-g setup.
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If you win lot of money why not 300Mbps
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G or N will make no difference for net browsing or playing online poker. In fact a good G router will probably be better than a crappy N router due to signal reliability. N is only good for file transfers. Wont make much difference streaming either. G is fast enough for streams.
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blue68f100 Notebook Virtuoso
The biggest advantage of 11n is if you get a dual band freq one you can move up to the 5ghz and get away from the crowded 2.4ghz bandwidth. For this you need a dual band dual radio for best performance.
Adapter refers to the NB or pc wireless card. This can be of several configurations depending on what type slot it needs to plug in to.
As far as routers use the router chart at smallnetbuilders.com , There are not very many dual radio models to choose from. and even less slot cards. Your adapter will be a single radio, and that all you will need. Most go back to the mfg to see what will fit there nb and more important drivers. -
The equipment I'm familiar with is cross compatible. In other words, an N laptop still works on a G network (router) and a G laptop still works in an N environment.
I seem to recall some issues like maybe the entire network slows down to the speed of the slowest technology. If that's true, then putting a G notebook on an N network may slow down other N equipment to G speeds. But for a single computer that's irrelevant and I may be totally wrong about that anyway.
I would choose a notebook with an N card (and in fact, I just did) even if using with a G router. You might eventually upgrade the router. As others pointed out, this will not make a difference with browsing the Internet, but I have network file storage and this will allow me to edit pictures over the network.
HTH,
hank
edit: blue68f100 already provided better answers, but mistyped smallnetbuilders.com s/b smallnetbuilder.com (only one smallnetbuilder I guess.)
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54Mbps or 300Mbps?
Discussion in 'Networking and Wireless' started by flat39, Nov 24, 2008.