What router to use that will work for my Acer 5100

I was thinking of getting a new router for my 22 Acer laptops in my apt. One of them is only 2 years old so I'm sure it has N caapabilities, but my Acer 5100 I don't think does. I wasn't aware that a laptop had to be compatible with a N router before it will work. Anyway, I went to the Properties of my wireless network adapter and clicked Advanced/Wireless Mode and to the little box on the right it has 11b and 11g which I take to mean that this is as good as it is going to get for Router choice. Right now I am using a WRT54g Linksys that I bought with the old Acer 5100. Am I right to assume that any N router would be a waste of money for my home network?

 

Not really- "n" routers work woth both 802.11g ans 802.11n devices when wireless is set to mixed mode.
It does have a slight impact on the performance of "n" devices but nothing major.

 

So what you are saying then is with the 5100 having b & g under wireless mode that it will still work as "mixed" on a "N" router. Should I get a dual band or can it be strictly an N?

 

If none of your Wi-Fi cards support 802.11n on 5GHz and you're not planning on replacing the card(s) there's no point spending money on a dual band router.
And yes- 802.11b/g card will work with "m" router set to mixed mode.

 

What is a wi-fi card on a laptop? I thought everything like that on laptops was integrated and unable to replace. My Acer 8943g says it has AdHoc 11n and 802.11bPreamble. That is my main laptop, so maybe I should just save my money and keep running the WRT54g?

 

Wi-Fi cards are upgadeable.
These are mini-PCI on (very) old units or mini PCI Express on recent ones.
You can easily replace such a card- it's like replacing a RAM stick + connecting the antennas.

 

I went to youtube and took a look at how to do this. I didn't have a clue about these cards. I also went to my 8943g to see if it had anything about it and I have a Snip that I am loading for you to look at and tell me anything more you can although I don't think this laptop has a card or if it does it isn't as easily findable as the one on the video. I also looked at the 5100 and was unable to see anything there either that identifies a wi-fi card.
It does have one. I'll be dammed! I guess you damn near have to google all this stuff if you want to be sure.
The 8943g has one too according to the video I just watched. Ver easy to change if you ask me. I still don't think I have to though for the 8943g.

 

@ julio99


So you've found Wi-Fi cards on both notebooks? If not- which one is still a problem?

 

No problem. I think if I keep dropping connections after changing the driver on the 8943g I installed a driver from Qualcomm, but when I reformatted my laptop 2 weeks ago I had the Qualcomm backed up with DoubleDriver and I went to reinstall the drivers and the Qualcomm didn't want to install due to the driver not being digitally signed. I got it installed anyway, but now I'm starting to doubt the safety of doing that. Should I roll it back or is it mostly BS about unsigned drivers?

 

It doesn't matter if it's digitally signed or not but there may be a different problem with this driver. Check other drivers from here.

 

I am missing your point on what trouble there is or could be. I am using Qualcom Atheros AR5B93 10.0.0.222. What is wrong with this? I don't see anything that jumps out at me and now you have my curiosity up.

 

I'm using the same Wi-Fi card although driver version 10.0.0.227 at this point and it's working fine. I don't remember anymore if I had issues with 10.0.0.222

EDIT: I just noticed there's 10.0.0.234 and upgraded to it.

 

I was following your replies and I was just about to try 227 when I noticed that you bumped yours up to 234, so I looked for it too and noticed that it says it's for Win8 and Win 7 but most of the downloads I found for 234 were all saying Win8 so I downloaded it anyway as it said win7-Win8 x32-x64 and I installed it and so far it's ok. Do you run 7 or 8?

 

I run Win 7. There were two folders in the archive so it really has separate drivers for Win 7 and Win 8.

 

http://www.necacom.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6973:atheros-ar5xxx9xxxx-wireless-lan-drivers-version-1000234&catid=54:atheros&Itemid=72


Do you still have the archive? If so could you send me the link so I can see if I got the same one? I don't think mine had a win 7 separate driver. Here is the link to the one I used I'm almost sure but I am sure they all have 8 inside the archive.

 

Here is is.

 

Well I goot the link. Thanks. I saw that same page,(Station Drivers) on my travels for the proper driver. Anyway, I uninstalled the one I had, (234) and restarted and it just reinstalled the same one I had and said that I had already had the best one for the job, but I think the size between these 2 are a bit off but what else can I do without making a mess? I am definitely keeping the one you sent and if the opportunity arises it will be installed. Thank you for all your help my friend. I see by the little Maple Leaf banner that you are Canuck. I am from Niagara. Born here.

 

Have you had any trouble with the 34? I went back down to 27 by uninstalling. Is there a way to install the drivers that don't have an installer. Like these ones that we were using. There is no setup so I was wondering the best way to install from scratch.

 

You can install via device manager/ choose your wifi card/ choose properties/ choose driver tab and click on "update driver" and then navigate to the folder where the driver is located and choose appropriate inf file.

 

I got that part. What happened was I lost the driver totally and didn't have one under the adapters for wireless. I rebooted and it usually installs after that. It didn't the first time. I went to Acers site and downloaded the one that they have for this machine and when I installed it I went to look after reboot and the Qualcom was back. Very strange driver behavior. I noticed that those drivers have "setup information" next to a couple of the lines and if you right click either line you have "install" at the top of the context menu. The question is though, which one would you install?
I can't add an attachment to show you what I mean. It was like these 2 at the bottom. You can right click either one and get install in the context menu but which one is the actual driver to install. This just avoids doing it from Device Manager if you lose your wireless altogether.

 

To be brutally honest I never bothered to check which inf was for what even though I installed this way multiple times and was kinda curious what was the difference.
You can always use "search for driver in this location" and point it to a folder where drivers and infs are- Windows will choose the correct one.

I promise I will check those infs one day- but not today

I'm using 234 but I can't say for sure if it's problem-free. It looks like it is, but I seem to have a problem at the other end- I transfer so much files that I manage to lock up the router or Wi-Fi on the router every two days or so (and it's a good mid-range router, not some piece of cheese).

I'm waiting for more 802.11ac routers and more importantly Wi-Fi cards and will probably upgrade.

 

I was talking with a tech friend of mine at Future Shop and he said it was about time I got rid of that old WRT54g and I thought it was too, so I grabbed a Linksy's N600 EA2700 Dual Band router. Took it home set it up and so far so good. I put back in the 10.0.0.234 and it even has a roll back this time in case something goes wrong. I find that half the time the roll back setting is kind of greyed out if you know what I mean. So far so good. I saw a few of those AC routers you mentioned. The one from Linksys ran about 129.00 dollars. I know nothing about those yet, so I'll do a wait and see approach on those. This should do me for a while anyway, although you never know the way technology rolls these days. Thanx partner!

 

OK- I can confirm 234 is indeed troublesome. It seems to cause problem when notebook is on battery power in my case (in power saving Windows profile so the Wi-Fi card is in power saving mode too).
Yesterday it lost Internet connectivity (which was later restored manually) and today it lost connection and after a minute or two Windows presented me with a BSOD blaming it on ATHRX.sys which is Atheros wireless driver.

I'm back to 227.

 

]Wow, a blue screen. I guess it don't get any more troublesome than that,eh? I still have 234 running, but 1 more hiccup and back we go. 221 was no trouble at all for me. I might go back that far if I get any more trouble from the ones we upgraded to. You had that 234 in when we first started talking about this if I remember right. What do you suppose started the trouble? It usually starts for me by dropped connections. Sorry, I just realized you told me what caused the problem. Power saving mode. I usually don't upgrade for no reason and like I said I don't think I should have moved from 221, but I suppose that is spileed milk.
Just thought this little article was right up our alley.

http://www.howtogeek.com/98465/htg-e...-your-drivers/

 

Well, the frequency at which you update your drivers really depends on personal taste. I tend to update my wireless drivers every few months, but Intel has a very good track record at providing wireless drivers that don't break anything. Atheros/Qualcomm on the other hand are rather hit or miss when it comes to drivers in my experience and I didn't update the wireless drivers for the ones I had as often as I do now for my Intel wireless adapters.

For myself, I go with the update everything approach, but for family members, I go by if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

I tend to upgrade networking drivers often- these are very important for be both performance-wise (wireless access to NAS) and because security improvements/fixes.

I would never advise anyone to stick to an old WiFi driver because it works fine. I've seem such security bugs that it's simply irresponsible to stick to old drivers. The best example being Broadcom driver that allowed others to connect to your notebook via ad-hoc connection if they were close enough. The driver that fixed it was the first ever Broadcom Wi-Fi driver to be available through Windows Update (although it wouldn't install automatically).

Unfortunately Wi-Fi drivers suck- Intel is credited with making good Wi-Fi cards and drivers- none of which is true. They made a lot of poor Wi-Fi cards- everything up to Intel 5300 was worthless and following this only 6200 and 6300 were genuinely good- 6230 and others with BT are troublesome.

Same thing goes for drivers- they (Intel) do provide regular updates and fix minor issues but they sometimes leave serious bugs untouched for months. Currently they are trying to establish why certain 6230 cards get terrible throughput. They blame it on notebook manufacturers but every once in a while they release a driver that fixes this particular issue- apparently by mistake since Intel claims they cannot duplicate the error themselves.


Anyway- long story short- while I don't care about sound drivers too much or similar non-essential drivers- Wi-Fi is something I would recommend do update (or at least attempt).

 

With the 10.0.0.227 in my machine right now, what would be a good time to start looking for a different driver. Do you just keep your eye on things or do you have some kind of plan you go by? I was at the Acer drivers site and they have drivers from Atheros, Broadcom and Intel that are all for this laptop. Does that mean any one of the 3 would work for this laptop or does Acer prefer that you stick to the brand that is in the machine when you buy it? Those 3 drivers have never changed since I've owned this laptop. For that matter, I don't think any of the drivers have changed on their site since I've owned it. Is that standard for companies to put a set of drivers on their web page and expect the consumer to find their updates?

 

Acer cuts cost by not providing updates. Proper deployment of a driver requires testing and in case driver causes any issues on its own or clashes with another driver (classic case in point Wi-FI drivers causing sound to skip for a second) they are responsible for fixing it.

Basically testing every notebook with a set of drivers and providing support costs money and not doing it doesn't make the notebook any worse but makes it cheaper overall. So yeah- it's Acer policy- test initial set of drivers, make sure they work fine and only provide critical updates if necessary.

As for the set of Wi-Fi drivers- some notebooks are provided with Broadcom, some with Intel and some with Atheros. With mass production level they achieved it's safer not to depend on one hardware manufacturer. You got Atheros therefore you're only interested in Atheros drivers.

As for updates- station drivers is a good website to keep an eye on.
As a rule you can skip small driver updates (as in 10.0.0. 227 to 10.0.0. 234) unless you're waiting for them to get rid of a specific bug.

You should always go with major updates like from 9. 1.0.314 to 9. 2.0.105 or especially like from 9.2.0.105 to 10.0.0.221

 

That sounds like a great way of keeping track of a good update. I will keep that site in mind. I keep your emails archived in a folder. The ones with a link or special info or instructions, so I don't have to keep bothering you. Thanks so much for all the help in the last week. Very much appreciated.