Wireless LAN

D

dsinclair

Registered
Has anybody gone wireless in their homes and have a recommendation?

I am moving to a condo in three weeks and really don't want to install Cat5 drops all over the place. I would rather set up my LAN as a wireless system.

Compared to my rock solid 100bt setup in my present house - what am I likely going to face working with wireless in a three story condo?

Also - since I have to wire for cable (never installed there before) should I have a cable drop routed to the primary computer and use a cable modem/ access point/ wired hub there and then buy cards for the other 4 machines - OR should I set up an access point at the cable demark and use wireless cards in all the machines.

Yikes! I kno NUTTIN' about this technology.

What brands are mid range?
 
RE: Wireless LAN

I have a linksys system. I only use it for the purpose of extending my cable modem to 2 other computers.... It works great for this purpose. Set up was very very easy.
 
RE: Wireless LAN

Run the CAT5, but if you do go Wireless put it on the middle floor.
 
RE: Wireless LAN

Wireless has gotten cheap. In my new house I may just use it instead of a cat-5 cable plant, and I even have a crawlspace to wire in.
I have one 802.11b access point in my old house and a card in my work laptop. I run an 802.11b network at work and we use a mixture of 3com, Netgear, Lucent and Apple equipment, it works fine. I think I'll just get Wireless G cards for the desktops instead of cabling the new place. I'll run them off of the 802.11b access point until I find a great deal on a Wireless G replacement. My cable modem probably will be the limiting factor for anything other than file transfers between my machines, so there would be little to gain from upgrading to G in the near term. Wireless G gear should be backwardly compatible with 802.11b and the cards are $70 for either the PCI or PC (PCMCIA) version ($50 on ebay.) The Linksys or D-link router/access point is only $130 too. Since I already have an access point for $200 I can avoid all that wiring, sounds like a deal. Wireless was too expensive when I wired the house I rent but now it's pretty viable.

If you do go wireless you'll want to enable WEP encryption to keep your neighbors off of it.

Let me know if you have any questions, I might be able to help.
-Joel.

EDIT: There is a rebate on D-Link Wireless G gear, the router is only $100 after rebate.
 
RE: Wireless LAN

Hello!

We run in the house a mix of cat-5 and wireless lan. The wireless part is all US Robotics and really almost always runs at the promised 22Mbps. I just got an email from the for a firmware update which supposedly brings the speed up to 54Mbps!

The accesspoint/router is a nice little unit, includes DSL router, dial-up modem backup connection, printserver and some other neat features, and I saw it lately as low as $69 with mail in rebate.

I am really pleased with the system, as the router is in the basement (with concrete walls) and I have absolutely no problems getting great connections outside on my deck, the lawn or the second level.

Hope that helped,
Marcus.
 
RE: Wireless LAN

If you're doing any heavy gaming you might consider running the cable, wireless adds a bit of extra latency.

Otherwise.. works pretty well.. 802.11b is really cheap, a is a little more, and the new but not complete official g standard (supports a and b) stuff is coming out at pretty low prices (good for home, but wouldn't suggest those for business yet since the standard isn't set in stone).

If you are mainly looking to share a internet connection, I'd do 802.11b.. We have had beautiful luck with Dlink wireless hardware and recommend it highly. We can supply you with a whole setup if you're interested as well, I imagine we can compete with the etailers on that stuff. Tell us what you're looking to do and we can hook you up :).

If you do source it elsewhere, make sure to enable the WEP security and properly set it up. Some brands will also allow for automatic acquisition of the WEP key - turn that crap off, any XP machine will be able to grab your key making it useless to use in the first place.

That about covers it I think :).

Thanks,

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RE: Wireless LAN

How do you guys get 100 mbps on your lan. I was running the linksys befsr41 and was getting around 10 even though it says 100 and then I changed over to the cisco ubr-924 and it got worse. I am running all cat5e through out the house.

Wireless is funny but don't walk past the router with a 900mhz phone - it will disconnect your from your lan.
 
RE: Wireless LAN

I'm running an SMC Barricade ($50 at Outpost after rebate) and the Orinocco Gold card ($52 at ecost.com)

I love it. Don't want to go back. We tested at work the SMC router with Linksys, Microsoft and the Orinoco card won, hands down (about 15' farther usable, across open ground)

The Linksys with the same setup was the same on card lenght, but they were all about 10' shorter.

I've also used the Cisco stuff, pretty cool, but not worth the $$$

Scott
 
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