Wirelees noob advice

[Aston Martin]

Before we start it should be stated that I now dislike all my family.

My brother randomly walked into Comet and decided to buy himself a laptop, as you do.

... and so the fun begins.


The laptop is a Windows 7 with draft n, his pc is XP.

Everybody is saying that N is rubbish and should be avoided.
His modem at the minute is the very high quality Speedtouch 330, which is about as technologically advanced as an abacus.

So he needs a wireless router and a newer modem? (The pc will stay wired.)

He doesn't wanna spend more than £60 for the router.


I've never done any wireless networking, so will need help when we have the parts too.

Thanks.

[narf]

Don't worry about an 802.11n card, they're (supposed to, ymmv) be backwards compatible with 802.11a/b/g.
Even if you buy an 802.11n access point you can still force it to stick to 802.11a/b/g if you don't trust 802.11n.

If you want both a new modem and a new router, consider going for a combined device. Takes up less space, only one plug-in psu, potentially less power consumed, no compatibility issues.

Judging by "Speedtouch 330" I assume you need an ADSL modem?

I'm running a nifty Linksys device with a self-compiled OS (the default didn't allow console access...), so I'll quickly look up their current offer in that price bracket: http://www.linksysbycisco.com/UK/en/products/WAG54G2
Does ADSL2+ (backwards compatible), 802.11b/g (aka Wireless), 4x802.3 (aka Ethernet).
Price according to alternate.co.uk 55€.

You can have the same thing with 802.11n, but it'll cost considerably more (90ish€)

[Aston Martin]

Yeah a built in modem makes more sense.

Found the n version for £60.

Link


p.s. Wirelees? I fucked up

[PacketCollision]

I don't understand why you need to upgrade your network gear at all. If your current solution can do 802.11G and you don't routinely transfer huge files from another local machine via wifi, just stick with what you have. If he wants Draft-N speeds, get whatever router you want (I'd suggest something that runs Open/DD -WRT) and set it to act as a bridge doing only N. Otherwise the G devices will slow down the N device.

[Aston Martin]

^
At the minute he only has a wired broadband modem.

[narf]

Originally Posted by Aston Martin

Found the n version for £60.

Link

According to some of the user comments it's carp Most people rated it 4 or 5, but quite a lot (1/4) gave it 1 star saying it didn't work. No idea if that was something like a software issue that has been solved in later versions or not, so no idea if I'd recommend that.

The wrg54g2 gets less bad ratings

[PacketCollision]

If you don't care about N, get a WRT54GL and install Tomato on it. Best basic home router around.

[narf]

Originally Posted by PacketCollision

get a WRT54GL

Then you'd need an external modem though

[NooDle]

Originally Posted by PacketCollision

If you don't care about N, get a WRT54GL and install Tomato on it. Best basic home router around.

yay, I own the best basic home router around

[matt2000]

He really doesn't need anything more than basic. I had a WRT54GS that died after several years of use (no complaints, it was a solid router up to that point) and replaced it with the Netgear 108Mbps I currently have. I've never used the supposed extra speed of this router so I wouldn't expect to see a massive speed increase using N.

Can we get AM the title 'Wirelees noob' while we're here please?

[thevictor390]

What's wrong with your current modem? As long as it works, just hook it up to a router and you're good to go. Don't worry about N unless you need super-fast internal network speeds, your internet connection won't utilize a fraction of it.

[PacketCollision]

Originally Posted by matt2000

Can we get AM the title 'Wirelees noob' while we're here please?

Done.

Originally Posted by thevictor390

What's wrong with your current modem? As long as it works, just hook it up to a router and you're good to go. Don't worry about N unless you need super-fast internal network speeds, your internet connection won't utilize a fraction of it.

Agreed. Keep your modem and plug a WRT into it.

[Aston Martin]

Originally Posted by matt2000

Can we get AM the title 'Wirelees noob' while we're here please?

Originally Posted by PacketCollision

Done.

Ok i kinda deserve it.


p.s. WAG54G2 on order.

[PacketCollision]

Unfortunately the wrt54G2 will not run tomato or OpenWRT. Unless you happen to get an old version 1.0, it will not run dd-wrt either. Hopefully linksys' stock firmware is better that it used to be. Alternately, refuse shipment on the package and buy a WRT54GL.

[thevictor390]

There is absolutely no need for a 'wirelees noob" to mess with Tomato or DD-WRT. I'm sure it will be fine.

[PacketCollision]

Hopefully. I haven't used stock linksys firmware for a while, but it was crap when I last did (had to be rebooted all the time, random freezes), and one of my friends got a 160N about 6 months ago and had the same problems. Luckily we were able to cram DD on it, which of course solved the problem.

I recommend Tomato because it's what the Linksys firmware should have been. It's easy to use, beautiful, and completely stable. My WRT54GS hasn't rebooted since I installed it when I moved into my apartment in May.

[narf]

My almost-stock Linksys firmware works fine. All I changed was remove a couple of write-only logs and included a shell - worked fine before that as well.

[matt2000]

Yeah the stock firmware on the GS was fine too. Which reminds me that I need to get a new CAT5 cable, the one that connects my modem to my router has broken clips so my connection keeps dropping when the cable falls out.

[narf]

Originally Posted by matt2000

my connection keeps dropping when the cable falls out.

Yeah, removing the cable does cause that.

[PacketCollision]

Glad to hear their firmware is better nowadays. And yeah, loose cables can cause some minor packet loss issues.