Hey all,

I've avoided the whole wireless thing for a while, just because... well I didn't want to deal with it. Now that I'm actually looking at jumping in, I have absolutely no idea what the heck Wireless G versus Super G versus bubkiss is.

So, I'm curious what the best wireless out there is currently. Staples is going to have the <a href="http://staples.shoplocal.com/staples/default.aspx?action=detail&flashbrowse=y&storeid=2278482&rapid=240745&pagenumber=2&listingid=-2095559987">NetGear Super G</a> router on sale for ~$50 before rebate during their President's Day sale, is this a good one?

All I'm going to be doing is VPN'ing into work from a laptop - maybe hooking up the TiVo. If I do XBox Live, it'll probably be wired, but I'm not 100% sure yet. Also, since I live in a house that's older than the dinosaurs, the walls are made out of plaster. The router will be homed on the 2nd floor - the living room is perpendicular on the first floor - figure about three or four walls between the two rooms - does this set up usually require a repeater?

Thanks all

I have a Linksys wireless router and have seen them to have pretty good range. I even installed one and a manufacturing facility I take care of. You should be able to go to the floor below you without much trouble with pretty much any wireless router I would think.

I am not sure about the Super G but you can't go wrong with standard 802.11 G.

Ah! I didn't know you could network a Tivo. That solves the one reason why I didn't have one. I didn't want a phone cord running across my house to it. Of course, I have DVR from my cable company is the other reason.

802.11g is the current standard (54 Mbps theoretical bandwidth). Various brands have their own proprietary standards that go above 54 Mbps (Super G, etc.), but you'll need a wireless adapter of the same brand to take advantage of it, so you can't get it with the adapters already built into laptops.

In my experience, the Netgear RangeMax access points have excellent range (even using a standard adapter on the other end), if you think that's going to be an issue. If you just want cheap and basic, Linksys will probably work for you.

I have a Linksys WRT54G V5, currently. Before this I had a Linksys WRT54G V2.2.

The difference between the two is flash memory and OS.
WRT54G V2.2 - 8meg flash and 16meg ram on an Linux platform.
WRT54G V5 - 2meg flash and 8meg ram running on a vxWorks platform.

If running on Linux is important to you, the V4 is still sold at some stores and runs off Linux. The Linux platform enables you to hack it with 3rd party firmware.

Known serial numbers (first 4 characters) vs versions / Chipsets:

CDF0 = WRT54G v1.0 / ADM6996L Chipset / 125Mhz CPU
CDF1 = WRT54G v1.0 / ADM6996L Chipset / 125Mhz CPU
CDF2 = WRT54G v1.1 / ADM6996L Chipset / 200Mhz CPU
CDF3 = WRT54G v1.1 / ADM6996L Chipset / 200Mhz CPU
CDF5 = WRT54G v2.0 / ADM6996L Chipset / 200Mhz CPU
CDF7 = WRT54G v2.2 / BCM5325EKQM Chipset / 200Mhz CPU
CDF8 = WRT54G v3.0 / BCM5325EKQM Chipset / 200Mhz CPU
CDF9 = WRT53G v3.1 / BCM5325EKQM Chipset / 200Mhz CPU
CDFA = WRT54G v4.0 / BCM5352E Chipset / 200Mhz CPU

CDFB = WRT54G v5.0 / BCM5352EKPB Chipset

People say to stay clear of the version 5, which I don't fully understand why. With the 2.2 I needed a range extender. With the 5 I have "Very Good" signal strength without a range extender. My router is located on the first floor of a duplex apt and my PC room is on the second floor. I do have central heat/air so there are tons of air ducts in my walls which hurt wireless proformance. On top of that my apt building has 240 apts making it a wireless hotspot. Yesterday, I was able to repatch WoW(360meg) in just under 4 mins.

I would though buy high gain antennas.

If you're only going to have basic wireless devices, like a laptop and one or two other items, wireless G is fine. If you plan on streaming video over your wireless network along side the rest of your devices it's not going to be enough bandwidth.

My network set up:
internet comes into the livingroom where my Cable TV is. My Wireless router is there. and my Media Center is connected by cable to the router. I have two wireless switches upstairs plus my laptop and a low use computer. For this, Wireless G is excellent. But, I also have an X-Box 360 streaming media from downstairs on it's own wirelss card. .11g is not enough for this set up.

I'm using a router with A and G. I can use the G side as much as I want without affecting the A side at all.

I personally like .11A better. It's the same speed as G, but uses a higher frequency. .11G uses the 2.4ghz band and .11A uses the 5mghz Band. So, A is less likely to be stepped on by other devices.

I use the Linksys WTR55AG (http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Product_C2&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1115416826028&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper)

I'm not a fan of Netgear hardware. I've had a few of their .11g wireless boards fail on me, SMS has been problematic as well. Linksys has been the most reliable for me.

If you plan on streaming video over your wireless network along side the rest of your devices it's not going to be enough bandwidthHow's that? Even the highest bandwidth HD signal is less than 20 Mbps; DVD quality averages around 4-8; and MPEG4 streams are even less than that. I stream captured video using Windows Media Encoder at a ridiculously high bit rate over wireless and there's plenty of bandwidth.

You might experience a little difficulty with HD streams if your connection is occasionally downgrading due to signal loss, but anything else should be smooth as silk unless your connection quality is terrible and you're downgrading to <10 Mbps.

For reference, this (http://www.netgear.com/products/details/WPN802.php) is the access point I use in two locations; I think Netgear makes a router version of it as well.

11G's theoretical max is 54mb, but it averages closer to 20MB and that's if you're in the same room. If you're upstairs accross the house the throughput is going to drop. My original set up was using a WRT54G router (G only) with my Xbox sharing the wireless switch my network uses. That way it was only a single .11g source (usually) no matter what I was doing on my PC. That was usually decent enough for just streaming live TV to the XBox, but there were days when it would just be problematic. Watching TV while playing online games and surfing was usually fine as well. But, if I needed to copy files from my downstairs server to my PC, Watching Video or live TV wasn't an option. You had two choices. Watch incredibly laggy video and have my files take hours to copy, or not watch TV/video and let the files copy at full speed.

The A/G router solves all the problems. I find the 5Ghz signal to be more reliable, and since it doesn't share the bandwidth of the 2.4ghz signal I can copy/surf/game to my hearts content without affecting the the Streaming media.

When I went to the A/G router I saw an immediate difference in streaming video, even when not using other wireless devices.

Two 54MB pipes are just better than one.

11G's theoretical max is 54mb, but it averages closer to 20MB and that's if you're in the same room. If you're upstairs accross the house the throughput is going to drop.It might be a difference in equipment and/or setup. Over my wireless network at home, using the access point I linked, I get 27.5 Mb/s actual bandwidth from system to system, or 50% of theoretical, which is about average. There is no drop in connection speed in any other room; the signal is even pretty strong outside.

If you need to be in the same room to get full speed, there is probably something wrong with your setup, or there is a lot of interference in the signal. Maybe try another channel. (Of course, I'm assuming you're using 802.11g, not a, which sucks.)

OK, so I'll look out for the Linksys and the Netgear.
Just for the record, the XBox 360 on a 50" plasma doing 1080i is boo-tee-full.