So, it is time to step up to the new millenium, only six years late. I must be improving.
It’s time to get off the 56k modem and speed up a little. Most likely this means DSL. This is for the home, without too many critical high speed needs, afterall. A T1 line would always be nice, but I don’t need to spend the money.
Along with this speed bump, it is time to connect the house dots. Specifically, two desktops that both need Internet access. Plus, my wife brings her laptop home from work which can access via wireless something to other if present (she thinks it is an ethernet card). This would make her life much easier as she deals with corporate clients in Europe and the west coast on a regular basis.
So, for you gear lovers, I’m looking at: WRT150N Wireless-N Home Router (Linksys, ~ $99 from Dell).
Questions:
Is this going to do it for me? Underkill, overkill?
Are there better solutions? Or is this pretty much spot on?
Thanks in advance.
Oh, and please don’t get too carried away with the jargon.
I’m sure the router you looked at is fine. One thing to consider, in the interest of consolidation and future growth, is to think about what else you might use a wireless router for. Would you ever use Vonage? Vonage has a Linksys wireless router for half the cost of the one from Dell that already has the integrated phone in it, along with 4 ports. So down the road if you wanted to hook up a Vonage adapter to your (other) router it would use one of your ports. Not a big deal, but something to consider.
Other than that I think your plan is a good one. I can’t imagine still being on 56K. Oh, and if you live in a populated area it would do you a lot of good to read up on setting up some security on your wireless router as soon as you install it.
http://www.newegg.com is usually the best. Also their user reviews of products are usually thorough and plentiful albeit a bit difficult to read at times.
Wire the house with Cat 5 cable , faster DSL – than wireless DSL . If you leave your net work open ( they will hack it in time ,even with a password ) the neighbors will be downloading Porn on your ISP . Been there .
We have as many turkeys running around the neighborhood as people. One of the reasons that I haven’t gone high speed before was that there wasn’t high speed available before, at least not DSL. For the record, I am not even sure that true DSL performance is available yet, here. A couple of companies are claiming to provide it. We shall see. A couple of years ago, though, we were still well over the 18,000 feet rule from a “main junction business” to get DSL service.
And yes, we are only 26.5 miles from Central Park as the crow flies. Strange world.
We are also only now getting decent cell phone coverage in the neighborhood and at the house. That also use to stop (reception) about a mile down the road or so. Privacy is not a real big problem around here.
I’ve seen Vonage commercials. I thought they were just another phone company. Is there something more to them worth investigating?
As for the second thread response, I agree ordinarily, this would be a Circuit City visit. But, we are in the process of getting a second, low cost desktop for daughter/family use. Dell has a decent dual core, 250 gig HD and 22 inch hi-def flat screen offer for $650 at the moment. Being lazy, I figure I would do it all in one order. Does that make a little more sense?
The only thing that bugs me about the system is that it is MS Vista, and everybody but everybody is warning me away from that and try and stick to XP. I have the XP disks for the current desktop from 2002. Is there any chance I can replace Vista with the older XP system? One bugaboo against it, is I understand that computer manufacturers aren’t providing CDs of the programs in all cases anymore. Could be a problem to reload programs that come with the machine. True, not true?
We might be doing some major remodeling next year. If so, I would definitely be going that route then. But, for now, wiring would be a major pain. On the plus side, there are no teenagers within 100 yards of our house. How far does wireless cover usually?
You may want to check out cnet.com for some research. It is a fabulous site. But some more of my .02 cents to cover some of your concerns:
Vonage is a phone company that uses the internet instead of telephone lines to carry calls.
Not saying that Dell is the greatest, but I think you would ALWAYS get a nicer\less expensive computer from Dell over a Circuit City type of retailer.
I use Vista and I much prefer it to xp. Be sure your new pc comes with at 1GB of memory (and I would strongly suggest 2GB of memory) and you will be fine. And I know that with Dell you can pay an extra $10 (or something) to get the OS disks whith your new pc.
I love having wi-fi at the house. You will find new uses for it that you didn’t anticipate when you set it up. I recently got a Roku soundbridge and I stream my entire music collection from my pc (upstairs) to my nice home theater surround speakers on the main floor. Same iTunes songlists, but MUCH nicer sound than crappy iPod speakers.
wireless router sounds fine. I have used that one and the netgear one, no problem.
I wuoldn’t worry too much about having a router with a specific vonage connection - who knows which VoIP provider you might want to use? It will only use a single port on your router.
I don’t think you will have any problem with people tapping into your wireless if they are that far away.
We might be doing some major remodeling next year. If so, I would definitely be going that route then. But, for now, wiring would be a major pain. On the plus side, there are no teenagers within 100 yards of our house. How far does wireless cover usually?
You may be fine , my neighbors all have wireless networks they over lap . You can turn down the power to basically the property line . I noticed a 2 -6 second delay after input --compared to a hard wired DSL connection ( the down load speeds are the same ). You end up away from a power source running your laptop batteries flat every 2 -4 hours .
The encryption security is much better now , before you could drive a street with aWIFI detector and read the network name /password . This has changed but I am still gun shy about broadcasting my online info into the neighborhood .
When I originally got DSL, I had an old desk top that was not wireless. When I got my new laptop, I was able to use the modem that the DSL company (Qwest) sent me as my router. This really sucked since my sister had given me a perfectly wonderful router for Christmas. The lesson here is that you may get all you need when you get the equipment for your DSL and it’s worth it to check first. As for Vista, I have it and have had only minor problems in converting data and programs. I wouldn’t be scared away by a new operating system unless you have a specific concern about Vista.
I have a Linksys G band wireless router, it has 4 “lan” connections on it. I think something like this is your best route. You can physically plug at least on of your PCs into it, as long as it is in the same room. Where will the PCs be located? topography of the house does matter.
Signals travel better slightly up than down, so put the router downstairs instead of up. If you have a big house and need full coverage you can get a signal repeater (there are hacks online to improve signal strength though).
Your signal radius will depend on the router and your house (thick walls etc). Regardless of the radius, you’ll want to set up your security properly. You should use WEP at least, consider WPA as well (standard security protocols, lots of simple to read instructions on setting them up). I’m weird, and am the only wireless user of my network, so I set it up so only my computer’s MAC address can use the network. Don’t broadcast your network ID, use a good password. Basic security protocols.
Your particular choice is evidently one step up from my G router. Not sure if you’ll need that with DSL, but it won’t hurt if you upgrade your connectivity in the next 1-3 years. I love Linksys. I’m on my second wireless router, the first one lasted 3 years. I’m on year 4 of my Linksys cable modem, which saves me from renting one (never rent the modem in my opinion, you can buy one for the price of 6 month’s rental). My local independent computer store said Linksys is the best in their opinion. They were all very dorky looking too.
And I don’t recommend ever rewiring the interior of your house, I prefer wireless only. It’s cheaper, the transmission rates are more than you need unless you are hosting at home (in which case you would want the T1).
Once you get your network set up, you can take the laptop outside and test your range for security reasons. Just at a minimum, use a password. That’ll stop 80% of anyone randomly using the network. If a super expert wants to hack you, they will.
When you order your DSL, it’s likely that your phone company or provider will bundle the connection with some sort of wireless router/gateway combo unit. Just buy that one, that way if you have issues they can support it. When I had mine installed, it was $80 for the wireless gateay, but then I got a $50 rebate. Came preconfigured, plugged it in, up in less than 5 mins.
I am also considering going wireless as we currently have an older wired Linksys router for our DSL connection both of which have worked flawlessly. Although I have not yet purchased one (will do so soon), I have read nothing but good things about the NetGear RangeMax Next Wireless-N Gigabit Edition (http://www.netgear.com/Products/RoutersandGateways/RangeMaxNEXTWirelessRoutersandGateways/WNR854T.aspx) which has 4 wireless gigabit ports but the downside is you will most likely need to also invest in Netgears Gigabit wireless NICs as well.
The wireless ports aren’t gigabit – those are the wired ports. The wireless ones are spec’d to go at 300mbit/s if you have the right wireless equipment.
You should definitely go with N, especially with broadband. The only problem is that N equipment tends not to be interoperable - the router and the wireless network adapters typically need to be the same brand to get maximum speed. You are probably better off wiring the house, but in the absence of that, you can still wire along the baseboard to/from the router to get maximum performance. In addition, if you’re going to wire the house, you would need to set up a switch as well as a router.
As for the PC, the $650 choice is almost never adequate. My 24" monitor cost more than that, and I have two of them. You should definitely go dual-core, gigabit networking, as much memory as you can afford. Hard drive space can be added later if you need it.
You have another option other than Dell - if you’re at all handy and enjoy challenges, you can build the PC yourself, and its probably 40-50% cheaper than Dell, in my experience. It probably takes about 4 hours of information gathering online to figure out how to do it, but its definitely worth it and sort of sets you up for life. For example, I have 2 24" Samsung monitors, a dual-core Intel CPU with over 1TB of storage, arranged in a 500GB RAID, for reliability, and a NVIDIA 8800GTS near top of line video card. That setup would cost at Dell around $5000. The parts, including monitors, would cost about $3200, probably less today. You add in about 8 hours of labor and you’ve got a topnotch machine that can do everything from real-time trading platform to kickass games and widescreen movie viewing. That said, that’s just an example - a lower caliber machine would obviously be cheaper, but this is just to give you a sense for the value you can get out of just a little bit of work.
Regarding network speeds, gigabit networking for internet use wouldn’t make much of a difference. Remember that many internet sites are sitting behind a T1 (1.5mbps) or maybe a DS-3 (45 mpbs). Even an OC-3 is “only” 155mbps. Your DSL isn’t going to approach gigabit speeds (1000mbps) – ever. Gigabit speeds could greatly enhance machine-to-machine communications on a LAN, if you are doing a huge backup or sharing massive files.
You’re right - gigabit is not particularly relevant for internet, but it helps a lot if you end up building out even a small network, which tends to happen regardless of whether you plan for it or not. Gigabit is just an easy way of future-proofing. The N is probably more important, as my experience with G suggests that whenever G does deteriorate, internet speeds do get affected.
