Spec me and my dad a wireless adapter

[Reaper 392]

We are having internet problems at the moment and one of the solutions may mean moving the router downstairs. Since my mum wont be happy with several cat5 cables trailing down the stairs a wireless connection would be the only solution and neither of our PCs can connect to the internet wirelessly in any way, so if anyone can recommend a good wireless adapter for both of our PCs that would be fantastic.

For my computer it would have to be either a USB adapter or a PCIe card because, while my motherboard does have a PCI slot, it is right next to the fans of my graphics card and my case has poor enough airflow as it is. For my dad's computer PCI, PCIe or USB would be fine.

I don't know the make/model of router that we were given as a replacement in an attempt to fix our problems, but I can get that for you tomorrow (today) if you need it.

 

[bremen1874]

Have you considered Powerline adapters?

If you want to stick to wireless are you just after cheap and cheerful 2.4GHz 150Mbps wireless-N, or something more exotic? Sadly the simple days of just choosing between a/b/g have gone.

 

[bledd]

Another option is buy a switch and run one cable up the stairs to it.

Or just conceal the cables really well.

Do it when she's out

 

[Reaper 392]

Sadly we don't have powerline adapters, although the switch + single cable might be a good way around things, since the cable that goes from downstairs up to the router would just be replaced with the big ethernet cable we have.

As for wireless cards, all I would need it for is connecting to the router securely, so presumably something pretty basic would be fine. However, our house seems to be a very good insulator of wireless signals, so we would need to make sure the range was OK

 

[FatRakoon]

I myself am utterly torn when it comes to networking.

I have a mental problem and a bit of a hoarder and so I have both extended my house for a Lan room, plus converted the attic into a PC room, I have a silly huge network consisting of gigabit, 3 different makes of homeplug with different speeds, and wireless too.

I have added and added to it over the years with as little money as possible, but one day I intend on simply redoing the entire lot with one huge network rather than lots of little bodge jobs,

Anyway, the original one was done with the phone line splitting so we had aphone in the kitchen, and one in the living room. The living room also had the router.

I then had an ethernet cable going from the living room up to the attic. I had both the phone cable and the ethernet cable hidden by using trunking. It is absolutely invisible to be fair, or at least once you paint it the same colour as the walls, its camouflaged enough so you dont notice it.

Similarly in both my sons and daughters bedrooms, I am using homeplugs and the cables are simply going along the skirting boards, this time I did not use any trunking, but instead simply used bridge nails ( staples ) the cable is thin enough to simply go along the skirting without you really noticing it... Again, once you plop a coat of paint on it, its pretty much invisible.

 

[bledd]

Why bother with the homeplugs, just get a central 8/16/24 port switch. Far less electricity used and a lower cost (no need to buy homeplugs)

 

[Reaper 392]

Another option is buy a switch and run one cable up the stairs to it.

Or just conceal the cables really well.

Do it when she's out

Thank you very much for suggesting a switch, everything seems to be working wonderfully now, much to the delight of my dad. Whether it will cure the internet dropping out problem I don't know, but the main reason that we got it was so that when the engineer comes round he cant moan at our cabling being the problem. Also, once we get rid of the old cables it will mean we don't have any more cables than we had before and I still get to use a wired connection