Wireless N Router

AyJay · 4 Apr 2010 at 23:15

Hey guys,

I'm fairly new to the networking board, so forgive me if this is a bit of a newby question;

I've just read tolien's sticky on networking - and came across something a bit weird. He claims that if you're with Virgin Media ( which I am ) who provide cable networking, you can only use the router provided? I was planning on upgrading to a Wireless N router ( I'm sitting two rooms away from the modem, so rubbish signal ) but if this is the case, what can I do? Cheers,

AJ

wij · 4 Apr 2010 at 23:39

Not sure where in the sticky it says anything like that.

What you want to make sure you're looking at though is a router advertised as being for cable i.e. one with an Ethernet port for its WAN interface that you plug the VM supplied cable modem into.

What you don't want to buy (obviously) is a ADSL router

What sort of walls / kit do you have at the moment, really unless you live in some sort of castle with solid thick walls a couple of rooms shouldn't really be an issue.

Higadeb · 5 Apr 2010 at 00:14

You do know that you'll only get the benefit of the increased range from wireless N if your computers all have wireless N card/adapters....

AyJay · 5 Apr 2010 at 09:06

wij said:
Not sure where in the sticky it says anything like that.

What you want to make sure you're looking at though is a router advertised as being for cable i.e. one with an Ethernet port for its WAN interface that you plug the VM supplied cable modem into.

What you don't want to buy (obviously) is a ADSL router

What sort of walls / kit do you have at the moment, really unless you live in some sort of castle with solid thick walls a couple of rooms shouldn't really be an issue.

I think we just have a pretty weak wireless router - again, its Belkin (I've grown to hate this company

), and I was looking for some lag-free online games, and just a generally stable internet connection.
So am I just getting mixed up with routers and modems? I can replace the router that they supplied (the Belkin) with a wireless N? I really need to brush up on my networking...

Higadeb said:
You do know that you'll only get the benefit of the increased range from wireless N if your computers all have wireless N card/adapters....

Yeah, I know. It might be a tight squeeze though for my new PC.

wij · 5 Apr 2010 at 09:38

Well Belkin are far from my favourite brand by a long way but before spending any money you can try a few basic tweaks to see if they make any difference.

First, get a wifi scanner. If you're on a PC netstumbler is pretty good. Let it do its thing and what you're interested in is the channels that any other Wifi networks in your area are set to use.

Channels 1, 6 and 11 are intermod free, so I would start out by changing your router to manually use the least congested frequency.

I'd then start to look at the positioning of the router + receiver at the PC. If you have an internal card for your computer there's not a lot you can do to probably move that, but the router you could try moving to make sure it's not in a corner on the floor for instance.

If none of that makes any apreciable difference then you might want to start looking at a new router. As mentioned above you're going to need a new adapter for your PC to ensure you get the best performance out of it. I would also look for a dual-band router and associated dongle/pci card. This means that you can run a network at 5Ghz as apposed to the more common 2.4Ghz frequency range. If you live in an area with a lot of wireless traffic this I've generally found can make a huge difference. For example in my house 11n over 2.4Ghz isn't much more use than a network running at 11g, however on the 5Ghz range it is significantly faster and more stable.

Another good alternative to the use of wireless might be to consider powerline adapters, you'd need a pair of these and half decent ones will set you back around £80, but that might well be a lot cheaper then a new router + wifi card and would certainly be a lot more reliable.