making pc wireless

[scooter]

Ok, i'm part of the old school and 'am happy with me pc hard wired. However, i do have a neighbour that wants to go wireless and i'm hoping you tech heads can help.

At the moment his broadband connection runs at 2.2mbs. (tiscali)

It is possible to get a set up that will run wireless at no less then 2.0mbs?

If so can it be done with a usb adaptor? or is ethernet card with arial the way to go?

The whole set up will be in the same room with only 20ft from the pc to the phone socket.


Can you give me some recommendations that will not break his bank.


Thanks.

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[Admin]

If you can get 2MB constant from Tiscali good luck!

The speed of your Internet connection is not directly relational to your network speed.

WIFI typically runs at 54MBPS, where as a LAN cable 100MBPS, but unless you are dumping down huge files all the time WIFI works just fine.

You dont say if he has a PC or Laptop, for me the USB ones are OK but liable to being pulled out or broken, if its a PC I would put an internal PCI WIFI card so its all hidden inside.

20 feet in the same room is a no-brainer, will be fine.

I used a Netgear router with Tiscali with no issues, about £50 or less these days.

What you missed is the security set up, going WIFI without security is like leaving your front door open. Make sure you enable security soon after you set it up.

 

[Johnp]

Admin makes a very good point. The connection speed your adsl modem/router runs at can bear little or no relation to the actual speed you get from your connection.

Try a speedcheck at thinkbroadband.com if any of you suspect you are being short changed by your ISP, try it at 7am in the morning and later at 6pm in the evening - and you see what you get. Look out for ISPs that use channel shaping and forced caching - the test at Thinkbroadband will help, but if you are into using file sharing - then the majority of the 'cheap ISPs' including Tiscali really throttle the traffic back on the commonly used ports.

Also these days lots of people have wireless networks and your neighbours network could be operating on the same frequency this can really cause problems - I use a package called 'netstumbler' to do site surveys to ensure coverage in the desired areas and no conflict on the channel being used.

Hope this helps.


JohnP

 

[scooter]

Thank you for the info guys. Very much appreciated. It is a desktop pc he is running.

I have had a quick look on amazon and see you can get a Net Gear 54mbs router with firewall and equivalent pci card for £55 in total.

lamer questions follow:
I have BT business broadband at home and just ran speedcheck at thinkbroadband.com. It states the upstream is running at approx 0.75 mbs and downstream at 6.75mbs.

On my desktop icon it states it is running at a constant 1.1mbs.

What does all this mean?
How can downstream register 6.75 when the max I can get from BT is 1.1???
and does this mean a 54mbs router is really a 0.54mbs router?

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