Wired or Wireless Ethernet. Your thoughts please (1 Viewer)

[Shane Martin]

I'm going to buy a ethernet router for my 3 pc's so I can share my DSL Connection to the internet which only has 1 ip address. I was going to buy a Wired Ethernet router but the wireless ones' interest me somewhat.

In order for me to go the wireless route I would need to buy 2 wireless cards($49 bucks approx), and 1 wireless card for the laptop($99 approximate). I realize the expense is more but I like the convienence of going the wireless route especially with the laptop.

Some questions if I might:

1. Can you share both wired and wireless ethernet cards on the wireless routers? This would be ideal as I could save a few bucks and only get 2 instead of 3 wireless cards.

2. Is there any difference between wired and wireless as far as setup goes?

3. Is anyone using this route and do they play internet games successfully?

If this helps here is my setup in my house.

If anyone has any suggestions to use for these routers and cards post your thoughts on that too.

Main pc(athlon 1.33 etc)

2ndary PC(p2 266)

Pentium 1ghz laptop(wifes pc)

 

[Jesse Leonard]

A wireless router would be the best for your situation. It is just like a "regular" ethernet router except that it has wireless capabilities built in. I have the Linksys wireless router. It has four ethernet ports on the back which allow you to hook four computers to it via ethernet. The wirelss portion of it talks to the wireless card in my laptop. The router seamlessly combines all these connections, allowing each one to access the internet and access each other. The router also assings IP address to all of the computers so I can share my DSL line that has only one IP address.

So, you would only need a wireless card for your laptop. The other computers can be connected by ethernet (unless it is too difficult to run the ethernet cable, then you could use wireless cards in them also). The setup is the same for wireless and ethernet (once you load the drivers for your wireless card).

Like I mentioned, I am using Linksys products and haven't had any problems. It is awesome to have a wireless card in the laptop. You can just pick it up and head anywhere in the house with no cables tying you down!

One thing to note: If you have never used a router before, you may run into a few problems at first. It will by default, not allow traffic through diffrent ports. You will have to deal with this wether you go wireless or not. You will either have to learn which ports need opened or just open them all for the time needed. There are many sites out there that will tell you which ports need opened for which games/applications.

 

[DonRoeber]

Like Shane said, you can use Wireless and Wired together, without any problems. The wireless part of the router is essentially a "bridge" to the wired part of the router, which conencts to the rest of the network. The router handles what network requests go to the LAN, and what goes to the internet.

I use a Netgear 314RT router and an Apple Airport wireless base station together without any problems. Integrated units, while not my preference, should be even easier to setup.

Wireless is great, and I've got nothing but great things to say about it. But for gaming, its probably not the best. You're sharing an 11mbit data pipe with whoever else happens to be using the wireless network. So if there are a bunch of people using the wireless network, then it can slow down quickly. Thats where having a wired connection is more helpful.. you don't have to share it. But in your case, you'll only have one or two machines using the wireless network, and your bottleneck will be your internet connection, so you really won't see much perfomance degregation when running games on the wireless network.

 

[Chris Wittry]

I have the Linksys wired/wireless router and it's awesome. My laptop and 1 desktop are on the wireless and the other 3 computers are on the wired. They all work seamlessly and the only time I notice a slowdown is when I'm transferring a large amount (>500MB) worth of files at a time from a wireless connection to a wired one (or vice versa).
One thing to note, you said you could get cards for your desktop for $49 and if you can, please tell me where you're getting them from, but in my experience I've found that you have to buy the $99 (approx) PC card, then use a $49 (approx) PCI adapter to put it into the desktop. Or you could use the new USB adapters, $99 (approx).

 

[Danny R]

but in my experience I've found that you have to buy the $99 (approx) PC card, then use a $49 (approx) PCI adapter to put it into the desktop
Linksys sells an Link Removed. No need to spend the extra money on an adaptor.

 

[Charlie_M]

Same with D-Link, although they call it an adapter--seems kind of misleading. D-Link also has a product at a price similar to the Linksys gateway, but with three ports and a print server.
I'm just getting into wireless networking too--ordered the D-Link and am upgrading the old 56k connection to fixed-point wireless broadband next week!
I've found the forums over at Ars Technica to be very helpful.
Good luck!

 

[brian a]

A quick word of caution:

The security on the wireless systems is very poor. If that's a concern for you, I'd stay away from them.

brianca...

 

[Joseph S]

I've got an Airport card but don't yet need wireless as I've wired my apartment rooms for access and have zero need for a laptop at the time. I'll need to hit the home depot in a few years though.
However, I donated my old 8600 w/ G3 upgrade to my parents two years ago and installed a cable modem and Linksys router. Well, now they're re-doing the house since all the kiddies left. They started asking about what the electrician would need to do to accomodate the setup. Since it would have included a complete cable wiring on the opposite side of the house, I decided to set them up with a Wireless LAN for Christmas.
1 Linksys Wireless/Router combo ($148)
1 PCI Skyline (Farralon) Adapter Card ($158)
1 PCMCIA Skyline Wireless Card (included w/PCI)
I'll sell off the old Linksys on Ebay and hopefully get the price within $240. That's not a bad deal, considering the Airport I'll someday buy for myself would run about $40 more than that.

The security on the wireless systems is very poor. If that's a concern for you, I'd stay away from them.

If you live in an apartment or condo I can see this as an issue, but most folks don't have to worry about a hacker parking in the driveway or camping out in the backyard.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

Wireless: 11 mbit or less depending on distances

Wired: 100mbit

 

[brian a]

I can pick up my neighboor's easily from the house, and I can get mine from down the street. Don't think someone has to be in your backyard to pick up your signal. Down the street with a laptop is fine.

brianca.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

The current generation of wireless networking is very insecure. However, if you get an access point (or router) you should be able to specify what MAC addresses (ie what physical cards, every network card has their own specific MAC address) can use that access point. That will prevent people from using you as a free ISP at least...

That leaves eavesdropping, something that you cannot prevent easily. You have to set up an encrypted virtual private network and run that vpn link over the wireless network.

The built-in encryption in wireless network cards has already been cracked so it's just a protection against casual eavesdropping of your traffic.

 

[Ed Faver]

For gaming, I've found wired to be a better solution. My son & I play Diablo II on our G4 & G3 and the wire makes a huge difference over trying to play it while he's on the desktop & I've got the iBook on the front porch. Wired means no freezes, no frame-rate drops.

 

[Steve_Ch]

>>Wireless: 11 mbit or less depending on distances
Wired: 100mbit

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

True enough. Wired is for any situation where you care about transfer speeds of the network (and/or security) and wireless is for laptops.

Just don't fall into the trap that many companies have and leave your wireless connection without encryption and without any sort of security, that's just stupidly lazy.

For most of us, eavesdropping on the traffic isn't a huge deal but definitely at least limit what MAC addresses are allowed to talk to the access point.

 

[Matt Stryker]

What about Wireless routers such as the SMC Barricade? They provide 128 bit WEP encryption...has that been cracked?

Just wondering since I ordered one for a coworkers mountain retreat. She wanted a wireless setup.

 

[DonRoeber]

Matt,

I could be wrong, but I think the 128 bit encryption has been cracked as well. But its not really as much of a concern as you'd think. If you're going to be doing super-critical-security stuff, you've probably got encryption already in the application or operating system level. And its also only relevant if someone is sitting in your driveway, sniffing your traffic.

At home, I run my wireless network by limiting the MAC addresses allowed to connect to it to our two Airport cards. I don't use WEP. I've taken steps to ensure that my password is never transmitted in the clear whether I'm on a wired or wireless network.

 

[Steve_Ch]

>>I could be wrong, but I think the 128 bit encryption has been cracked as well.>But its not really as much of a concern as you'd think. If you're going to be doing super-critical-security stuff>At home, I run my wireless network by limiting the MAC addresses allowed to connect to it to our two Airport cards.