Wireless routers, A+G? (1 Viewer)

[PhillJones]

I'm looking into starting my wireless network. I was going to get this from netgear: Double 108 router . But then I noticed this: Double 108 A+G , which has a "fast lane" 802.11a channel on it. The website says that the a channel is faster due to the lack of interference and is suitable for video streaming and so on. I'm going to use the router for VNC control of my HTPC using my laptop and so, do I need the 'fast track' or is it just hype?

BTW, I live in an apartment building in boston, When I turn on my laptop, it goes hunting for wireless and hacks into whatever it can find before I turn it off. I can normally 'see' between 5 and 10 wireless networks, mostly undsecured of course. Presumably, all this microwave traffic and 2 mobile phones is going to cause interference. Should I spend the extra and access the relatively uncrowded 'a' band?

 

[SethH]

Well, the advantage to A is that I doubt anyone in your building has A hardware, so they wouldn't be hacking your network. The disadvantage is the cost. You would have to get a new A card for your laptop and an A adapter for your HTPC. I would stick with G. It has the same bandwidth, but is a more crowded spectrum. I doubt you would notice much performance difference at all.

 

[PhillJones]

Thanks Seth,

I think I'll go for the G and see if it does the job that I want it to do. If it doesn't, I'll take it back and swap it.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

The plain first-generation 11mbit variants work just fine for anything you want to do. The G variants are all backwards compatible to that too, btw.

G will give you same speed as A, but only if all your equipment is G. If you use any old B equipment, the whole network uses that regardless of what your other G gear can handle (ie, a choice has to be made, so it throttles back to the common denominator).

But as I said, 11mbit is plenty for remote control (10k/sec is enough for remote control...) and even video streaming works just fine on 11mbit.