Fire

I have a cable connection and i want to switch to wireless. What would be a good router to switch too without lossing much or any speed?

jesbax

going wireless you loss some speed but not much. here is a site with wireless router
http://www.pcwarehouse.com/pcw/dept.asp?dept%5Fid=110

Fire

is 108 mbs fast?

ahajv4life

That, i believe, its the latest and greatest on the market, "extreme g" as some call it. So ya, that's fast.

jesbax

yes that is very fast can't go wrong with that.
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Praetor

Its fast however a few points:
1. The native speed is stil 54Mbits, 108Mbits (what they advertise) is due to driver trickery and compression (where they always assume 2:1 compression)
2. If you are using 54Mbits from 802.11g then your speed will (a) like all wireless, be variable and (b) be carrying baggage because of the requirement for compatability with 802.11b.

Here's a breakdown of the IEEE802.11 line:
802.11a -- circa 1999, 5Ghz, initially 6Mbit but very shortly after upgraded to 54Mbit and currently in 72mbit and greater speeds
802.11b -- circa 1999, 2.4Ghz, 11mbit
802.11b -- revised 2001, 2.4Ghz, 11mbit, greater line stability (as a byproduct of CCK)
802.11c -- circa 1999, a protocol developed to stabilize multi-point bridging operations
802.11d -- circa 2001, 2.4Ghz, 11Mbit, in all respects, identical to 802.11b-2001 but with a lot of MAC fine tuning (for legal reasons). The 802.11d supprts 5Ghz transmissions however this is dependent on the implementation.
802.11e -- circa 2002, MAC address tuning (for performance rather than compliance like 802.11d)
802.11f -- circa 2003, a step up from 802.11c to improve access point connectivity
802.11g -- circa 2003, a messy one, if you are sharing with 802.11b users (i.e., using DSSS as opposed to "exclusive 802.11g mode" which uses OFDM and thus has more reliable performance)
802.11h -- circa 2003 being revised, transition from WEP to AES

Now that that's done, "extreme g" is a bunch of marketing mumbo jumbo with no technical backing -- very GOOD marketing mumbo jumbo, but marketing mumbo jumbo nonetheless. Now to answer the question, there are two types of implementations of 802.11g (note the wording):
A - 802.11g in an environment with 802.11b and other 802.11g users
B - 802.11g in an environment with exclusively 802.11g users
In situation A, your performance will be significantly less than that for situation B.. why? Because of the overhead that all 802.11g devices must have in order to be compatible with 802.11b. Why? because when you have a 802.11b user on the network, all the 802.11g users must transmit RTS/CTS packets (which is excessive overhead), depending on your device you might or might not be able to see the count for these packets. OFDM (exclusive 802.11g) doesnt have these packets but since 802.11b uses DSSS and doesnt support OFDM all devices must transmit those packets in order to avoid packet collisions. Because of the transition of OFDM (in order to improve performance to 54mbit) the IEEE forced the change to add the RTS/CTS packets to the 802.11g specification (this happened ~mid-2003 so devices made before then are freeof this limitation but only work reliably in exclusive-802.11g environments).

Wellll..... the thing about 802.11b,d,g is that it runs of the 2.4Ghz spectrum which puts it in direct conflict with florescent lights (not so much phones and cpus, just the lights which operate in the same ranges). Also, you're still gonna be susceptible to interferrence.jamming as a result of concrete etc. Ive had the luxury of playing with a significant portion of the 802.11 line and the uni here and if you've got a solid 802.11g setup running in exclusive mode (i.e., no support for 802.11b users -- thats centrino people btw) and a nice solid WAP then you'll be fine. Even then, with a direct line of sight to the WAP (<7 feet) I was more than able to play in the 20-30Mbit range (with a T3 as the backbone). Naturally if you're runnning a home network with a (id assume) much less powerful landline or infrastructure -- dont expect anything even remotely in the ballpark of the spec'd speed -- which is 54Mbit regardless of what it says on the box or the sticker or the manufacturer's website. Devices that say 108Mbit, 125Mbit etc do so using driver optimizations and assume 2-1 compression --- which damn near never happens.

All that technical juice said, 802.11g is still good for most people runnign your basic home network or whatnot. Of course if you want to run it as a replacement for a home LAN, getting the infrastucutre is much more important than the specifics of the card.

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YourDreamSystem

watch out for 802.11 n!!! reports of up to 324kbps!

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