My house has two cable lines and im paying $100 a month. Ive been thinking about setting up a wireless network but im scared the speeds will be terrible. With a 802.11G wireless network, what kind of upload and download speeds can I expect?
Depends on your ISP and the speeds you get in your area. The router probably won't have much bearing on it since the transfer speed between stations will usually be more than what your ISP speed is. might want to check out www.dslreports.com to find your ISP speed in your area
I meant, I have two roadrunner lines and im paying $100 a month ($50 each). By having a wireless network in my home, I would reduce the cost from $100 to $50 a month since i would be using one cable modem/line instead of two. I do not know much about wireless networking and im scared the download speeds will be terrible. Im also worried about the reliability of the connection and any unforseen problems.
Wireless Rocks At my apartment, my cheapo router gets 150kbps max on downloads. At my parents' house, my laptop was getting 500kbps downloading. Their router is midprice. When it comes to reliability etc, I think it's worth it. Wireless is in man...airports, resorts, Universities and companies worldwide are going wireless.
I just set up an 802.11g network last week. My laptop running off the wireless router (at 45% signal strength) has no real noticable slowdown in download speed.
One cable modem gets you about 2-6 mbit down. Wireless is between 11 and 54 mbit. As long as you have good signal, you shouldn't see any slowdown. BTW, don't rent a wireless router from your cable provider. You can get a decent wireless router for less than 100 bucks, and sometimes less than 50. They're super easy to set up. Also, I don't recommend using wireless on desktop machines. Most wireless routers come with switches built into the back to run ethernet cables.
Wireless network speeds out of a 802.11g router on a full connection strength is atleast 54 mbps , (you can get some up to 108 mbps) but if you connect it to a connection that gets only 1.5 mbps (definition of broadband) your connection max will get 1.5 mbps (theoretically), but transfers between computers connected locally (through the router wired/wireless) will get the higher speeds. If you have two cable internet line running into your house you have two modems...right? If you wanted to use those you could get a dual-WAN load-balancing (two-internet connection) router which will utylise both connections through one central point increasing you d/l and u/l speeds. But once again that is with two connections.... You shouldn't have dependancies with the same company / infrastructure if you're worried, because chances are (IMO) if one connection is out, they both are. You can have a wired-network and don't need two connections...if you get a router it will (following is simplified) take the input connection and make it availible to the output connections in addition to interconnection all computers (plug modem into the input and plug the computers into the out put and they will be connectd to the internet). The wireless router / access point does the same and usually also has wired ports.
It sounds to me like you have two cable connections for two computers and want to use the wireless router for a home network. Is that right? If so here are a couple of things to think about: If you can create a home network you should not notice any speed hits from either computer unless you are simultainiously downloading large files. Most web surfing is burst traffic and not continuous traffic. Second, wireless routers are convenient but if you have a lot of walls in your house you may be disapointed with their performance. If you can wire your house with twisted pair (run the cables through your attic) and connect all the runs to a normal (non-wired) router/switch you will be much happier. Especially if you just want to connect the second computer to the first computers cable connection. Wireless access points can be a security risk if you don't lock them down properly. If you leave them wide open you risk (at the least) someone surfing the internet on your connection (slowing you down) to someone hacking into your pc and stealing information (not to mention someone could surf for child p*rn through your connection). I have a wireless access point (802.11b) and the one place that we use it the most is the one place where the signal sucks the most. So, a friend of mine and I ran twisted pair from my office into the living room and the den and now we just use the wires. Much faster and much more reliable.
It's so good, the cable connection that I piggy bank on (i.e. connecting to a router next door) when I'm home from school (my parents don't have cable modem) is fantastic. Just get the router.
why is this considered crappy? If they wanted, they could limit I.P. addresses and keep him off, but most probably they never even notice that he is on. There is probably never even a drop off in their download speeds. plus, it isn't costing his neighbors any money.
It may be more than "crappy" it may actually be illigal. What's being described is the same as tapping into your neighbors cable tv or sattelite feed without their consent. Not to mention that it is most certainly against the terms of service contract should the neighbor give consent.
and lord knows that the war on illegal viewing of cable and stealing of bandwidth is right behind our war on drugs.
Yeah I guess it's bad, but it doesn't hurt the neighbors (I only surf) and it's only when I'm back home which is like 2 days out of a semester.
