going wireless

[Kingofpain]

whats the cheapest wireless solution for a 3 computer household? looking for a simple wireless network to share files and internet between pcs using xp as cheap as possible...

[arbitor]

Buy a wireless router and then three pci cars, about 100 quid

[killie99]

don't expect to get very fast transfers if moving large amounts of data betrween pc's using wireless. If you're going to be moving large amounts of data around the only sensible solution is wired.

[Kingofpain]

not too bothered about speed or quality, but is there no cheap wireless routers around? more worried about price.

[jimbouk]

If your internet is near one of the computers then a wireless router and two wireless cards (use wired for the third).

It isn't going to be fast as killie99 says, but unless you can drill holes through walls/take up carpets to lay cables neatly then it'll have to do.

Stick to 'g' rather than splashing out for 'draft-n' wireless spec. Are you on cable or adsl? I'm sure people will throw recomendations at you once they know exactly what you need. Stick to one brand would be the only other advice atm.

[Kingofpain]

cable, can u recommend any cheap wireless pci cards and routers and what is the diffrence between g/draft-n?

like i said the speed is of no importance

[nimbu]

hey mate where in the world are you based? If UK, check out the following bits from scan

LN16927
Dlink DI-524 Wireless Broadband Router (54Mbps) with 4 port Switch & VPN (Cable/NTL) £33.89
LN17029
Dlink DWL-G510 54Mbps Wireless PCI Adapter £16.22

Though be warned D-link can be hit and miss. Some people lovem (like me) and other will hate them. Ive been running D-link hardware in my house for about 3 years roughly and have had no major issues.

[CooperXS]

I would suggest Lynksis as good quality brand.

3xwireless pci adapters - 25 quid
Wireless broadband router - 35 quid

Total 75 quid

Reference prices taken from ocuk. And I'm sure you could find these hardware cheaper - ocuk not the best prices there is.

[mrk]

Linksys/Netgear are the ones of choice, I had Belkin the first time I converted the house to Wifi and if I had not returned it and got a Linksys setup I would have hated WIFI like some people do for poor quality!

I had Linksys for 4 years as I was on NTL Cable BB but now am on Sky ADSL and have a Netgear DG834GT router with the Liinksys wifi pci cards and everything runs as smooth as it did with good reception and signal strength.

[Spud1]

erk see i'm going to confuse you even more now

If you want a quality system then avoid linksys like the plague - they may be owned by Cisco (one of the most highly regarded networking companies in the world) but they really do turn out some cheap rubbish. Almost every router I have had off them has overheated, and they tend to have really rubbish modems in them.

Your not worried about price/performance though, and want to go as cheap as possible, right?

In that case it doesnt matter what company you go for, linksys, d-link, mentor..anything will do. So a quick look around a single site for the cheapest gives you something like this:

Linksys WRT54GC Compact Wireless-G Broadband Router/4-Port Switch (£35.24)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...116&subcat=730

Linksys WMP54G Wireless-G PCI Adapter (£17.61 each)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...116&subcat=220

total: £88.07

You can get all this much cheaper though from your local PC shop - they will likely have a no-name brand like Mentor which often have cards for about £10 and routers for £20...making it about £50. Its probably cheaper from Scan also, but they only ship via CityLink so you would be taking a huge risk of your order actually not turning up..

If on the other hand you want quality then go for a netgear solution, but this will cost you around £100 for the router, and £30 per card.

the main difference that you need to know about between all the standards (a/b/g/n) is the speed - if your not worried about speed then go for any which support b or g, they are the most common and are plenty fast enough.

[mrk]

Some models of Linksys are bad yes, they HAD a bad range of models which were not software upgradable to something like DDWRT or OpenWRT, they got so much bad press because of it that later models were back to normal.

I have had Linksys WAG200G and the WRT54G v2 and they were amazing for stability and wireless quality.

The only downside is the stock firmware does not have much administrative control like the Netgear routers have (such as IP reservations and multiple port forward instances instead of just 10 as foud on the Linksys.

Do your research and you will be able to buy a good Linksys model because there are many good ones out there and only a few bad ones.

[Kingofpain]

thanks for all your input i will keep these notes in mind when buying wired is starting to sound so much cheaper but wiring the cables is such a pain in the ass!