Wired or Wireless?

Duffman

I know very little about networking, I'm trying to connect a laptop to a desktop and have some questions..

The first option is to set up a wired network... The laptop has a 100/Gigabit card so I'll need to buy a PCI net card and a crossover cable...

Are there any disadvantages to connecting 2 PCs with this cable instead of a hub?

Is there *any* point in setting up Gigabit... Surely 100 will do since the hard disks can't write that fast?


The second option is to set up an ad-hoc wireless network... The laptop card uses b stadard so this would be limited to 10...

Will I notice the difference between 10 and 100...? Again the hard disks aren't this fast?

Does an ad-hoc LAN have all the functionality of a LAN with router? Can I extend the range with pringles cans etc?

Thanks for help..

MrPinK

Originally posted by Duffman
Are there any disadvantages to connecting 2 PCs with this cable instead of a hub?

No, the only advantage a hub provides is extra connections.

Is there *any* point in setting up Gigabit

I'd like to say yes, but there's not really. The NIC will cost about 10 times as much. It'd be really nice to be able to say you have a gigabit network tho

Will I notice the difference between 10 and 100...? Again the hard disks aren't this fast?

You will notice the speed difference between 10 and 100. Remember that network speeds are in megabits, not megabytes.

Can I extend the range with pringles cans etc?

Yes, and it actually does work

Tom Dunne

Originally posted by MrPinK

Yes, and it actually does work [/B]

Whoa! Tell me more about the Pringles can thing!

Duffman

Thanks for the reply MrPink... What kind of transfer rates am I likely to get on 10? Just trying to decide if wireless is worth the speed tradeoff..

Capt'n Midnight

If you are linking more than three devices together - a switch will always provide greater bandwidth because any pair of devices can use private connections that don't intefer with any other pair.

Wireless 11Mb - this is the speed you get under ideal conditions - it can drop back to 1Mb if there is interference etc. - Note this is shared by all devices using the same frequency so no private connections. Also it's half duplex - you can send OR recieve - but with only two devices it would work out as 10Mb DATA in one direction and 1Mb handshaking and ACK's in the other.

With RF what matters is the SNR - signal to noise ratio. Reducing the noise can be more important than boosing the signal - direstional antennas reject most of the background noise as well as imporving the signal.

Wired connections are 99.999% reliable if setup properly - you will always get 100Mb in both directions (full duplex) if the hardware / OS supports - they are also much more resistant to eavesdropping..

As for Speeds
10Mb half duplex - 300KB per second (Windows overhead)

Look at www.irishwanorg/board www.dublinwan.org

MrPinK

Originally posted by tom dunne
Whoa! Tell me more about the Pringles can thing!

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/448

I've only seen it working (and working suprisingly well too) with 802.11b, but it's supposed to work fine for 802.11g. A pringles can isn't the ideal size tho, there are other designs using extra large coffee tins and such out there. Google 'cantenna'

CombatCow

Those tins that you get bottles of whisky in work aswell - only thing is that you'll have to drink a lotta whisky to make a few antennas


CombatCow