worth buying 802.11n wireless?

fitzer002

802.11n modems are being sold for around €130 yet eircom offered me 802.11b for €90. Seems like I would be paying alot for old technology. Is there any current benefit in buying 802.11n . would it even work on eircoms 3 mb lines?

paulm17781

fitzer002 wrote:

802.11n modems are being sold for around €130 yet eircom offered me 802.11b for €90. Seems like I would be paying alot for old technology. Is there any current benefit in buying 802.11n . would it even work on eircoms 3 mb lines?

You would have to get an 'n' adapter for your PC to use it. As long as the 'n' router supports b/g too there is probably no harm in getting it. It will work with a 3Mb line no bother.

fitzer002

Thanks for that.

Here is the 2 routers i was looking at... what you think of them? I can't tell the diff between the two but they are different prices

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Netgear_RangeMax_Wireless_Router_WNR834B/version-1.asp

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Netgear_RangeMax_Next_Generation_802.11n_Wireless_Router_DG834N/version-1.asp

pizzahead77

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Netgear_RangeMax_Wireless_Router_WNR834B/version-1.asp is a Wireless Router only (ie you need an existing broadband modem to plug into it)

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Netgear_RangeMax_Next_Generation_802.11n_Wireless_Router_DG834N/version-1.asp is a Wireless Router and Modem (so you don't need another modem to plug this into.

dub45

Actually Peats have an offer on this model http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Netgear_RangeMax_Next_Generation_802.11n_Wireless_Router_DG834N/version-1.asp

complete with laptop card for 99 euros at the moment. Its pretty unbeatable at that price.

http://www.peats.com/cgi-bin/test_new/catalog.cgi?view_product=1&id=21705

How did you Eircom come to offer you a 'b' model anyways? I would have thought that at this stage they would be virtually extinct.

fitzer002

yeah i really hope i heard her wrong on the b thing , perhaps she forgot the "g"!

Thanks for the peats suggestion... saved a fair bit of money there.

dub45

fitzer002 wrote:

yeah i really hope i heard her wrong on the b thing , perhaps she forgot the "g"!

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.

In fairness to Eircom or indeed any other isp you really should make sure of the facts before making a claim in public like that against them. There is more than enough real ammunition out there to castigate isps without making iffy claims about them.

watty

Not worth buying "n" yet. even "b" (11Mbps) is just quite fast enough. For 54G or 108Mimo, or 125 Mimo or N you need all the cleints to support that as well. I.e. if you WiFi phone & Laptop are 802.11g they will work at 11Mbps on 802.11b air point and 54 Mbps on 802.11g, 108Mbps MIMO, 125Mbps MIMO and 802.11n

Unless your dsl is faster than 3Mbps or you have a lot on your home network, even 802.11g is marginal improvement over 802.11b. Even with a 11g WiFi, only ONE device running 11b forces all the 11g devices to 11b mode.

The 802.11n is so new, that your Laptop/Phone is unlikely to support it and run instead at 802.11g.

The "n" may also have incompatibilities etc.. I'd not bother with it for another year or unless you have a 1/2 dozen client devices that support it and 20Mbps Internet ...

kaizersoze

I got one of these to match my new laptop which has wireless N built in.
https://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=337363
They are on offer this week for E93 + shipping.

Wireless range is alot better than the Eircom Netopia and line stats have made a big improvement. SNR Margin went from 9db to 24db and crc errors are gone. Web pages seem to load quicker (although could be my imagination:) ) and transfer speeds across wireless are better.

watty

the 11n has nothing to do with your dsl SNR. Either line has improved, or the Netopia is rubbish or the two boxes calculate it different.
The web pages loading quicker could be better NAT & DNS. I switch from using the WiFi as Wifi & Firewall/Router to just WiFi and a separate Dual PIII 600MHz Linux box running ClarkConnect and got a big speedup on pages loading. "raw" download speed is the same.

rc28

watty wrote:

the 11n has nothing to do with your dsl SNR. Either line has improved, or the Netopia is rubbish or the two boxes calculate it different.
The web pages loading quicker could be better NAT & DNS. I switch from using the WiFi as Wifi & Firewall/Router to just WiFi and a separate Dual PIII 600MHz Linux box running ClarkConnect and got a big speedup on pages loading. "raw" download speed is the same.

The netopia is rubbish though so I'm not surprised he's getting much better snr figures. I changed to the netopia 2247nwg from the 3347nwg and the snr figures went down to 7.00 from 28.50!

Wheels

I have the Belkin N Router and I'm constantly rebooting the damn thing.

kaizersoze

watty wrote:

the 11n has nothing to do with your dsl SNR.

Never said it did. I was referring to the DSL modem side of the D-link.

dub45

Wheels wrote:

I have the Belkin N Router and I'm constantly rebooting the damn thing.

Belkin have a pretty dire reputation on here for what its worth:rolleyes:

Have you tried updating the firmware and all the usual stuff?

Cabaal

moving to wireless