Wireless cards

[sapi]

Can anyone name some good, reputable brands?

I'm getting a signal from under 10m away, through four or five walls and a kitchen. Badly. :lol:

Before going down the 'cable of death' route, I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions as to good brands for cards? MIMO cards are out of the question as my router (7300g) doesn't support them.

Currently writing this on a Netgear USB dongle that is giving up as I write; i'll probably have to free up a PCI slot this time :)

So, any ideas?

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Linkys

[Xiahou]

Linkys

I've had pretty good luck with Linksys too.

Another cheap fix you might want to try is slapping a bigger antenna on your WAP. I had some really unusual wireless range problems with my linksys router(I'm guessing due to interference), so I tried a pair of high gain antennae that I bought at Radioshack for about $20- they were significantly larger than the stock pair.

They really seemed to help make the difference. It wasn't a huge improvement in signal, but it was enough to keep reliable a connection (where it had been previously spotty/unreliable) a couple rooms over, where my BTV link PC is.
Also, angling them properly can help somewhat. Read this.

[Whacker]

Cheapo option 1: http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template/

Expensive option 2: http://www.amazon.com/SMC2532W-B-Eli.../dp/B000099671

You'll get reception on the moon with that card, believe me. I've used one before. Also make sure you have a good quality AP as well. There are some insanely high powered access points as well. See here for an example (I cannot vouch for quality): http://radiolabs.com/products/wirele...cess-point.php

[sapi]

*sees price and chokes

I think I might just go for the cat5 option

[Slug For A Butt]

Nothing wrong with CAT5 as long as you take the time to rip a few floorboards up.
I tried wireless and hated it, as did another couple of people I know. It seems OK if your house is made from plasterboard, but in little stone houses in the north of England it just seems to struggle (mind you, my sister has her router directly 1 room above her PC and her signal fluctuates, nothing but floorboards inbetween).
I spent an afternoon running cables in under the floor and guess what? It works flawlessly.
Sure the wireless is still OK when my wife wants to shop on ebay in the garden, but the two desktops won't ever be going back to wireless I dont think.
Give me a physical connection every time. (but I would say that being a telephone engineer.)

[Whacker]

Give me a physical connection every time. (but I would say that being a telephone engineer.)

You know my wife keeps looking at me funny when I tell her that it'd be cool to build our next house, and that I was thinking about running conduit in a few spots. Rock on, fellow telecom type nerd.

[Slug For A Butt]

Whacker, you are my kind of nerd.
New build, with conduits and draw wires in every room under the plaster and floors going to strategically placed blanking plates.
Ahh... heaven! You want speakers, PCs, phones, lights, power points, arials moving/installing... no problem.
Sad really, my wife plans the colour of the next room we decorate while I plan what is UNDER the plaster. Maybe I need a hobby.

[Husar]

I'm a cable lover as well, the wireless network in my parents' home shows similarly fluctuating "qualities" and I find it quite bad to be disconnected 1-5 times in an hour, sometimes more often. It may be good for big public places etc, where there are no walls obstructing it, but at home, I'd rather have some cables lying around(last time I visited my parents I simply plugged one of those 10m cables into the laptop because the WLAN connection was so horrible). And I'm not sure whether I'd want a really powerful access point for the same reason that I don't want to be in a microwave oven when it's turned on.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

The Netgear setup in my house is nothing to write home about. Sometimes (usually, even) it's fine. But then again, I had to wrestle with my receiver for a good ten minutes to pick up anything...

[Papewaio]

Nothing wrong with CAT5 as long as you take the time to rip a few floorboards up.
I tried wireless and hated it, as did another couple of people I know. It seems OK if your house is made from plasterboard, but in little stone houses in the north of England it just seems to struggle (mind you, my sister has her router directly 1 room above her PC and her signal fluctuates, nothing but floorboards inbetween).
I spent an afternoon running cables in under the floor and guess what? It works flawlessly.
Sure the wireless is still OK when my wife wants to shop on ebay in the garden, but the two desktops won't ever be going back to wireless I dont think.
Give me a physical connection every time. (but I would say that being a telephone engineer.)

I think wireless is improving, give it a few years and it will be fine.

I have a wireless router...ADSL2 and about 600m from the exchange.... but I still plug directly into it the router via USB port most of the time... the phone cable goes up the wall, across the ceiling and down behind a picture frame before splitting between router and phone... I'm not sure if the wife would approve of me putting it behind the wall... I would love to have a fully kitted out place... but I don't think being able to run cables under the floor with removeable floor tiles and air conditioning built for the PC and not the home will be seen as a great thing.

Yes I too am a Telephony Engineer.

[Whacker]

I have a wireless router...ADSL2 and about 600m from the exchange.... but I still plug directly into it the router via USB port most of the time... the phone cable goes up the wall, across the ceiling and down behind a picture frame before splitting between router and phone... I'm not sure if the wife would approve of me putting it behind the wall... I would love to have a fully kitted out place... but I don't think being able to run cables under the floor with removeable floor tiles and air conditioning built for the PC and not the home will be seen as a great thing.

Lots of fellow nerds itt. Not particularly fond of the idea of people banging away at my wireless network since I know how insanely easy it is. I was thinking about perhaps in this or the next house, mounting a wireless AP/antenna up in the attic at a centralized point in the house, in such a manner that the signal forms a rough cone of coverage that includes the house and maybe a bit outside or so, but not much beyond that. I haven't really researched this at all so I don't know if there's even any reasonably priced antennae that would fit the bill or if I'd run into problems mounting one facing directly down, but it still strikes me as a good idea for signal shaping.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Wireless will never be as good as hard wiring.

[LeftEyeNine]

sapi, did you try making up a reflector ?

[sapi]

Nope - but I bit the bullet and got some cat6

It's working perfectly now; I'll install the cable properly shortly

[Slug For A Butt]

Good man Sapi.
It takes a bit more work, but I think the results are worth it.