Wireless network upgrade - (people who know about this stuff...)

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hi,

I have a wireless network in my house, but I’m still using wireless b. I have a Linksys router (BEFW1154) and a network card for my older laptop. Will upgrading to a wireless g network make the signal stronger through walls?

It works well, but b is so four years or so ago. I’d like to upgrade, but if it won’t work better though walls I’ll stick to wireless b.

2

You won’t see any kind of performance improvement, as far as walls and other obstacles go, because the 802.11g standard operates on the same frequency band as the 802.11b standard (2.4GHz).

I haven’t looked at the wireless routers on the market lately (I’m still using my Linksys, as well), but I would guess that the 802.11g models are becoming more common. If you have the opportunity, I would recommend switching over to 802.11g, but only because it offers a little more bandwidth to work with.

If your current 802.11b router isn’t showing any signs of fritzing out, though, I would just stick with it.
LilShieste

3

Thanks! I was also wondering about he wireless n stuff I saw yesterday and thought maybe the g stuff was going to be dirt cheap now.
They say it has like 12x the range, but nothing about strength through walls, which is the only area I really would like to see increased performance.

4

Yeah, I’ve been out of the loop lately on some of this hardware stuff (I’m more focused on the software side of things, heh), so I had forgotten about the upcoming “n” standard. I’m excited to see that it’s slated to go into effect starting next year. Devices that support that new standard will likely start out fairly expensive, but I definitely think it’s the way to go (and, as you mentioned, this should help in driving down the prices of their “g” counterparts). Thanks for bringing this up.

The operating frequency of radio waves is really the main thing that will affect signal strength through walls, etc. Another thing that will affect signal strength is interference with other devices operating within the same frequency band (e.g., other wireless routers, or cordless phones). It looks like the 802.11n standard might support 5GHz frequencies as well as 2.4GHz, so that should help in some ways.
LilShieste

5

The problem is that the n standard hasn’t been finalized and won’t be for another couple of years. That means that any router or access point claiming to be n compliant may well have to be upgraded or have the firmware flashed when the standard is finalized. You’re probably not going to see significant price drops on g device for a while yet.

6

The only difference between 802.11-b and 802.11-g is that the g standard is capable of communicating at 54 Mbs while b is only capable of communicating at 11 Mbs.