3 story building, need a router with a strong signal. Should I go N?

[frybread]

Due to constraints, router will be on the top floor. P2P girls are on the 3rd floor, I'll be gaming on the 2nd floor, minor web-use on the first floor.

Are N routers worth it at this point, and would dual band really work with all of these people's adapters (which I assume are all G)?

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[bliko]

Roughly how many people are going to be using the wireless network?

Perhaps you may need more than one access point.... or perhaps more powerfull antenae... it really depends on the site.

Dual-band is worth it...however you can only take advantage of it if your wireless clients support 5GHz signals.

N is a definate improvement over g, however don't get your hopes up too much... in some cases i've seen it only giving ~2x improvement over previous g setups... ofcourse this varies from case to case again.

Do you currently have a wireless router? How well does that faire on each floor?

 

[frybread]

About 5 people will be using the network. Most of them will be using g adapaters. But I'd gladly get an N adapter for my PC!

Current wireless router seems to be doing alright (wrt54g) getting -71dBm 1 floor away. I don't know if that's good or bad, actually.

 

[bliko]

Do any of the people have connection issues at the moment? ... from what you've said I don't get the impression that you have any problems with your current setup.

Upgrading to wireless n would give improved preformance...however since most of what you're doing seems to be web-based... you will only get as much internet speed as your net connection allows....so the highest improvements would likely be seen in file transfers to/from other computers.

For gaming you may want to look into configuring qos on your router...such that p2p guys have low priority and gaming has high priority over the wan.

On your router this can be easily done with dd-wrt:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.ph..._V24_build_do_I_flash_onto_my_Broadcom_router

If you got a dual band router you could use the 5GHz frequency for your gaming rig exclusively...which means none of the other users would slow down your connection to the router. In addition to this you could configure qos as i mentioned above to give yourself priority over the wan connection.


Although...for the lowest latency it's best to use a wired connection to your router.

 

[jdabbs]

I saw your thread on the TR forums. Are you still looking at dual-band routers?

 

[frybread]

Thanks guys. Your suggestions and this article helped me make up my mind:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30542/228/1/3/

I think I'll stick with my WRT54G and really try it out for awhile. If by the time I decide I don't like it, maybe N prices will have dropped.