Definitely clueless..Please help!

[Orroborus]

Hey there.

First let me tell you that I am really NOT technically savvy. I mean I can follow instructions (I was able to connect a 2wire router to 3 laptops) but that's about it.

So my problem is, I have 4 laptops.
(1 Asus HD vision M50VMseries with 11abgn capabilies,
1 HP Pavilion Pc with probably 11abg,
1 Acer Aspire 5920 with 11abg,
and 1 old HP pc with probably 11ab capabilites.)

The Acer plays online games and needs lots of bandwidth,
the Asus downloads 700-800mb movies,
the HP pavilion downloads lots of music and video
and the old pc surfs the net.

I am in a 2400 sq foot home and all 4 laptops want to connect to a wireless router. 3 of which are either 1 story up or in the basement. This is a technical nightmare for me...

How can I do this? What router do I need? What setup do I do?
I have read your reviews and guidelines, and frankly, the more I read, the more confused I get... Please help me..

 

[thiggins]

Trying to do all that you want to do with one wireless router covering 2400 sq feet and 3 floors is probably going to be a stretch. Even draft 11n won't provide the kind of bandwidth you're looking for, especially if you have everything going at once.

I strongly suggest you put your downloaders on a wired connection. Or they are going mess up your gaming.

If you ask specific questions, I can be of more help.

 

[Orroborus]

Thanks for the reply.

I have been planning to have the gamer and/or the movie downloader wired to the router.
The thing I am really confused about is what router will I need to buy? I thought having a 11b/g will slow the network so buying a draft n would be useless. Also, in my previous home, I have set up the 11g 2wire to connect to the gamer on LAN while the 2 downloaders were wireless. This worked for the most part until the gamer complained of lags and high ping. So when we moved to the new house, I wanted to be able to provide for both the gamer and the downloaders. I am willing to set up in any way, just tell me how to do it.
Will I be able to connect them all in 1 modem? Can I do a piggyback or something?


Thank you so much!!

 

[thiggins]

Lag and/or high ping will always be a part of gaming via wireless. Many things can cause the throughput on a wireless connection to temporarily drop to virtually 0 for a few seconds. Draft 11n is actually worse than 11g and tends to have high throughput variation in addition to these "dropouts".

If you are going to have a busy WLAN with both draft 11n and 11g clients using continuous bandwidth (streaming, downloading), then you should have separate 11g and draft 11n routers.

 

[Orroborus]

I see.
Is this possible with a motorola SB5102 modem? I think there is only one wired connection possible.

If I were to go with two routers, which ones should I buy?
2400 sq ft home. Modem on main floor. 2 computers on 2nd floor
2 more computers in the basement. Mostly 1-2 rooms apart.
A couple of 2.4Ghz and 5.8Ghz wireless phones.

I have been planning to buy just the 11g router now then the n router when the final specs come up. Again, which ones are my best bet for performance and reliability.

 

[Orroborus]

I am opting for either the Linksys WRT 610N or the D-Link Xtreme N DIR-655. I don't know if these are the best choices for my situation. If anyone has any experience with these items, please don't hesitate to post about it.
I also saw a cheap Linksys WRT 610N on ebay for as low as 120 cad. Any thoughts on these?

 

[thiggins]

Is this possible with a motorola SB5102 modem? I think there is only one wired connection possible.
Read How To Convert a Wireless Router into an Access Point and How To Add an Access Point to a Wireless Router

If I were to go with two routers, which ones should I buy? 2400 sq ft home. Modem on main floor. 2 computers on 2nd floor
2 more computers in the basement. Mostly 1-2 rooms apart.
A couple of 2.4Ghz and 5.8Ghz wireless phones.

You can get most anything for an 11g router since the technology is well-developed. You just need to make sure that routing speed is higher than your Internet connection's. Use the Router Charts for that.

Locate the wireless routers as centrally as you can to give yourself the best chance of whole house coverage.

I recommend you get rid of the 2.4 and 5.8 GHz cordless phones and get Dect 6.0 phones. The current phones will interfere with your wireless network.

 

[Orroborus]

Thank you so much thiggins for all the time and effort you gave in answering me and these posts. I know it must be very tiresome to see the same question asked again and again. So I really appreciate what you are doing.

Unfortunately, my brother had already bought a router. It seems the family needed it bad and so took it upon himself to buy one. He chose a Linksys WRT410N which is still pretty good since it was one of my previous choices according to your wireless router chart. (I didn't know that the G routers were in the router chart under LAN & WAN, all I found was the wireless router chart for N routers)

Anyway, I will be contemplating on adding an access point if the range is not enough. Again, thank you for your patience.

 

[thiggins]

I think you mean WRT400N, not 410N.

The WRT54G2 is an 11g router. You can see other 11g routers in the Wireless Charts by selecting the Azimuth benchmarks.

 

[Orroborus]

No. I think I bought the Linksys WRT 410N. It is working pretty fine in the range I wanted. However, like you said. Lagging does occur. Occasional disconnection too but it seems to be working well. My family have been happy with it.
I really appreciate your help. I will see if I can help others here find their router as you helped me. Thanks again.

 

[thiggins]

No. I think I bought the Linksys WRT 410N.

I checked with Linksys. The WRT410N does not exist. The WRT400N does.