NICO Geek Squad, I need helping choosing a wireless router.

[Urabus GodofTraction]

Roommate just bought a Linksys E2000. It was about the easiest thing to set up I've ever played with. Oh, and it covers the whole house terrifically.

[audtatious]

G router does fine if you are just surfing the internet. I only have a 40Mb service.

Check out this page to see if your router is compatible. http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database

I had an issue with my LinkSys WRT54G when torrenting. What happened is that the NAT table was constantly at its limit. The refresh rate is a little too slow and the max connections is 512.

I flashed DDWRT sp24 mini to it and set the max connections to 2048. Fixed every single issue I ever had. There are a plethora of other options that you may be interested in, but it works right out of the gate if that's what you want...

yeah, I've limited connections to 200 or less via the torrent software and it still kills it. Otherwise it works great.

I'll look into the flash but have been considering an upgrade to N.

[Chaotic_Warlord]

Does your laptop have a Wireless N card?

I believe so, I pasted what it is into google and didn't come up with a whole lot on whether it's a N card or not, maybe you guys will have better luck since you might know where to look for the real complete specs, since the manufacturer doesn't give me much to work with on their site.

My laptop has this wireless card in it: Atheros AR5B91 Wireless Network Adapter

[audtatious]

"Any current one" doesn't include that. A G router is relatively archaic.

You can walk into pretty much any store and pick up a WRT54G right now. Easily one of the most commonly stocked routers in my experience. I'd say that qualifies as "current." And they have horrible lifespans.

Like others have said, N is really unnecessary much of the time. Unless you're doing large file transfers within the same wireless network, you're not going to see any real performance benefits over G. Which is why, despite being older, G hasn't gone away.

Correct. In my case I do transfer large files between my desktop and my HT system so in that case N+ would be beneficial. Otherwise, from a network perspective, wireless G is rated to 54Mbps which is faster than most home-based network connections.

[audtatious]

From my experience N Draft has a much longer range than G

Which is another consideration, signal degradation and response time. My wife's PC is on the 2nd floor and my router is in the basement. She connects at 54Mbps via wireless G but can only pull files at 1/2 the speed of my directly-connected system. If we assume N is stronger (we know it's wider) then there would be somewhat less of a data transfer delay due to slower response times.......maybe

[audtatious]

Does your laptop have a Wireless N card?

I believe so, I pasted what it is into google and didn't come up with a whole lot on whether it's a N card or not, maybe you guys will have better luck since you might know where to look for the real complete specs, since the manufacturer doesn't give me much to work with on their site.

My laptop has this wireless card in it: Atheros AR5B91 Wireless Network Adapter

From what I can tell it supports N but people have lots of problems getting it connected at that speed. I saw one thread where someone had to change some specific router setting to connect and work at N, otherwise just lots of complaints.

[PoorManQ45]

The Atheros AR5B91 supports dual band. 2.4GHz and 5GHz. If you can afford it look for a dual band router. There have been reviews showing less interference on the 5GHz band.

[Chaotic_Warlord]

Thanks for the input on my network card, I seriously couldn't find any info about it from the Atheros website. This is the router that I'm actually interested in...

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... eviewStart

Though this is the newest version, just looking for a good price on it...
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... &CatId=373

[PoorManQ45]

The 610N is not the successor to the 160N. It is the successor of the 600N. The 160N is the current model, being the successor of the 150N.

The 610N offers dual band 2.4/5GHz and a Gigabit switch.

If you want 2.4/5GHz I would recommend a refurbished netgear WNDR3300 which can be picked up for ~$30 on sale. If you also want Gigabit ethernet you can pick up a 8port 10/100/1000 switch for ~$30. That would be an excellent combination.

Throw DDWRT on it and you're golden