Which is best? - The answer depends on how flexible you need/want to be. You cannot beat wireless for the flexibility.
First about speed. Wired networks are faster than wireless, but wireless is catching up, nominally speaking. Wireless G is a nominal 54Mbps, but a more practical 20-25 Mbps. Some wireless manufacturers are advertising a nominal 108Mbps. Wired speed is 100Mbps. But all this speed is useless if you only browse the internet, where your broadband internet connection runs no faster than 1.5-3Mbps. Where the speed plays a role is if you expect to do significant file transfers (or gaming) amongst the PCs in your LAN. Then faster is better. Wired LANs are also more secure.
If you have no immediate plans for wireless, then wait. It is changing so rapidly a year from now it will all be different, and faster. If you really want to go wireless now, go woth G. But be advised that G equipment being sold now at year end low pricing will probably be replaced by the next geberation in a month or two. That's what happened a year ago.
A couple of things on speed. Wired is always better for gaming, unless you like to die a lot. There will always be a slight bit of latency in wireless so I like wired for gaming.
B vs G is for internal speeds of your Local Network only and is not affected by your ISP. More than likely, your top download speed is not greater than 3.0 Mbps so the 802.11b standard at 11 Mbps is plenty sufficient. However, if you are sharing large files across a wireless LAN, then go 802.11g.
Wired at 100 Mbps or 1000Mbps (Gigabit) would still be my preference.
_Paladin
795 Posts
0
December 28th, 2003 16:00
4boysdad,
Which is best? - The answer depends on how flexible you need/want to be. You cannot beat wireless for the flexibility.
First about speed. Wired networks are faster than wireless, but wireless is catching up, nominally speaking. Wireless G is a nominal 54Mbps, but a more practical 20-25 Mbps. Some wireless manufacturers are advertising a nominal 108Mbps. Wired speed is 100Mbps. But all this speed is useless if you only browse the internet, where your broadband internet connection runs no faster than 1.5-3Mbps. Where the speed plays a role is if you expect to do significant file transfers (or gaming) amongst the PCs in your LAN. Then faster is better. Wired LANs are also more secure.
If you have no immediate plans for wireless, then wait. It is changing so rapidly a year from now it will all be different, and faster. If you really want to go wireless now, go woth G. But be advised that G equipment being sold now at year end low pricing will probably be replaced by the next geberation in a month or two. That's what happened a year ago.
Post back if you have additional questions.
4boysdad
6 Posts
0
December 28th, 2003 17:00
_Paladin
795 Posts
0
December 28th, 2003 17:00
4boysdad,
Go here and run the speed test to see how fast your cable connection really is.
jmwills
2 Intern
•
12K Posts
0
December 28th, 2003 23:00
A couple of things on speed. Wired is always better for gaming, unless you like to die a lot. There will always be a slight bit of latency in wireless so I like wired for gaming.
B vs G is for internal speeds of your Local Network only and is not affected by your ISP. More than likely, your top download speed is not greater than 3.0 Mbps so the 802.11b standard at 11 Mbps is plenty sufficient. However, if you are sharing large files across a wireless LAN, then go 802.11g.
Wired at 100 Mbps or 1000Mbps (Gigabit) would still be my preference.
Message Edited by jmwills on 12-28-2003 08:40 PM