Quote:
Originally posted by NotFromHere
Oh, sporadic service then. You'll notice no difference in speed. If you scroll back you'll see that I personally installed a Linksys wireless with some aggravation, but I notice no difference in speed in either computer. One is upstairs and 1 is downstairs in the kitchen, and even though all rooms are wired.
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Just to back up, G^3, the controlling factor on speed in a network is your router, which controls the network and serves as an interface with your cable modem. Instead of computer->cable modem->world it's
computer->
computer->router->cable modem->world
computer->
Routers can be either wired or wireless, and most wireless will also serve as wired routers as well.
Even a basic wireless router (802.11
b, as opposed to
g or
a) is several times faster than normal home broadband connections (11Mb/sec vs. 2-3 Mb/sec for cable). I'd still get g at this point because the additional cost is very marginal, and you'll get greater capacity down the road and on the road.
If you notice any slowdown, it's on the pipe going out of the house. Two computers would only see a slowdown if they were simultaneously downloading high definition video. Four or five on one cable modem might notice slowness if one or two were streaming music while the others were doing graphics heavy internet browsing.
In other words, it's really not a problem.
Get a home networking for Dummies book and expect to spend an hour setting up the router, 30 minutes for the first computer, and 15 minutes per additional computer. Pay special attention to the security setting recomendations, especially if you go wireless. If your desktops don't have wireless cards (and they need to be in a different room than the router), consider USB wireless devices, which should be painless to install (no cracking open the case).
ETA: I've got one of these and I'm pretty happy with it:
Netgear 802.11g wireless router 
