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Small Home Network Wired vs Wireless

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by maggie-o 1 view

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Have very small home network and want to purchase cable router in order to share internet connection among 2-3 pc's. Is this the time to go wireless while I'm at it? 2 PC's are in same room. Other would be "part-time" laptop in different room.
What about speeds? Would broadband connection be slower a)just by adding wired cable/router and or b) by adding wireless cable/router?
This is main concern.
Anything else we should be thinging about?
Thanks very much..

2 replies

by gkeel

Adding a router to your Cable connection is a good idea even if you were not networking since it would allow you to use NAT and thereby provide at least some firewall protection. There is a lot of wireless out there now and it is easy to setup. The wireless is also now running at 10MB ethernet speed now as opposed to the 2-3MB that was prevalent a couple years ago. You will not see any performance problems with your internet access especially since even cable is not significantly faster thanT1 (1.5MB). The only question between wireless and wired for me would be the network connection between the laptop and the rest of your network. If you currently don't have a network card in the laptop then using wireless is really the way to go.It would allow the laptop to roam within the house to anywhere and still have connetivity. On the other hand, if you use the laptop in another office and have a wired type network card already in it, wireless would require you having to have two configurations on the laptop, one for the wired card and one for the wireless. That could be a complicated configuration. Good luck whichever way you go.

by dodgeint2002

Linksys makes a Wireless AP and Router all in one unit that you may want to look into. Wireless is the way to go if you want to use your laptop through out your home and stay connected. But if cost is an issue for you going with a wired network would be better. But you are looking at paying almost $200 for a router and then a few dollars for a NIC for your laptop (unless you have one already). The linksys AP & router is almost $200 and their NIC's aren't two expensive. Speed is a little different since you could run a 100mbps network wired and only about 10mbps on a wireless unit. Wireless provides more mobility but Ethernet (wired) is a little cheaper and faster. I have this same problem at home with my network and personally I am going to purchase the Linksys Wireless AP & router all in one unit and a Linksys wireless NIC.

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