bobpeers -> blog

A friend bought a new laptop on my recommendation but now needs it setting up with a wireless connection. She lives in a small flat, has very basic computing needs and only has the one computer currently connected to her cable modem.

I advised her just to get a cheap 802.11g router since these days even a cheap basic model is more than adequate for her needs and they can be picked up for 200-300 DKK (about $40-$60) . Her laptop has the Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945ABG module built in like many laptops these days.

When I came to visit and set up the network I saw she had a Wireless G+ MIMO Modem Router and after talking to her a few thoughts sprang to mind:

1. This router has a built in ADSL modem but she has internet through a cable modem so can’t even replace the cable modem with this box, instead she will have to use both. Then why sell her a router with useless ADSL modem built in?
2. Part of the sales pitch was of course speed, how this is G+ and runs at 108 Mbps compared to the standard 54 Mbps. Two problems here, looking at the product page it’s clear that to achive this she’ll have to use a compatible card for her laptop. Since she doesn’t want to buy more hardware this speed is just not true.
   The other problem is that since she doesn’t have an internal network but just connects directly to the internet it doesn’t really matter how fast the wireless works just as long as it’s faster than her internet connection!
   So many people don’t get this, but it even if the wireless works at a quadrillion Mbps it will only be that fast from her laptop to the router, after that it will run at 2 Mbps, the speed of her internet connection.
3. Another selling point was range, the idea that MIMO suffers less from interference and has a greater range that standard 802.11g products. Bearing in mind that she will usually be sitting less that 10 metres from her router this seems a bit pointless.

At the end of the day it’s easy to upsell computer equipment to the general public since the whole field is full of cryptic codes and changes every 10 minutes it seems.
But that’s why you need people you can trust to sell you the right thing rather than just think about the companies bottom line while, unfortunalty this service is all to rare these days.

I bought my current laptop, an Acer Travelmate 800, in June 2003. Yes it’s an antique by todays standards but it was one of the first with built in wireless connectivity.

It’s the original Intel Centrino platform with the Intel PRO Wireless 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter (802.11b). At the same time I bought a Linksys Wireless Router and at the time this was the only wireless signal I could see from my flat. Needless to say I got no interference and although 802.11b maxed out at about 2 Mbits/s in the real world I always had a steady, stable connection.

Now it’s almost 5 years later and at any given time I see between 5 and 15 wireless routers broadcasting their SSIDs plus god knows how many others not broadcasting the SSID.

Even though I’ve since bought a new Netgear router these signals make my wireless connection almost useless. If I can connect at all the signal drops out about every 5 minutes and then reconnects, if I’m lucky. Other times it just drops the connection and stays disconnected until I manually intervene to force a reconnection.

After reading this column by Pc Pros John Honeyball I agree completely. Compared to my wired LAN, WLAN is a joke, the really annoying part is that I so much want it to work well.

I’m planning on upgrading to a new laptop this year, one with the wireless 802.11n standard (maybe out of Draft status by then) and I’m hoping that the interference issue has been somewhat improved with the advent of MIMO technology

My internet connection runs at about 10Mbits/s but I also have a NAS storage device that I use for backups and general storage so I would ideally like that my wireless connection will run at least as fast as my wired connection, at least 40-50 Mbits/s. From what I’ve read 802.11n can achieve this but having been disappointed in the past I’ll wait and see.

At the same time I’ll upgrade my router so all my network devices will also be using Gigabit Ethernet (bar my printer) so at least my wired network will be up to speed.