I hate wireless networks

Give me a cable anyday

When I purchased my new PC, I figured that to save myself some time and effort I'd just use a wireless card as the method of choice to connect to my router. Both wireless card and router are of the D-link brand, which at the time I had the impression it was a fairly solid brand that I have no problems with in the past.

After installing the network card and going through the neccessary steps I managed to get it to communicate with the router. All good, yes? Well...that depends on one's definition of good.

First of all, the wireless card seemed to not be transmitting at the speed it was advertised to. When I bought the card, it said on the box that it could go up to 108Mbps, which was a leg up over the others which was only the standard 54Mbps. When I checked the speed in Windows, it was only at 54Mbps. Where's the beef?

After reading the fineprint I noticed that was only after getting the firmware update. So I did that (along with installing the latest driver / software packgage) and still its at 54Mbps. Kinda a little pissed, seeing as that feature was the only reason I picked that card over the others.

But wait...there's more. I noticed occasionally I would get random errors from some service that was installed by the wireless card's software. After some research I found out that the third-party developers of the software used by the D-link manufacturer created quite the POS software that was used to run the card. It was supposably buggy and just badly coded in general.

To top it all off I find out after using the wireless feature of my router for more sustained periods of time (in the past I only used it on my Wii and DS consoles) I notice that it can sometimes drop out for no reason at all. It takes several restarts of both the router and access point before it decides to start transmitting again.

All these frustrations have led to me just buying a big ol' 15m roll of Cat6 cable, which I'll be hooking up to the router and threading through the roofspace to my room so I can get a stable, gigabit connection to my network and the outside world.

I'll be thinking twice before relying on a wireless solution ever again.

networking

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I find that the mass market wireless technology is generally not very well suited for heavy use. Those $50-$100 routers are ok for sporadic use, but not for sustained periods of time. If you want performance and reliability - the hardware costs jump by an order of magnitude. Now you're looking at mid-range Cisco routers that cost upwards of $1,500 instead of cheap consumer-grade Netgear, Linksys, D-Link and Buffalo crap.

Unfortunately stringing Cat6 across the house is not always an option for everyone. Thankfully, wireless in no longer the only option. I've been using powerline adapters for over a year in my condo with great results to even handle streaming HD video content without a hitch. Again, you get what you pay for so those cheap ($20-$50) models that promise up to 85Mbps generally can't even compare against the more expensive ($150-$200) 200Mbps models. Personally, I use two Linksys PLE200 adapters (one near the main router, the other - near the networked A/V system) with good results. The units run a bit on the hot side, but have not failed in a year or so. Of course this technology is not for everyone, as it's got limitations that depend on the electrical wiring in your house, but at that price it's definitely worth a shot.

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