Wireless Neworking Question

[MDM4AU 332]

I have a laptop I use for work as well as a home PC. I work from home a good bit (as much as possible) and I would like to be able to work in other parts of my house in certain situations.

I have Netgear products already and have been looking at the Netgear 802.11G wireless routers. There is one that handles 54 mbps and one at 108 mbps. Obviously the 108 will work faster but is it really needed? I found a great deal on a Netgear 802.11G router (54 mbps) with card . I have heard that that should be enough and that the 108 may interfere with my cordless phones.

My questions are, should the 54 be enough and will the 108 interfere with anything in my house? I don't do anything fancy and I won't be using it all the time. I usually stay in my office (fewer distractions) but when my wife needs to be on the PC to do lesson plans or research I would like to be able to work in the next room from my laptop simultaneously. I do have a single level home as I understand that multi-level homes sometimes require extras. I don't want to buy the 54 and feel like I have dial-up again and I don't want to spend the extra money on something I don't really need.

Any advice will be appreciated.

[hccobb 0]

It has to do with the bandwidth your cordless phones operate on.

If your phones are on the 2.4ghz band then the 108 card will interfere. Honestly though -- unless you're downloading really huge files you won't notice a difference between 54 and 108. 54mbps will not feel like anything remotely close to dialup. In fact it should be almost right at 1000x faster, but that's only if your internet connection actually has 54mbps of bandwidth. If you have a 1.5mbps DSL line you're only going to get 1.5mbps no matter what wireless card you have in there.

[MDM4AU 332]

It has to do with the bandwidth your cordless phones operate on.

If your phones are on the 2.4ghz band then the 108 card will interfere. Honestly though -- unless you're downloading really huge files you won't notice a difference between 54 and 108. 54mbps will not feel like anything remotely close to dialup. In fact it should be almost right at 1000x faster, but that's only if your internet connection actually has 54mbps of bandwidth. If you have a 1.5mbps DSL line you're only going to get 1.5mbps no matter what wireless card you have in there.

Great! I appreciate the feedback.

[Streyeder 0]

If you do get interference from your phones (which is rare) then try moving around your Access Point and/or the phone base. That will usually solve the problem. Wi-Fi can be VERY finiky with location.

[stoic-one 1,547]

Actually, 54 and 108 operate on the same frequencies. I have a 54g router and 2.4Ghz phones and have no problems. Careful channel selection will prevent interference.

Either way, both protocols are faster than even a cable modem by a factor of 20x.......