Newbie Question

Hi. and please bear with for this question.

I am fairly new to wireless networking, although fairly 'lit' with PC's.

I have a fairly simple questions that I hope someone could answer for
me.......

I have a desktop PC running Windows XP Pro, connected to a USB Modem and BT
Broadband( yeah i know and i will be changing ISP soon!!!). I also have a
Belkin 54Mbps 802.11g PCI card installed.
I am connecting to my laptop which has an older PCMCIA 11Mpbs 802.11b card
installed.

The network is fine, I can see both machines and share files and printing,
they can both surf the net, however, the bandwidth the laptop seems to be
receiving is much less and this makes surfing on the laptop seem like
dial-up sometimes, and when watching streaming tv, the broadcast seems to
stop and start.

I was wondering if there was an incompatibility between the 802.11g and the
802.11b card and if I was to put an 802.11g in the laptop would it make a
difference?

I look forward to receing some help form someone soon!

Cheers

David
(E-Mail Removed)

David Richards wrote:

> Hi. and please bear with for this question.

Cheers from state side.

>
> I am fairly new to wireless networking, although fairly 'lit' with PC's.
>
> I have a fairly simple questions that I hope someone could answer for
> me.......

That's a lot of fairlys. LOL


>
> I have a desktop PC running Windows XP Pro, connected to a USB Modem and BT
> Broadband( yeah i know and i will be changing ISP soon!!!). I also have a
> Belkin 54Mbps 802.11g PCI card installed.

So your computer is connected directly to your modem through usb? Do you
also go out of the house with your fly down?

> I am connecting to my laptop which has an older PCMCIA 11Mpbs 802.11b card
> installed.

Using internet connection sharing from within XP?

>
> The network is fine, I can see both machines and share files and printing,
> they can both surf the net, however, the bandwidth the laptop seems to be
> receiving is much less and this makes surfing on the laptop seem like
> dial-up sometimes, and when watching streaming tv, the broadcast seems to
> stop and start.
>

If the answer to the above question is yes, then that would be becuase
you are running everything through the desktop first. There is a
software overhead involved.


> I was wondering if there was an incompatibility between the 802.11g and the
> 802.11b card and if I was to put an 802.11g in the laptop would it make a
> difference?

It would make a difference for file sharing between the two, but
depending on what the speed of your internet connection is it would most
likely not speed up web browsing on the laptop.

The 802.11b is rated for a top speed of 11mb/s right? So, unless you
have a broadband connection faster then that your bottleneck will still
be your cable/dsl modem.

You would be better served to buy yourself a wifi router and run your
modem into it and let it serve the two computers.
>
> I look forward to receing some help form someone soon!
>
> Cheers
>
> David
> (E-Mail Removed)
>
>


Ryan @ his e-mail address