Review of wireless ADSL routers

I'm looking at upgrading my existing 11b wireless setup to increase speed
and also to consolidate as I have two boxes at the moment. I'm after a
decent crop of recent reviews?

I'm looking at the D-Link DSL-G604T, to be used with Plusnet. Any issues?
How does the signal strength compare to say the equivalent Netgear box? This
is the sort of info I'd like.

Any help appreciated.

Steve
--
[email: remove the SPAMTRAP]

Take a look at the review at http://www.pcpro.co.uk where the netgear WG602
got a good showing.

--
gee six jay en (E-Mail Removed)

"Netman ®" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:K9Voc.4074$(E-Mail Removed)...
> I'm looking at upgrading my existing 11b wireless setup to increase speed
> snip <
>
>
The "upgrade" may end up in great disappointment and realisation that you've
wasted your money.

I've spent the last 4 weeks sorting out problems with 11g installations
reverting many clients to 11b due to g's unreliability and short reach.
Frequently all it took was a person walking across office between an access
point and a client for the client to loose connectivity and abort a file
transfer or whatever it was doing at the time. A simple half-brick partition
wall will knock 50% of g's signal strength whereas 11b only looses 10%.
11g's speed drops at an alarming rate with distance. 54mb/s at 2m can go
down to 2mb/s at 10m. I found PCMCIA and USB adaptors much more sensitive
than PCI. No doubt the metal bulk of a PC case in close proximity to the
antenna is the reason. I'm still experimenting with one setup at home. With
11b I was getting 60% signal strength in my back garden approx. 20m from the
router in upstairs front room, 11g can't even connect. And I was hopping to
be able to view DigiTV's output stream on my notebook. No chance.

"Alien Zord" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> "Netman ®" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:K9Voc.4074$(E-Mail Removed)...
> > I'm looking at upgrading my existing 11b wireless setup to increase
speed
> > snip <
> >
> >
> The "upgrade" may end up in great disappointment and realisation that
you've
> wasted your money.
>
> I've spent the last 4 weeks sorting out problems with 11g installations
> reverting many clients to 11b due to g's unreliability and short reach.
> Frequently all it took was a person walking across office between an
access
> point and a client for the client to loose connectivity and abort a file
> transfer or whatever it was doing at the time. A simple half-brick
partition
> wall will knock 50% of g's signal strength whereas 11b only looses 10%.
> 11g's speed drops at an alarming rate with distance. 54mb/s at 2m can go
> down to 2mb/s at 10m. I found PCMCIA and USB adaptors much more sensitive
> than PCI. No doubt the metal bulk of a PC case in close proximity to the
> antenna is the reason. I'm still experimenting with one setup at home.
With
> 11b I was getting 60% signal strength in my back garden approx. 20m from
the
> router in upstairs front room, 11g can't even connect. And I was hopping
to
> be able to view DigiTV's output stream on my notebook. No chance.
>
>

Interesting comments

I have a Linksys WAG54G wireless ADSL router
I used to use it with an Ebuyer origo 11mbps b card
but have swapped to a Linksys 54g card
the signal drops around the house
but using the 54g card I still can get from 10mbps to 48mbps
whereas the 11b card dropped until it no longer connected!

??

Ian

The wifi output is limited by law to 100Mw, (lot less then a mobile phone)
so in theory all wifi transmitters / receivers have very similar signal
strength.
Your local conditions will make lot more difference then the make of the
kit, 11g is more prone to interference and signal degradation.
However Draytek Vigor 2600G is recognised as the best affordable home
adsl/router/wifi combo.
D-Link is OK-ish, Netgear is for geeks who enjoy updating the firmware every
few weeks to cure yet more bugs.
Regards,
Martin

Martin? <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> The wifi output is limited by law to 100Mw, (lot less then a mobile phone)
> so in theory all wifi transmitters / receivers have very similar signal
> strength.

M=mega, m=milli.
100Mw is a billion times the power of 100mw.