Easy for you guys but my heads buzzin'

Hello all - bear with me please coz I'm a total novice at networking as
you'll appreciate the more you read my post {:0)

We've just had our exchange reach it's trigger level so I'm starting to look
into what I'm gonna need to get both my PC's connected to ADSL.
My heads banging trying to get to grips with all the different hardware names
and differences between them.
Basically what all I want to do is

1)Be able to get dsl on two machines (obviously I suppose!)

2)Not have to have my main PC (downstairs next to the phone line) - switched
on all the time for the other to access the net

3)Download files from my digital camera from one PC to the other - (whichever
happens to be on at the time will be used to get the images from my camera to
PC)

I want to use a wireless network as the two PC's are on opposite sides of the
house and would be a pain in getting the cable from the main one to the one
upstairs. As I'm getting everything new, I will be getting the new 54g type
(especially considering the fact I'll be transferring pics which will be
128mb+ in total). Am I right in saying that I'll need :-

An adsl modem/router combo downstairs by my main PC
A short length of networking cable and NIC card to connect to it
A PCI/USB wireless adapter in the upstairs PC to connect to the router
downstairs?

If so, I would really appreciate some advice for good, reasonably priced
hardware to do the job, and from where...... plus, any sites with nice and
simple explanations, diagrams etc to help me get my head round the set ups
etc would be a great help
Many thanks - told you I was a novice ;-)
Phil

 

No, you need another end for the wireless network.
If that is part of or connected to the modem/router/switch then you'll
be able to use the upstairs PC while the downstairs one is off but it'll
be quite expensive,
Despite the falling cost of wireless, it's still cheaper to run cables,
but you may not want to in your house.
I suspect it will actually be cheaper to connect to a wireless
modem/router by wireless from downstairs too, unless you already have an
ethernet card or motherboard socket in the PC. More versatile anyway.

There's a big speed difference between a PCI (100Mb/s) and a USB (2Mb/s)
ethernet (10 or 100Mb/s) or wireless (18Mb/s) connection, but you won't
notice it when surfing the net because your "BT broadband" ADSL will be
only 0.5Mb/s at very best, say at 02:00 am. If you can get broadband
cable (NTL or Telewest), you'll get 0.6Mb/s most of the time..
Those speeds will only affect playing games between the PCs and
(slightly if your impatient) transferring files.

Hope that helps

 

wireless (18Mb/s) connection...

Whilst I agree in principle with the point you made, I don't
understand the figures you're quoting here. Care to clarify?

 

Well, sorry, the 2Mb/s was a typo for 12Mb/s

This would fit the "specified" speed of USB-1 but I wouldn't quote the
specified 460Mb/s of USB2 because I've read reviews of USB2 100baseT
adapters that couldn't reach 50Mb/s and I think it's fair to say that no
USB1 10baseT adapter is as fast as a PCI 10baseT adapter despite 12Mb/s
being apparently faster than 10Mb/s. This is down to duplex problems and
I think 6Mb/s is a better figure for USB1

I see from another post of yours that you recommend USB wireless
adapters to get the aerial away from the PC - do you find them as fast
as PCI or PCMCIA wireless NICs ?

My 18Mb/s wireless figure was a wild guess at an average. I know they're
claiming 54Mb/s now, but do you think that's realistic?

As for 100baseT, nobody has seen a tenfold increase in speed. Maybe 8x
for over 1000 clients on a local superserver database or 5x for home
gamers, but only 5% or so for shared internet access, even with 2Mb/s
broadband.

My point is, unless your home network is to be used for internal gaming
(as many are, though) you needn't worry about these speeds at all.

I don't think dedicated gamers (I am not) would choose a USB2 link
(460?) over 100baseT (PCI of course) - or am I wrong?

 

Fine, understand now.

Yes, but that's based on gut feel not measurement. The flying lead
is my get-out-of-jail card for an awkward customer site - much
easier than persuading the customer he really wants to relocate his
PC, or needs to by a separate antenna.

Haven't done any measurements, but all of the benchmarks I read
suggest 18-24Mbps is realistic.

Correct, the bottlenecks in the NIC/PC/software/disk drive etc of
the endpoints govern the benefit you'll gain. But 10 vs 100Mbps is
also about allowing more nodes to share the same LAN infrastructure
without delaying each other.

I'm told that with heavy usage, a USB connection would take a few %
more of the cpu power - no gamer would accept that!

Either way the key issue for network gamers is not data throughput
- games don't generally chuck huge wads of data around - but
latency, aka ping time.