Wireless routers - any reason to upgrade from 802.11b?
 

Wireless routers - any reason to upgrade from 802.11b? Every now and then our wireless network goes down. After rebooting it's ok. I'm wondering if it's the Linksys 2.4 Ghz router that's causing the problem.

Other than the loss of connectivity (a couple times a month max), is there any compelling reason to upgrade to a newer router? We have two laptops - one Apple one Windows, a Roku and an iTouch that are on the system. Never really had any complaints about speed, or signal with our current set up.

Unless your internet connection is faster than 11 Mbit/s, no.

Tom
(Who is still running and old netgear 11b router)

DL speed is 15.9 Mb/s

Routers overheat and lockup, they get worse as they get older. Some do it, some don't. Of all the routers I've worked on, or owned Linksys has been most sensitive to this. They had an entire series that lacked proper heat sinks and most of those died in the few moths of ownership.

This has been kind of going on with Linksys for years now, people do all sorts of things to try and help, like this:

WRT54G - Adding a fan - dslreports.com

To answer your other question, unless your doing a lot of traffic on the LAN (between machines on your network) you're going to be limited by your external connection as mentioned above.

In addition to the external pipe there is the issue of the devices connecting.

Routers will default to the speed of the slowest connected device.

So if the Apple were G and the Windows box B you're only going to see B.

From 802.11b to 802.11g I could see justifying an upgrade but be sure to get all of your client wireless devices upgraded as well. If there is one 'b' client on the network the 'g' network will revert to 'b' operation as a whole because of that client.

802.11g vs b is like the difference between Ethernet and Fast Ethernet (almost). Fast Ethernet was full duplex 100mbps where as Ethernet was 10mbps HALF duplex. 802.11g is 54mbps but backwards compatible. I could go on but I you will get better performance with the g stuff than the b stuff. Plus with some newer hardware you will get away from the likes of WEP for 'security' into something that can actually be considered 'secure' with WPA2 and AES encryption.

Depends on what you want to do on your network. Just sharing internet connection no reason, although you can't buy a *just* B box at a bestbuy, etc. these days, For moving large files, streaming movies (audio is fine on 11mb), etc. you want faster.

Your connectivity problems may be channel related - manually set it to 1 or 11 (6 is middle and default for most, so lots of collision space if you are close to others, also portable phones, etc. The other channels overlap slightly into themselves.

Our two old 'b' routers were doing that for several months. Then they got to the point where they'd just crap out entirely regardless of resets. I had one tested by my IT folks after I replaced it and was told it had likely suffered a surge.

With router prices under $70, I'd go ahead and replace it with the newest protocol and end the headaches.

I run 802.11N... But I stream audio all over my apartment... I don't really need that kind of bandwidth.... But I have plenty to spare... :D

refurb Linksys "g" routers are regularly available for $25.

To be slightly more accurate - 802.11b/g use the 2.4 Ghz spectrum and consist of 11 channels (2.4 Ghz wide) starting at 2.4ghz(ch1) ending at 2.473 (ch11). Each channel is 2.4ghz wide so in that range there are three that do not overlap. 1, 6 and 11. A great many consumer grade wireless devices come set to channel 6. If there is an auto setting, that might work better. Your best chance for a good signal is to do a simple wireless survey of your airspace. Download 'netstumbler' onto one of your wireless computers and run it for a bit to see which channels are in use. Pick the best one that is NOT in use or has the least amount of use.