I have a question about Wireless Routers. I want to know if I should buy a new one, buy a wireless card, or if its something else.

Original Set up

Router is in the basement with my computer. A cord runs up to the main floor to a computer. The 3rd Computer has a wireless card on the 2nd floor of the house.

The Problem Begins

A few months ago I bought one of those phones that has a main base & phone, and a charger base & phone that doesn't need to be hooked up to a jack. That is hooked up on the main floor and the extra phone is in the room with the 3rd computer on the 2nd floor. The 3rd computer has been having connectivity issues for a few months now, and the phone wont hold a charge (probably two separate incidents but who knows!). WS said her computer was at 30% Connectivity.. she thinks it started when we got the new phones but who knows.

The Solution or not....

WS moved the router onto the main floor of the house, now she has 80% Connectivity. Right now I have this funky wire... and I always did but I'm remodeling and I want to get rid of it. I also don't want my Connection to drop, because it was pretty kick ass. I haven't played to notice a difference yet.

My questions...

How hard is it to install a Wireless Card? I have a brand new computer, the computer the router is hooked up too is about 4 years old. Both run XP. The new one will upgrade to Vista sooner or later. A Wireless Card will go in one of them... or can it go in both? Can you put a Wireless thingy in all the computers and hook the router up some where else (across the room away from the computer)?
Should I bother with just a Wireless Card or do you think I should invest in a new Router since this one is a few years old? I'm not sure how long they last..

I think that is all my questions hehe I hope I made sense!

Thank you !

I cant really give you an answer to your questions,as I am no expert on this kind of stuff.

All I can say thought is this .

My son and I have a PC each,mine being the main one one.I have wirelss set up in ,with a card in each .

In my old house ,all the wirelesss stuff was right alongside my pc,and my sons pc was upstairs,but it never worked all that well.

Where I have moved to ,my telephone socket is down the hall from where my pc is,and I have to have the router actually placed in the hall.

I was worried it would not work,but it does and I have npo problems with it atm asd far as I can tell.

I think as long as the router is some where between the main PC and user pc's it should all work well.

I dont think the wireless will work through outside walls though,just internal ones .

No idea if this helps ,but Im sure some one will come along with a solution.

Hope you get it all up and running

I am sure there are lots of different ways and you will receive lots of different answers to this post but here what I can suggest.

The short answer to your question is Yes you can do what you want to do.....

You mention that you already have a wireless router in the house but it is an older unit. The first thing you need to know is what type of router what I mean by that is, is it a 802.11b, 802.11g. I believe the newest out is 802.11n so I am pretty sure you dont have that one, besides security which I wont get into, the main differnce is how much information can travel over the wireless signal. 802.11b travels about 11mb per second and 802.11g travesl about twice as fast. not if you have 802.11b you dont need to go run out and by a newer and faster version if all you are doing is internet and Playing UO as the standard broadband connection is not any faster then 11mb per second so the 802.11b would not be slowing you down at all. However if you transfer large files between computers then having the faster 802.11g will be a benifit.

As far as adding wireless cards to your excisting computers this is fairly simply. All you need to know if which system you have 802.11b or 802.11g and buy the matching device. Now you have a few choices here, You can buy a PCI card that mounts inside the computer on the motherboard and has either an antenna that sticks out the back or an antenna that sits on the desk or you can buy a USB wireless adapter the plugs into the usb port and that is about all the instellation there is. besides loading the drivers. I have used both very sucessfully. I tend to stay with the Linksys brand and keep everything the same brand. Linksys wireless router matched to Linksys wireless cards or adapters. I like the Linksys brand as they seem to have excellent PC compatibility and if there is a problem they have good customer support. Again though I am sure there are lots of other people that have their own favorite brand, I am just telling what I have experienced myself.

I hope this has helped a little, good luck.

Note also that cordless phones can seriously interfere with wireless signals. You have to check the MHz/GHz range of your cordless phone. I suggest the 5.8 GHz spread spectrum cordless phones if you want to avoid interference with your wireless network. The 1.4 GHz and 900 MHz interfere like crazy. So do microwave ovens, if you're cooking while online (and your microwave is anywhere near your wireless router).

Also, FYI I was able to share my wireless connection with my next door neighbor, who lived in an attached duplex townhouse next to me. (So, it was interior walls the signal was passing through, BUT it was a hardcore, fireproof, soundproof interior wall!) They had 100% signal on their side as I did on my side.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend a new router. I personally got a new router because my old one was 802.11b and I wanted the stronger encryption benefits of the newer 802.11g. I'm not going to bother upgrading to the newest 802.11n until I hear a good reason to. (It's supposed to have higher bandwidth and throughput, but a few people I know who have upgraded haven't been able to get their networks to run as fast as advertised).

If you're happy with your current security levels and whatnot, stick with what you have. The routers/cards with the older protocols are less expensive.

Thanks for the good advice guys. When I get the wireless card... expect another post on How to..