Wireless Router and other questions.

[onthat]

My roommates and I wanna go wireless, what DSL or Cable providers are worthy of a recommendation? I have gone as far as cingular (probably the most expensive data plans anywhere) wireless PCMCIA cards with this so I'm willing to hear anything. Also, I'd like to know the difference between a $79 Linksys router and the airport base station...trying to compare connection quality.

 

[regre7]

I'm not sure since you didn't specify the model, but I'd imagine the Linksys would have a 4-port onboard hub or switch.

 

[xfiftyfour]

i don't know about best, but we've had plenty of success here in our apartment (powering two laptops and two desktops) using bellsouth dsl and a linksys router.

i'm pretty sure the price of the airport station (200) is mostly an apple premium. they're both based on 802.11g, so the speeds should be the same.. mostly just dictated by how fast your internet is..at least the way i understand it.

 

[superbovine]

if everything is apple use an airport if you are a novice. it is easier to configure and the tools are easy to use to setup the airport.

however, if you have a mix pc mac enviroment you want to choose the linksys. it is easier to configure from both and mac and pc, and basically smooth out issue with different security schemes i.e. wpa2 wep etc.

overall, i'd choose the linksys for the shear fact that you might actually get help from the teleco if you ever need to troubleshoot on a standard linksys rather than an airport.

 

[kyleaa]

Have you looked into an Airport Express base station? I have one at college and I enjoy it - it also functions as a print server and you can do streaming audio from itunes. I have had a couple Linksys routers, and they tend to function well with firmware updates - I have generally had issues out of the box, but it's been over 2 years since I bought my WRT54g so hopefully they've improved . However, I would definitely recommend linksys over belkin or netgear, I have known people with very odd config problems.

The only reason I have ever considered buying an Airport base station is that the Airport Express units can be set up in a WDS (Wireless Distribution System) to extend network range, but as the 802.11n draft is coming into use, that hardly seems like a useful feature anymore . Hopefully apple will jump on the wireless-N bandwagon.