Wifi Dongle Vs Fixed Network?

[Mortymoose]

It's that time of the year, Winter has arrived and Head Office has gone into nesting mode and deemed it fit this fine morning to instruct me to reorganise the furniture in the Computer Room at home....

I have three Pc's and one Arcade Machine(Pc) all linked on a home network via a fixed lan cable.... No sweat...

I now have to break the cables and rearrange everything in a space measuring 5x4m ....

Got to thinking, that it would be far easier to get wifi dongles to plug into the boxes that reorganising cables...

Went to my mate over at his local Pc store.... No simple dongles in stock but does have two B-Link Usb antenna type wifi hardware... basically a cable runs from your USB onto an aerial box on your desktop and then you have wifi..... It costs R279.00

But I find this a step backwards as it is just placing another object with yet another cable on my desk.

he can order me those nano wifi dongles, but reckons they do not work as hot as what he was trying to sell me...

So folks, Oh! Wise forumnites..... throw advice in my general direction please...

Bulky Wifi cable Device
Nano Wifi Device
Fixed Lan Cable?

 

[mister]

Fixed Lan Cable

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

Cables, I would only use wireless as a last resort.

 

[irBosOtter]

Rather stick with lan cables. If you want slow network speed (between pc's) and some issues every now and then, go with wireless...

 

[Alton Turner Blackwood]

Remember wifi is also susceptible to interference, amongst other things

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

Remember wifi is also susceptible to interference, amongst other things

Yep, in our office the wifi will just die suddenly, have to either restart the router or just wait for it to come back by itself. Would hate to be in the middle of a large file transfer or on an important conference call when that happened.

 

[Electric]

I currently use a pci wifi card but previously used a usb wifi dongle.
Speeds are very good on both devices, I occasionally get some line drops but generally I am very happy with the wifi card.

 

[Electric]

Rather stick with lan cables. If you want slow network speed (between pc's) and some issues every now and then, go with wireless...

I don't notice any slow down.

 

[rsifan]

If you have no other choice but to go wifi, get those small USB dongles, they work just as well as the 1 your friend is trying to sell you.

I have a pc in my 2nd bedroom, and it's connected to the ADSL router via 1 of these:
http://www.dbg.co.za/product_info.php?cPath=1_55_63&products_id=890

My downloads on that pc still run at full adsl speed (4Mbps). I don't transfer anything from the primary pc to this 1 over wireless so cannot comment on file transfer.

The wifi signal has to go through 3 walls to get to that pc and there is still no issue.

 

[Mortymoose]

Thanks for the advice folks.....

I shall stick with the wired lan and just re- saddle the cables...

 

[irBosOtter]

I don't notice any slow down.

You will if you copy lots of big files, just meant that wireless will never be as fast as physical network cables, never ever lol
For normal surfing etc you probably will not notice anything

 

[Electric]

You will if you copy lots of big files, just meant that wireless will never be as fast as physical network cables, never ever lol
For normal surfing etc you probably will not notice anything

I'm not debating the difference between Lan and wifi speed but I am referring specifically to streaming across devices.
I don't generally copy large files via wireless anyway.

 

[cerebus]

Due to the location of our PC in relation to the router, I'm using a PCI wifi card in the back of the PC, and effectively all my devices drink from the same wifi brook. I have no problem with it. The signal is excellent and the effort and aesthetic problems of routing cables through my entire house is very much reduced.

 

[D4N]

If you want to go the WiFi USB route I would recommend these adapters:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/300Mbps-USB...SB_Wi_Fi_Adapters_Dongles&hash=item3cd9073c32

They are much better than the Planet and TP-Link dongles I used before