How to Choose a Wireless G Router

Home Network Builder.com Section 1: Networking Hardware Lesson 2: Buying your Networking Hardware Male Speaker: First I'll advice you to watch this entire video series before you buy a router and wireless network adapters. There's lots of great information throughout these videos that you will need to make good purchasing decisions. We will begin with the router, if you've decided to go with the Wireless G Router you'll need to look low in the list of wireless routers on the maker's website. The makers always put their latest hardware on the top. The wireless G routers are well established. They have been out for a while and they just work. From Linksys the WRT 54G is the standard for a basic wireless G router. You can find it online for around $40. You'll see router with features like Range Pluse or Super G, these were added to make Wireless G faster with better range, don't bother with these. The prices on these routers bring them up to the cost of Wireless N and at that point you would just go with Wireless N if you needed the extra speed and range. For Wireless N there are lots of choices. Most makers are breaking down their wireless and routers into good, better, and best models. The good Wireless N Routers are slightly faster than Wireless G Routers with better signal coverage. The Better N Routers are even faster still with better signal coverage and the best routers max out the wireless and signal coverage and speed the better and best routers usually also include some QOS or Quality Of Service features. QOS is there to make sure all your time sensitive data gets priority on the network. This would be things like video streams online gaming and voice over IP phone calls that need to happen in a timely manner, so the QOS give them priority. A few of the higher-end wireless N routers can use a 5 gigahertz band instead of the standard 2.4 gigahertz band for transmitting the wireless signal. This ability is called Dual-Band and requires special Dual-Band Adapters for each computer to work. It's up in the air whether dual band actually helps. It could be and probably is just clever marketing. The two biggest router makers are Linksys and D-Link. There is also Netgear, Belkin, ASUS and few others. From Linksys the WRT 150N is their basic wireless N router for around $80. Their better N router is the WRT 300N, which increases range and speed for around $100. The WRT 330N is there best router adding gigabit Ethernet ports and some QOS optimizations for online games at around $160. D-Link has paired-down their offerings and are no longer selling a basic wireless N Router. Their DIR 655, which is the router we using this video series is very similar to Linksys's high-end router for around $120. D-Link also offers the DGL 4500, which adds a display on the top of the router and features dualband for around $180. Special dualband wireless adapters are required for each computer. When you go to the makers website, look for a Buy Now link next to the product. They have updated prices from the largest online stores for each product. And you can also locate a store near you that carries the product. Trendnet, Belkin, Encore, and Netgear all have similar offerings. ASUS has an interesting wireless N Router, the WL500W has a USB port on it where you can connect and share an external hard drive or a printer and share them with all of your computers on the network. Before you decide on a router you need to read lots of reviews. Do a Google search, for the model number you are looking at and review and you will find several professional reviews. Now these professional reviews are great, but don't overlook end-user opinion. Both Amazon and newegg.com have great end-user reviews. They each use a five star system. On amazon.com if you are looking at a product, just click on customer reviews up here at the top and here at the top they are showing us the most helpful favorable review and the most helpful critical review and the helpfulness is voted on by other end users. And if you scroll down, we get a list of all the end-user reviews. And it sorting by most helpful and we can also search by newest first, which will be the most recent reviews. On newegg.com you can click customer reviews and they show two or three of the most helpful reviews here just on the main page, but if you click read all reviews, you'll get a page of just reviews and if we scroll down it sorting by helpfulness and we can also search by the date posted, highest and lowest rating. These give you inside into what you might expect when you use the router, that said keep in mind that these are just people. Some of them will receive a broken part; it happens. Some of them will have broken the part and won't admit it. Some just don't know what they are talking about and they won't admit it. Pay most attention to the opinions that others have rated most helpful. Even if you not in the U.S and you can't order from amazon.com or newegg.com, you can still use them as a resource for choosing you hardware. For the wireless network adapters it's best to get an adapter that the manufacturer recommends for the router. This will ensure the best compatibility and speed. This is not to say it won't work if you use adapters from different manufacturers. In these videos we are going to use a D-Link router with Encore, Netgear, Broadcom, and other wireless network adapters from different manufacturers and they all work together. Each manufacturer offers PCI card and USB wireless adapters for desktop computers. You just need to choose the most convenient type for each of your desktop computers. For your notebook computers you can get a PC Card or Express Card Adapter depending on which one your notebook takes. Again don't run out and buy before you watch all the videos. It only takes a few hours to watch and you'll save yourself a lot of time and money. Sit back and keep watching. Next in Section 2 we'll show you how to connect the modem to the router and install the wireless network adapter inside our computers to get them on the home network.