Wireless router

[hlratliff]

Not sure if I'm in the right spot, but here goes. I need to purchase a wireless router for my home. I have two towers in separate bedrooms with wireless cards plus laptops that will need to connect also. My house is quite large and my son also has an xbox360 that will need to connect. I have been looking at linksys but am not sure which model I would need. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

[JMMD]

Something like this would probably work well for you:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833156286

 

[Leeky]

A few things to consider:

1. How is the xbox connecting? Wireless or ethernet cable?
2. Do you have somewhere centrally you can place the router? In very large houses coverage can sometimes be patchy if the router is located in one corner of the house and the wireless devices on the other.
3. What wireless (A/B/G/N) are your computers?

All of these will dictate what router would be best for your situation. Wireless N devices generally speaking (from my experience) have better range, so are more suitable located further from the router in question.

If you have patch internet in your house it might also require you to make use of a router, and a wireless repeater, used to extend the wireless coverage in your house.

Linksys are highly regarded, and I can also recommend most D-Link, and Netgear type N routers as well. My personal favourite preference is Linksys though.

I don't know the cost of routers in USD, but I would think at $150 your paying too much. I could be wrong though.

 

[hlratliff]

The xbox will be connecting wirelessly and the wireless cards in the towers are NVIDIA GeForce 6200. The router will be centrally located so that shouldn't be a problem. I just want to make sure that whatever router I get can handle multiply machines on line at the same time and gaming as well.

 

[tipstir]

I would get the WNDR3700 or WNDR3700AV from Netgear with it's 8T/8R ANT, 680MHz WNPU and 64MB RAM and 832KB Packet Buffer. There is a V2 with 128MB RAM. This is N600 dual band 2.4GHz (b,g,n) and 5GHz (a,n). Most users won't need dual band, Then I would second suggest getting TEW-691GR from Trendent, this is N450with 3T/3R @ 4dBi ANT, 500MHz WNPU, 64MB RAM, 512KB for Packet Buffer. Min in ANT is 3T/3R or higher. Don't want 2T/2R.

T=transmit data packets
R=receive data packets

Under Linksys by Cisco you're looking E2000 (N300) or E3000 (N600)

Buy 10/100/1000mbps don't buy 10/100mbps think of future needs not of past needs.

One Router that is not really known is the one from Senoa called Engenius ESR-9850 N300 Gig 10/100/1000mbps with 832KB Packet Buffer, 384MHz WNPU, 32MB RAM, it also uses hardware turbine network engines this would give you 800mbps from the 4 ports which are Gig. To explain this more most of the higher price wireless routers mentioned above only give you from 200 to 400mbps from the Gig ports. They also have less max session connections which are 4,000 to 14,000. TEW-691GR offers the same features like the turbine frame feature also. Non-blocking packets ports full speed of your device.

ESR-9850 MSC was 19,000 and it's up to 50,000 using latest firmware. But you see to get this type of performance you have to give up QoS which you need for XBOX if you do online gaming. If you enable QoS then the ports would downgrade to 400mbps on the ESR-9850.

ESR-9850 is 2T/2R design cost less than $60 bucks online only.