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General discussion

Best apartment networking solution?

Jul 25, 2004 4:18AM PDT

I am considering cable internet and live in an apartment. My cable access is on the opposite wall from my pc and the cable provider will not run cable to my pc.
I'm trying to decide on either a wireless router or regular router and running cat5 around the room to my pc.
Is there any performance concerns with either wireless or running cat5 for 50 feet? I don't want to loose any cable speed.
Any specific hardware suggestions?
Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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Re: Best apartment networking solution?
Jul 25, 2004 4:35AM PDT

"Is there any performance concerns with either wireless or running cat5 for 50 feet? I don't want to loose any cable speed."

No. CAT5 "speed" is not affected by such. It's rated for 100 Meters.

Bob

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Re: Best apartment networking solution?
Jul 25, 2004 4:46AM PDT

Any speed loss with wireless? There shouldn't be from what I have read, because cable tops out less than the routers, but I've read reports from users that their wireless routers are really slow.
And why do some wireless routers have accelerators, if they are not supposed to lose any speed?

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Wifi G.
Jul 25, 2004 5:03AM PDT

It's at best 54 megabit and most cable modems are 10 megabit (tops!)

I have a linksys router plus a WAP and the only time I see slow is never.

Let me comment that I find the industry to be very slipshod in that when I pull a product out of the box, I must update the firmware, fetch newest drivers or I do see "issues." Not everyone will do this, so they may suffer.

bob

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802.11 vs. CAT-5/6
May 15, 2009 2:07AM PDT

All Wi-Fi connections - accomplished via the 802.11 spec - are half duplex (HDX). Think of it as a very narrow street vs. a wide street; both allow for 2 way traffic but the narrow will require that only one direction of traffic can flow; you have to allow othe traffic to pass before you can proceed.

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Re: Best apartment networking solution?
Aug 1, 2004 12:10PM PDT

I just had my first experience with a wireless router today using the slower 802.11b standard. It was fine surfing the net anywhere in my apartment, but I'm returning it cuz it's too slow accessing my network. I use a 50 foot cat line when I want to drag my laptop in there. If super-speed isn't a major concern for you, you may want to go the wireless route. My bro' in law has a wireless setup for his daughter's computer, using 802.11b, and I was quite impressed with the speed for an 802.11b. But with my hardwired setup, my download speed is close to 4 gigs/min/sec?...or something like that, depending on where I'm downloading from. I know I downloaded a 13 gig file the other night, and it took about 10 seconds. DSL is inherently slower.

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Re: Best apartment networking solution?
Aug 6, 2004 12:27AM PDT

Thinking about WiFi, huh? Did you read "Surprised to find network at home: what to do?" in this forum? That is not an uncommon occurance. You can have security, or you can have wireless. But you can't have both. Nobody has yet created a wireless network that is as secure as one that is wired, that's why businesses aren't going wireless like home users.