My family is finally moving on from dial-up very soon and it looks like we will be getting Verizon DSL. They will be supplying a modem/router which is 802.11g capable. I have a LINKSYS wireless PC card that someone gave to me which is 802.11b capable. My question is if the wireless card will be compatible with the modem/router. I have read places that 802.11g is backwards compatible but I wanted to ask here as well.
11g is 100% backwards compatible with 11b so you will have no problems there. Basically having a 11b Wireless card means you are not going to get much benefit from moving to a faster connection rate. I would highly suggest getting a 11g compatible card ASAP.
I have a b router and it sucks.... I just wired it..let me tell you why it sucked though..basically wireless gaming...don't do any wireless gaming with b stuff it blows...wireless can be tricky as well...I recommend getting a G card for the g router
Thanks for the advice guys. I think I might give the B card to my dad since he will need a wireless card as well but I doubt he really cares about having the best speed, as long as it works relatively good and I'll buy a G card for myself. Do you know of any ones that are good and relatively affordable?
I run a NetGear WG511 and have been real happy. Good range and the throughput is real good. The price is nice as well, I picked mine up for around $35 bucks.
FWIW, unless you have fiber optic internet which is currently spreading across the country (it freaking rocks!) then you probably won't notice a difference between B and G for surfing the net and/or gaming. The only time you'd actually notice the difference is if you do file sharing between 2 computers on the same router. This is because the bottleneck in a typical wireless connection is not the B or G connections, but rather it is the internet bandwidth itself.
If you're buying it new today, obviously go with G or even A, but if what you've got has been given to you and you don't have a lot of money to spend, just stick with the B card...I highly doubt you'll notice any difference at all in the normal surfing or gaming.
Rirruto wrote:If I get an 802.11g card, would I even be able to utilize it's maximum speed with my DSL connection?
That's what I'm saying....you won't be able to unless you're transferring files with another G computer on a G router. The internet bandwidth is typically slower than G cards are capable of.
However, this could change in the future. I know in Dallas you're now able to get fiber optic internet with ridiculous speeds at reasonable prices, so if this technology catches on then obviously B will become outdated. Until then, you're fine with B.
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by Rirruto » Wed Jun 15, 2005 2:22 am 
