using 2 netgear Routers connected at the same time

Hi. I am still very new to these forums and this is my first related just to technical matters. First a bit of background for my concern.

I have never setup a router on any network before. When I first got my Broadband my Son did it for me and I know there were problems with getting connected to Freeserve, but they may have been because it was the first connection to broadband. The Router I have is a Netgear DG824M and I must say since it got finally setup it has been very reliable both for Cable and Wireless use. My problem now is that I have just got a laptop with wireless g speed and I want to take avantage of this. My existing Router is just b speed. I have established that the Router cannot be upgraded so I am trying to sort out the best way to do this with the least amount of problems in doing so. I know someone who also tried to do it by adding a Wireless g speed access point by doing as the manual stated connecting it direct into a spare cable point on the Router. But some some reason it never worked and even mucked up the Routers ability to function.
I cannot allow this to happen as my family have just moved abroad and using the internet for webcams etc is our main lifeline. So hence I need some advice as my son cannot now help me.

As stated I have a Netgear DG824M and I need to establish a facility to use a g speed laptop. So advice on the best, most straight forward way of doing this is welcomed.

I have thought about upgradeing tp the Netgear DG834GT, if I do is it possible to connect and get this setup along side the existing Router? I ask this as it seems away to keep connected until I am sure the DG834GT has been set up ok.

If it is not, should the New Router be able to get setup ok? ie as there is a Broadband connection already it should not cause problems like the first one did. If the new one did not function correctly can I just remove it and put the old one back and it just picks up from where it was. I ask this because it has always work right away after a power cut etc.

One final question, can a cable connection and a wireless connection be made on the same laptop, if so will it always connect to the much faster cable speed rather than wireless, or are you presented with a choice? I ask this because most of the time the laptop will be connected to cable, but there will be times when I have to use wireless.

As I am sure you can see I am quite new to this, but now turned 70 I find it harder to take new things in. I hope you can understand this and able to help,.

Many thanks, ronnieG

What speed is your internet connection? Theoretically, 802.11b is capable of approximately 11 MB - if your internet connection is less than 11MB (say 2MB) then the 802.11b router will cope fine - no need to change!

If your internet connection is more, then post back, but basically, you cannot use two routers together - much better to plug in a wireless access point than is G capable, or invest in a new router, or connect your lappy via wire for now

windows selects the fastest connection, so usually picks 100M wired ethernet over wireless. Its better to turn the wireless off if using wired, to avoid unexpected problems.

Hi and thanks to both of you for your prompt replies.
My broadband is 2Meg, I thought that g was said to be about 5 times faster than b, ie up to 54Mbps as against 11 for b, so unless I am missing something here, I don't see how a b wirelless router can cope with g speed? Is the wireless speed in relation to the Broadband speed supplied which if so may be the point I am missing, but I have never read anything that suggest that it is?

Regarding Windows always selecting the fastest speed, that is good to know, but as for turning wireless off, I have never found that it works, well at least I can't, I have tried going into network connection and turned it off there but it did not seem to do it. I have also used the keys on laptop which on mine are Fn + F2. I have also found that I could not get wireless unless I had cable connection show also, seems odd I know, but?

Once again thanks for your help, but I would likea further explination as to how a b speed router of 11 Mbps can also supply me with a g speed of 54Mbps, I hope it can, I look forward to your amswer, many thanks, ronnieG

802.11g is a "superset" of 802.11b ie the 802.11b speeds are included in 802.11g standard. At long range 802.11g falls back to 802.11b.

Most 'g' access points have "Mixed, G only or B only" modes to limit access to certain types of client if required.

So a G client seeing a B router will try to connect at 11M or below.

Thank you for your reply, that is what I thought. It is just that the other post made it sound like I could get the 54Mbps from a 11Mbps wireless router.

It seems that the only way forward is to replace the Router to a DG834GT and hope it all works ok. So the last point I need clarified is: If it did not work ok, ie I muck it all up trying to set it up, can I just take it out and put the DG824M back in and everything will be ok? I hope so.

I guess my weakness on this subject is I am not sure on the technology as to how it all works, ie does the present router store all the information of my computers connected to it? Or if I install the new Router, will it change any of the inforamation the old one would need to get going? Sould I print out a copy of all the settings on my present Router as they are now, so I could reset them again if needed.

Thanks, ronnieG

Ronnie

If you want to upgrade your router to wireless, my experience is the DG834G is a better buy than the GT. It is usually cheaper, the G has a better reputation for stability and reliability, and is one of the most tolerant if you get hit with poor landline quality.

I think you should be able to setup the new router before decommissioning the old one. The only thing you can't do is have both connected at the same time - but it only takes a few seconds to unplug one from the phone line and plug-in the other. Setup the new (login info, wireless connection, firewall etc) without connecting the phone line - the router doesn't really care if it can't see outside. Then simply unplug the phone line from the old and connect to the new. I would recommend using cable to connect your computer at this stage, it is easier to plug and play. Your new router should connect to DSL within a few minutes and give you internet access. Now get the wireless working and configured with WPA security, and test by disconnecting the LAN cable to computer. If it doesn't work at any point you can always reconnect the old system and go online to find out where you went wrong.

As for speed, if you only have one computer attached the speed issue is academic. Almost all DSL connections are slower than 802.11b, so the bottleneck is the DSL line and it doesn't matter how fast the router connects to your computer. Either b or g will give you the same performance. For the same reason it is not worth spending extra to get one of the enhanced speed wireless routers, it will just "wait faster" for you to press the next button, or the DSL delivers data at the same speed. The only time you might see a difference is if you have 2 computers at home and you're passing files between them.

Finally, with LAN cable and wireless both connecting your pc to router, the system should still work. Just let the computer decide which to use.

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Paul

54Mbps is not all it's cracked up to be. Move more than about 15 feet from the router, and the speed will drop down to 11 Mbps or less anyway.

that isn't the only way, you have been told by at least one poster that a wireless access point plugged into your existing router is an alternative.

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?ProductID=2352 for <

Thanks Paul for your detailed reply covering all my points. I have noted your comment about the DG834G.

I just need to clear up one point and than I think I will be ready to take action if needed.
It seems to me that you are saying it does not matter if I connect my Laptop with a b speed or my Laptop with g speed even to a Router like the DG834G there will be no difference in the wireless speed? If that is the case, is there any point at all in upgradeing from my DG824M which has the b speed.

The main reason I got another Laptop is so I can use it where I do not have a cable connection. I do find when I am using a Webcam that the b wireless is not fast enough to give me good quality picture and speech sync. I was expecting a g wireless would be much better?

As a Photographer (suppose to be retired!!) I do need many PC's and I have 3 Desktops on cable and 2 Laptops on wireless. They would not be all active on the internet at the same time, but it could well be a Desktop and Laptop would be.

Thanks again and if you can clear these last point up, I will be a happy man>

bit of an exaggeration, but I know what you mean. We've run 54M for ~500m with appropriate antennae.

Hi Ronnie, as I said earlier, if your internet connection is less than 11 meg then there is no need to upgrade. The 11b factor means that the wireless router is capable of putting wireless speeds through of up to 11meg. As you do not purchase an 11 meg speed from your ISP - your speed is only 2 Meg - an 11b wireless connection is more than adequate.

Your "g" laptop is backwards compatible, so will recognise that your router is "b". Even if you upgraded your router to the G client, you would not see any speed increase since your action internet connection downstream speed is 2 meg, so that is the speed you will get regardless of device.

Where you do benefit from 54meg (11g) as opposed to 11 meg,(11b) is if you are transferring any files or folders to another networked computer - obvioulsy the 11g will transfer them faster, but that is nothing to do with the internet

You will need to set up your laptop to access your router wirelessly. To do this you will need to ensure that wireless is turned on in your router page. Follow the instructions you got with the netgear, and you should be able to do it. If you are connecting wired and wirelessly via the laptop, you will need to turn off the wireless access on your laptop when the wire is in to prevent complications.

TBH, you are better just to use it wirelessly, because if you are near the router so that you are using a wire, why not just use it wirelessly? It can cause problems having to keep disabling wireless and then turning it back on.

Edited by deleted (Tue 12-Sep-06 18:43:54)

Kyomii, I think you're a little optimistic with your assessment of wifi throughput. As I understand it, the rated speed is the total in both directions, so you're down to 5.5 Mbps each way. Then there are overheads, and on top of all that, the bandwidth is shared between all the wifi-attached machines. My own 11b stuff rarely gets much above 3 Mbps throughput. However, that's more than enough to service my BB.

On the plus side, internet traffic is by nature mostly "bursty", so in practice several users can share an 11b connection without being too aware of the others. However, a single "greedy" user who wants to dp p2p or streaming will slow it down dramatically.

And whilst 3 Mbps may be adequate to cope with surfing and emailing, bear in mind that, for instance, a 700 MB CD will take about 31 minutes to transfer at 3 Mbps - you won't want to be moving large files about on such a network.

Thank you Kyomii and Xris. It seems to me that I have completely misunderstood what a Laptop with a g wireless as against b, is all about. As mentioned previouslly my main reason for getting it was beacuse there are times I have to connect to the internet to use the webcam where I have no cable connection to use. I am not convinced that the general public understand this as I clearly did not, it seems as though it is a good selling point but not very well understood. You only have to read about wireless speed and it is all about getting the 54 speed and even faster, if as you point out it has no benefit as far as internet is concerned there seems very little if anything to gain, except as you say between two computers.

So from what you have said, the speed of wireless connection is NO SLOWER than a cable connection? This really is something new to me as I have Always certailnly understood that it is. But I can see your point about if using a 2Meg speed and that is the limit, it does not matter if it is cable or wireless the speed can still be the same? However, I guess the advantage of cable over wireless is you get a better quality connection with not so much lost on the way? For many years I was involved with Video Editing and I well recall that it was drumbed into us that a Wireless connection is much slower than cable!!

I have certainly learnt a great deal from this posting and thank you all. I hope the subject is continued as I always want to learn more about what I am working with. It does now seem to me that I had just as well stay with what I have at least for the present. If I change providers ie say Orange to BT so I can get at least 6Meg they will provide free the equipment which is all g wireless, time will tell!!

All the best, ronnieG

By and large, I'd agree with kyomii that the wireless speed isn't too important. Or it hasn't been but now we have adslmax (up to 8 Mbps) and ADSL 2+ (24 Mbps), these can both outperform 11b (on the face of it, 11 Mbps is faster than 8 Mbps, but I wanted to point out that in practice you don't get all of that notional 11 Mbps with 11b wifi).

It comes down to what you want to do with your network Some users of this forum are putting in gigabit Ethernet which supports, yes, 1000 Mbps. This is important only if you are routinely moving large files, or have a lot of traffic. Most of us cannot justify it.

I currently have 4 visitors sharing a 54g router connection and they're all quite happy. At least one of the adapters in use is only 11b, so I'm not actually sure whether the wlan is running at "54g" or "11b" speeds. But everyone's happy, so I don't care too much.

In my case. my broadband is 1.5 Mbps, so even the 3 Mbps that 11b manages would be more than enough (in most cases) to keep up with it. If you have anything above 2 Mbps adsl, then you probably need 54g wireless kit to ensure that your internal links can comfortably outpace the BB data. If you have adsl 2+, then 54g or above (mimo, 108 Mbps) is essential.

Apart from speed (I don't get my full line speed through my 11b wireless, about 3meg rather than 4.5meg) but the biggest difference is security 'b' generally only has WEP encryption whereas 'g' has WPA or more and is generally considered more secure.

Hi Ronnie

Sorry, paying work meant I didn't check back as soon as intended.

To clear your questions;
On your 2Mbit DSL connection, Internet performance will be the same regardless of connection between router and computer. Lan cable, and wireless b or g are all significantly faster than the connection to outside world so any one of them could saturate the DSL capacity.

Wireless G should give better performance than B (between your computers). Any PC - PC link will run at the speed of its slowest component, just as you can only drive at the speed of the car in front. In other words, if you upgrade the link (b to g, or wireless to cable) you should see a speed increase for transfers between computers around your home.

As at least one other poster has pointed out, you should also gain the benefit of WAP security rather than WEP (which is easy to crack). THis is actually important to you even if you think nobody is interested in your data, the key point is you won't risk providing free internet access to half the kids in the street.

You can use your laptop configured for both wired and wireless connections. I normally leave mine like this, I run on wirelss at home and around the office, and plugin a cable if I need to copy huge volumes to other computers on the network (this usually means gigabytes rather than megabytes).

Unfortunately this is unlikely to help your webcam if its working out over internet because the DSL link is the likely bottleneck and still runs the same speed. The only help I can suggest here is to compare existinf wireless (11Mbit) and wired (100Mbit) connections to router with webcam, and prove by experiment whetther the wireless is pulling it down. If there's no difference you need to check settings, memory available, processor speeds, and maybe consider more efficient software. If you have 2 webcams you could also duplicate the test within your lan, to show how much impact is due to the slower intyernet connection.

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Paul