Help aino choose his wireless adapter!

[Ainokeatoo]

Alright hello everyone, it's that time of year, I need a new wireless adapter, and when I say I need, I mean desperately. Well, maybe not so much, but still.

Anyways, I need a lot of help in choosing a good and fast wireless adapter since as of now, according to a number of electronic store employee's, my connection to the interwebs. Basically, with lack of better words, sucks.

I'm using a Linksys Wireless-G game adapter, that by my knowledge, is one of the, if not "the" slowest wireless adapters out to date. This is followed up by the fact that it's description is said to be used for the original xbox, gamecube, and PS2.

Adapter Description. (http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=w8x&q=Linksys+wireless+g+game+adapter&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=803276493043237495&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&resnum=4&ct=result#ps-sellers)

It's not that it does not do what it is supposed to, but! It does not do what it's supposed to do, fast enough. So far, the max download speed I get is around 200kbps and this is my speed test.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/376061139.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

That is the fastest my internet goes, 1600 kbps download and 400 kbps upload, and that is to the closest server to me, the one located in my town.

Now i've looked at some of the newer wireless adapters.

Linksys WMP300N Wireless-N PCI Adapter (http://shop2.frys.com/product/4826750#detailed)
D-Link DWA-552 Xtreme Wireless-N PCI Desktop Adapter (http://shop2.frys.com/product/5005025?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG)
D-Link DWA-556 PCI-Express Xtreme N Dekstop Adapter for PCI Express Slot Motherboards (http://shop2.frys.com/product/5164076?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG)


Now, I want to avoid a PCI as much as I can, the above are just a few that I can remember/find. So if someone can help me choose, or if you can find me an adapter that can do what the above can, and that is much better than the wireless G adapter i'm using for both my xbox and PC. It'd be most appreciated.

[SamSmith]

Could it be that your actual broadband is just sub-par?

I use a fairly cheap but adequate USB wireless thingy, stick it in, and usually holds a steady 50+ MBPS.

[ll Mista GT ll]

As far as I know, only the Microsoft Wireless adapter works on the 360. If this is not 360 related, its better to post it in the Tech area in the OTL.

[l Maximus l]

There's obviously something wrong with your adapter if your ISP provides faster speeds. I had the same problem with a Netgear router and bought a new Linksys router and the problem was fixed. I use the latest Wireless N router.

But, instead of using a wireless adapter on my 360, I have it hard wired into my 360. The wireless portion is used for my laptop computer which has a Wireless N card.

I have a room dedicated to playing vids...I even had the cable company install a new jack so I can play in that room and have the router hard wired. It just seems to me that nothing can beat a hard-wired set up in my experience. I'm a believer in wireless; however, XBox Live uses an enormous amount of data that needs to get from the router to your 360 and it seems to me that packet loss is an inevitable issue.

[Ainokeatoo]

There's obviously something wrong with your adapter if your ISP provides faster speeds. I had the same problem with a Netgear router and bought a new Linksys router and the problem was fixed. I use the latest Wireless N router.


Well I am using a wireless G router and since I have a desktop without a PCI card installed it's basically brand new and I haven't had the money to go out and get a wireless adapter/PCI until now. The wireless g gaming adapter I use for both my computer and my xbox *have to unplug one to play the other* is very old, as in, I used to use the thing for my original xbox. In my area I have the fastest internet provider that I can get here, and I do know that hard wire is much better than wireless but since i'm far away from the router that's not an option.


But, instead of using a wireless adapter on my 360, I have it hard wired into my 360. The wireless portion is used for my laptop computer which has a Wireless N card.

I would do that if i had the power to lol.



I have a room dedicated to playing vids...I even had the cable company install a new jack so I can play in that room and have the router hard wired. It just seems to me that nothing can beat a hard-wired set up in my experience. I'm a believer in wireless; however, XBox Live uses an enormous amount of data that needs to get from the router to your 360 and it seems to me that packet loss is an inevitable issue.

Oh I know all of that lol, I don't mind wireless because it is only once in a very very big while that I ever lag on my 360 and even on games that my computer can play. I just need the connection on my computer to the internet, and my connection to my 360 to my computer to be faster if it's at all possible with buying a wireless N or higher adapter.


Could it be that your actual broadband is just sub-par?


Well I wouldn't know how to answer that, what would be considered sub-par? And how would I find this out? Because I have one of the best internet providers in my local area "Cox".


I use a fairly cheap but adequate USB wireless thingy, stick it in, and usually holds a steady 50+ MBPS.

I opened up my "Local Area Connection Status" It says the speed is 100.0 MBPS.

[Reclaimer]

I opened up my "Local Area Connection Status" It says the speed is 100.0 MBPS.

That's just the transmission speed between your computer and your router. That's all.

For your 360? Just shell the extra 30 bucks and get the Xbox 360 adapter. Yes it's USB and theoretically any USB wi-fi adapter will fit in there but the space is relatively tiny around that back USB slot. I have a few USB adapters for some older laptops and nothing would fit in the allotted space because the plastic piece back there gets in the way.

Plus.. with the 360 adapter you'll know it will work period, all the time. A bit
over priced but whatever.

Using a wired ethernet adapter that plugs into an antenna box like the old Xbox wi-fi adapter sometimes causes network problems. Not all the time but your router sees your Xbox and the antenna as two separate devices.
Conflicts occur.. seldom.. but possible. At least I saw some trouble with the Xbox wi-fi adapter on the original Xbox because of IP conflicts between my Linksys router and that set up.

As for your PC? Get the same name-brand and same model family as your router. Usually works well that way. On my desktop I have a Linksys PCI wi-fi card that matches my Linksys WRT54G Router.
No problems.

Yes, you don't want PCI.. find the USB alternative that matches your router.

[Ainokeatoo]

I see, so, the obvious question, at least to me is. Would having a Wireless N or N+ Adapter/PCI boost my internet any faster than it is now? Would it be by a lot? And what do you reccomend?

[Reclaimer]

I see, so, the obvious question, at least to me is. Would having a Wireless N or N+ Adapter/PCI boost my internet any faster than it is now? Would it be by a lot? And what do you reccomend?

Yes and no.

Here's the deal. Well, lets look at it in my case.
I get 5megs down and 2 up for internet connection speeds.
Wireless "G" operates at 54 megs per second from the router to whatever device I'm using.
That means my Wi-Fi G devices that can access the internet have up to 54 megs of overhead per second before I start to see a bottleneck and performance issues.

But since I only can get 5 megs down per second from my ISP, I have nearly 9 times the bandwidth allocated to whatever device I'm using that is not being able to be used.

Get it?

Theres more to this but simply put.. N is over kill. Way over kill.. but I'll get to that.

What helps with the wireless N thing is that you can access other resources on your network very fast. Much faster than wireless G.
I have no wired devices on my wireless G network. Therefore in this example my desktop and notebook which have a common shared hard drive for archive storage, can only move data back and forth at 54 megs per second in a perfect world. Which doesn't really happen for a lot of reasons but in theory that is what you should think.

Pay the extra money and get new equipment for Wireless-N if you plan to have a network that you want multiple computers to talk to each other and share files with each other.
The good thing about "N" is that it has a better range. So if you're prone to interference or plan to cover a large area and you want fewer dead zones, go for N.

But in terms of gaming with your 360, getting an external device that supports wireless N shouldn't be a concern because you'll never take advantage of all the bandwidth it gives you. Even with wireless G you're still up there fine.

It just depends on what you want to do. Get N if you want to run a big network and move big files around between machines or you plan to cover a large amount of area.
Stay with G because it's cheaper and you're just concerned about gaming and only dealing with one or two other computers on a network.

[Ainokeatoo]

lol I got my wireless N PCI card, and fortunately I love it, I actually found that my card would go over the 200 KBPS cap that my old wireless G used to not be able to do what so ever. It wasn't a whole lot over max was 220 KBPS, but that's only because i'm still using the wireless G wireless router, so I know it has the capability of going faster than 200 kbps should I upgrade *and I will soon* to wireless N router.

Driver and application set-up was a bit dicey (Using the Linksys Rangeplus PCI and despite it saying that it's vista compatible, it's not so it kept freezing up my computer until I found I had to run it in compatible with windows xp sp2 but it's all good) but once everything got working and such, i've been zooming along no problems so far. Thanks rec, and I found that range plus linksys is basically the same as wireless N ultra rangeplus and twenty bucks cheaper.