netgear RangeMax Wireless-N?

i am planning to buy a wi-fi router for my home. the main idea is to share net connection between my PC and 3 laptops. i want to share it between two floors.. i have net connection and 4th floor and want to share on laptops on 5th.. the floor height is approx. 14' (14 feet) and the building is concrete and old stones.. i tried with lniksys router of my office. i had to keep the router on the window pane on 4th floor. on the 5th floow, i got the signals only near the window with 1 bar only. so i was thinking of buying netgear RangeMax Wireless-N . i dont know whether it will work or not and whether it is good series.

your suggestions are appreciated.

thanx a million in advance...

Giancarlo2009-10-12T06:20:32Z

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Here's the deal, wireless G, goes further than wireless N. hands down... way further, it even goes through walls better. But Wireless N is a faster connection (when you're connected).

There are wireless N+G routers. that means that it broadcasts both ranges, but in no way does it mix them together together to make a better range.

Your best bet is to get a good wireless-G (let me tell you that linksys have become garbage, so don't get those) And get yourself some long range or high gain antennas. That will give you the furthest possible coverage. It's not the speed, it's the range of distance covered that you need to worry about.

Peopl are telling you textbook definitions. straight out of school. I'm telling you what's really gonna happen. I have G & N both running from the same spot (second floor). Wireless N doesnt work on the first floor, it works only on the second. Wireless G works on the 1st and second floor, with a much better range. It's the same the Netgear RangeMax, and another AT&T IPFLEX wifi router in my office.
Oh yea we also have Wireless G set up all across the warehouse with repeaters, and hard core antennas, because N doesn't reach the barcode scanners, even with good antennas.

I've been hearing that backwards compatibility story since 2005... it's not happening.

Get the N. try it, it won't work, then return it and get the G that you an put a good antenna on it.

bludger12009-10-12T13:49:04Z

802.11N *does* have much better speed AND range than 802.11G. When not used in in mixed mode (all clients have N adapters) the router can use MIMO (multiple in, multiple out) encapsulation to gain its stronger signals.

The typical range of G is 35m
Where the range of MIMO N is 70m, so the N signal should be much more appropriate for you.

Keep in mind if you get a 5GHz N router then it is less prone to interference but has much shorter range.

I wouldn't really recommend a Netgear Rangemax though if I were you. I was using one myself for a while and after around 2 months it decided it would start dropping out. If it wasn't doing that then its DHCP server would go down.

Contrary to the other persons post, I would highly recommend a Linksys router (perhaps an all-in-one depending on your needs?). I am currently using one and it works really well. The only issue it has is that DHCP won't work on windows 7 (the router doesn't recognise a DHCP request packet that win7 sends). But setting a static IP fixes that quick enough.

So yeah, in short I would suggest a nice Linksys N router. They are a little more expensive that Netgear but they are worth it.

Hope I helped :)

Anonymous2009-10-12T13:31:43Z

Wireless N has a father range and better bandwidth than Wireless G. Don't listen to that dude below me.

If you can soft-mod your Wireless N Router with Tomato or DD-WRT then you can almost double your output and range with those custom firmware settings.


802.11n
The newest IEEE standard in the Wi-Fi category is 802.11n. It was designed to improve on 802.11g in the amount of bandwidth supported by utilizing multiple wireless signals and antennas (called MIMO technology) instead of one.

When this standard is finalized, 802.11n connections should support data rates of over 100 Mbps. 802.11n also offers somewhat better range over earlier Wi-Fi standards due to its increased signal intensity. 802.11n equipment will be backward compatible with 802.11g gear.

Tomato
http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

DD-WRT
http://www.dd-wrt.com/