It is not a brilliant router as it still relies on 100mbs
Ethernet. Should I look to upgrade this item first?
On 01/11/2018 20:51, Richard Brown wrote:
Hi Again
I think I ought to add.... I know about B, G and N. After that what
should I consider. If 300mbs is slow, what would now be a good wifi
speed please? Do I look at security with the card or should that be
locked down by the router? When I look at this page by Amazon:
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_nr_n_1?fst=as%3Aoff&rh=n%3A430513031%2Ck%3Awifi+card&keywords=wifi+card&ie=UTF8&qid=1541105021&rnid=1642204031
It has a confusing array of cheap and not so cheap cards including the
one I bought that is actually Amazon's choice!
Cost/benefit ratio analysis time!
Take stock of what your usage model is, what wireless standards your
existing gear supports and what you plan to utilise it for over the next
few years. For example I personally want absolute maximum firepower,
every single possible bell and whistle and enterprise level features
over an entire property with a lot of stuff connected. Budget for me is
obviously an issue but as this is a once every decade sort of event
complete with running cables through walls and installing a patch panel
and so on, budget is secondary to pretty much everything else. I do
_not_ want to have to repeat this in 18 months because I half arsed it.
Additionally I'm expecting to have AC wifi gear capable of over 1Gbps
before long, to pump multiple simultaneous 4K streams, run continuous
backups and a whole lot more.
You're probably not looking for quite the same level of kit. If the new
wifi unit is just to connect your workstation to your existing router
(which quite possibly only runs at 300Mbps anyway, although I'd hope
not) in the same room and you see it providing more than enough
throughput for your needs in the foreseeable future then you know what?
Maybe you genuinely just don't need to overthink this or spend excessive
cash. Having a good muse over what you actually want/need from your gear
before pulling the trigger on buying it is a really good idea to get
everything straightened out in your head beforehand. Speaking personally
I'm a but rubbish at this and tend to get really bogged down in the
technical minutiae...
So don't worry too much about every single detail, just define what is
you want first and _then_ go shopping for it afterwards (basically the
opposite of what I usually do). Check your router first of all to see
just what it's capabilities are and unless you want to rip that out and
replace it as well or add an extra AP, that'll inform your decision more
than anything else. Linux compatible USB wifi adapters fortunately
aren't expensive so you can afford to future proof a little bit without
breaking the bank though.
Security happens elsewhere in the stack so don't worry about that either
(other than avoiding crappy manufacturers with bad reps for updating
and/patching vulns - like TP-link for example).
Feel free to post your exact router model if you like so we can check
it's capabilities.
Cheers
PS: that card would have worked out of the box for Windows users to be
fair: bear that in mind when retailers blithely promise great support
and driver compatibility - they don't mean for us dirty Linux users :|
