802.11n is nice if you have 802.11n capable laptops AND you are transferring lots of large files intra-network (e.g. if you are doing some video editing or whatnot). For most folks who just do most of their traffic between their computer and the internet, regular ol 802.11g is more than enough. Although some 802.11n routers with good MIMO antennas can get better reach via rudimentary beamforming. This could be handy in certain houses with deadspots (although I doubt many people in Taiwan live in homes large enough for this to be a problem).
Trust me, the Buffalo 802.11n router I have only have two antennas and it’s not as good in that sense as the old router I had (which doesn’t work with my ISP) and had I know it was going to be an issue, I would’ve gotten another router at the time. I barely get a signal on the Xbox 360 upstairs and a wired connection isn’t an option.
I actually have an 802.11n PCIe WiFi card in my desktop and my GF’s notebook works with it, although not my own notebook, but I rarely use it.
Would rotating the router have any affect on the range? As you seem to know a fair bit about how the things work in terms of signal transmission.
It doesn’t have any external antennas, so getting more powerful antennas wouldn’t work either 
LostSwede, what model of Buffalo is that? Is that the N-Finity series?
Kenneth
It’s the WHR-G300N buffalo-technology.com/produ … ess-point/
Right now it’s mounted on a wall with the Ethernet ports pointing down towards the floor.
Thanks, guys. Only needed for one large room and no extras needed.
The first thing you should do is to move the router and the wireless clients away from any large metal objects (think metal desks, bookshelves, etc). Microwave ovens and 2.4GHz phones can also wreak havoc on 802.11bgn. You might also try seeing which bands are the most saturated. 802.11bgn is split into eleven bands, but only three bands are completely mutually exclusive: 1, 6, and 11. Generally I find 11 is the most unused band, since its the least common default in routers. Most stock router firmwares include a function for “site survey” or something which will let you see a list of all the surrounding wireless routers, the band they are operating on, and their signal-to-noise ratio.
With a linux firmware you could also up the transmit power on the antennas too. Although generally this doesn’t have as big an effect as moving the physical devices themselves. Some people build miniature parabolic dishes out of tin foil to do simple beamforming, but I think that’s going a bit too far.
Pretty much anything should work, don’t pay too much, NT$1000-1500 should be plenty.
PCI might have something for under NT$1000 that as long as you read chinese (or have someone flash it with an english firmware) will do the job just fine.
Thanks. That’s the info I need. 
NT$600 even 
shopping.pchome.com.tw/?mod=item … 6&ROWNO=38
I had that one before and it was easy to set up and worked well.
[quote=“djlowballer”]Custom firmware turns a 60$ linksis router into a 1000$ cisco router. You can do so much more once you have control.
In college we had a subnet for the compsci department that was granted open internet. We decided this was awesome and used WRT54 (and GL) with some other stuff laying about and made our own campus wireless that we could p2p and do other cool stuff on.
I have also melted my fair share of them seeing how much I could boost the transmit power.[/quote]
I’ve got a first-generation WRT54GS with removable antennas, 32MB RAM, 8MB ROM running TomatoVPN now. Great for tunnelling all my personal web traffic while at work and for having a U.S. IP address for visiting some sites. I’m going to be very very sad when/if it dies 
jashsu, I have to admit I was wrong… 
After various issues (like the router stopping to work all together after a couple of days) and having updated it with the Buffalo firmware twice (oddly enough the router worked better after the second round of flashing), I figured it was time to look for something else.
Tomato wasn’t available, but I found dd-wrt.com which works great with the Buffalo router I have. As you said, it’s easier to set up, has a better UI and provider more options (although I don’t need 90% of them). There’s even an option to boost the transmission strength from the router, so I’m getting slightly better signal strength now as well.
Well worth checking out for those that are a little bit more technically minded as the install procedure isn’t quite straight forward, albeit not very difficult either.
Can anybody help a complete computer idiot get his wireless router connected to the Internet?
I have an AirLive WL-8064ARM connected to my MacBook and my original D-Link DSL-5540C. The Internet cable goes into the D-Link and a cable goes from that to the AirLive. The Internet I’m using now is via Ethernet cable running from the AirLive.
I have an airport signal, but I can’t connect to the Internet via airport. I get green lights on everything but Internet and Server.
I’ve been trying to work out how to configure the web-based admin thingy using IP 192.168.1.1. But, to be honest, I’ve no idea what I should be doing once I’m in there.
Hope someone can help. Treat me stupid. Write like I’m dumb and never even seen a computer before. 
Part of the problem might be that your wireless router is actually an ADSL modem which complicates things.
First of all, is the D-Link a router or just a modem?
If it’s a router, then you should set up the AirLive in Bridge mode, as that will turn it into a wireless “bridge”. Check actual page 46 (PDF page 52) in the manual to see how to do that manual.ovislinkcorp.com/WL-8064ARM_Manual.pdf
From what you’re describing, it sounds like the D-Link acts as a router, since the AirLive doesn’t have a WAN port (the one that you would connect to a modem).
It would be easier to set this up with a router that wasn’t intended for ADSL usage, as you’d connect the WAN port from the router to the port on the D-Link. I don’t know if you can afford to get a new router, but it would make things much easier. The AirLive thing has a terrible UI judging by the manual and I’m not sure if it’ll work properly for what you want it to do. I guess it’s just acting as a network switch at the moment due to the lack of a WAN port. 
Thelostswede, you seem to understand routers very well. I was wondering if it was possible to connect the ADSL modem to a regular D-link router and then connect my SMC wireless router to Lan1 of the d-link router so that I won’t have to deal with the ADSL? I cannot for the life of me figure out how to setup ADSL on this wireless SMC router. I can configure the router so that it shows up on my wireless networks but I can’t seem to get internet through it.
I am thinking I can just connect the SMC wirless router so that I can run DHCP because I don’t understand this PPPoE for ADSL.
TheLostSwede, thanks so much for the very helpful response–I neglected to thank you earlier.
[quote=“PengTron”]Thelostswede, you seem to understand routers very well. I was wondering if it was possible to connect the ADSL modem to a regular D-link router and then connect my SMC wireless router to Lan1 of the d-link router so that I won’t have to deal with the ADSL? I cannot for the life of me figure out how to setup ADSL on this wireless SMC router. I can configure the router so that it shows up on my wireless networks but I can’t seem to get internet through it.
I am thinking I can just connect the SMC wirless router so that I can run DHCP because I don’t understand this PPPoE for ADSL.[/quote]
Well, it should work, as long as you can set the SMC router in “stupid mode” i.e. so that it just acts as a wireless bridge, as you can’t connect a router to a router so to say. PPPoE isn’t very hard to set up, you should just need a few settings, the user name and password. Hinet has some pretty stupid user names though, but I haven’t done set it up for over two years now (been using cable) so I can’t remember what settings it is you need to change… sorry…
sigh
Help, please. I’ve got a Zyxel router from Chuanghwa, and it’s playing silly games with me.
Has been for a while, but now it’s serious. Can’t connect with the Mini, neither via ethernet cable, nor wifi. Can only sometimes connect with the iPad. But the wife’s beastly Window’s laptop has no problems.
I’ve shut it down, rebooted, nothing’s working. It either hangs, and hangs, and hangs, or tells me that another devices is using that IP address. I renew the device’s lease… nada.
Suggestions?
Have CHT come and replace it…
That suggests that the computer you want to connect with is not set properly to get its IP address from the router via DHCP but set up in some way that it remembers (hangs on to) the IP address it had before instead of relinquishing it when being disconnected or turned off.