I'm with BT at the moment who are charging me a fortune. So will need to change providers soon. I will also be moving all my PC gear into the small bedroom where there is no phone socket so it will have to be wireless only. I havnt changed providers for quite some time now so dont really know much about it, but are wireless speeds still drastically slower than cabled connections? If so do the speed differences between wireless and cabled vary between providers in anyones experience?
I'll want as fast a wireless connection as possible, i dont even know right now if my PC has wireless connectivity! its a well specc'd but quite old machine so might need something. Are there good wireless cards/dongles available that would maximise the connection between PC and router? I could always run a phone extention around the house from the downstairs phone socket but not sure if the distances involved would degrade the signal too much?
Anyway, not sure what the best solution would be right now for providers and bits that i need to buy. Any suggestions would be great
The second bedroom is pretty far away from where the router would be so it would mean a very long bit of cable running round the house.
With regards to the speed difference with cabled and WiFi. If, say, I pay for a 50Mb connection and the wireless is only 20Mb. Would the wifi still be 20Mb if I paid for a 20Mb connection or does the wireless speed scale down with the main speed? If you see what I mean. I just don't want to pay for a super fast connection if there is no point.
The walls are solid, no idea about the electrics.
Let's use water as an analogy.
Internet provider is like a tap. Wired cables is like a hosepipe. Wireless is like using your hands or a bucket to carry the water.
How fast the Internet provider offers (ie: 50Mb, 20Mb, etc) is like how much did you turn your tap on. The higher the figures (ie 50Mb) is like you turning the tap fully open, so you have fast flowing water. Lower figures (ie 20Mb) is like you turning the tap on a little, so you have a slow running water flow.
Using wired cable is like using hosepipe, all the water goes through the pipe, at the other end, you get the same amount of water as you get out of the tap.
Using wireless Wi-Fi is like using buckets to carry the water, you would have a chain of people passing buckets after buckets, but because there are doors and stairs and furniture in the way, those caused some people to spit some water as they try to pass it over the big sofa or the bucket gets knocked against the doorframe. You get a little less water coming, but still get the rest of the water coming, therefore slow to get all the water you paid for out of the tap, as well as missing a few drops.
Thus...
The further away your PC is from the Wi-Fi hub, the more walls, doors, floorboards the signal have to travel through (as well as what kind of walls and doors, ie: hallow plasterboard walls or thick brick walls) the signal had to go through.
Therefore: It is not the wireless equipment that scale down the speed, it is what is in the way (ie: walls, doors, floorboards) of the signal that scales down how much signal and speed.
Best bet is run an extension all the way from phone socket to bedroom, to get all the data coming through the cable, like hosepipe. But if this is not an option, then...
The trick is to run a phone extension but only to get the Wi-Fi hub to a good central point where you can cut down the number of 'gets in the way' things that slows down the signal.
For example, if your bedroom is at one end of the house on upper floor and the router is at the other end of the house on lower floor, you could have like 4 or 5 walls plus a floorboard, and a number of furniture in the way of the signal. But run an extension to the middle of the house, have the Wi-Fi in the hall, you could cut down to 2 or 3 walls, plus one wardrobe and a floor between your bedroom and the Wi-Fi.
Or run an extension to the room under your bedroom, you only have the floorboard getting in the way of the signal, thus lose only a little signal instead of too much signal.
The closer you get your Wi-Fi hub to your laptop, the better.