Questions wireless routers and 2.4ghz

I'm getting the Linksys wireless router for the N-draft, but need a few things answered.

First off, is it portable? The router that is. I am the only one using the router at my home and sometimes I spend the night at other peoples houses who don't have wireless. I would like to be able to bring the router with me (since it is fairly small) and just get wireless at any broadband-able house. Would this require me to set up a connection every time or will the computer remember that the router was used before and just reconfigure.

Also, I have lot of wireless gear. I have a wireless mouse, wireless controller, and a wireless headset which all run on 2.4 ghz. Will these devices interrupt or affect my wireless networking in any way?

Oh, one more. I understand that the wireless router will automatically set itself to the lowest supporting device. My computer run on ethernet, so will this affect the wireless N output? Nothing else should be running on the router other than my laptop, but the modem may be linked to several systems.

Thanks in advance

 

Portable? I would say yes, there should be no problem with your router talking to the wireless cards as its configuration is stored in memory. My concern would be actually setting up for other people's homes. Depending on how they get their access, you would may need to set your router to bridge with a DSL modem or act as an access point to an existing network.

You will definitely get interference in the 2.4 Ghz band. You can try changing channels (6 seems to be the default, but you can go to 1 or 11). Or if you get a dual-band router, going up to the 5 Ghz band.

Depending on how your network is set up, the lowest speed could be the limiting factor. 100 Mbits/s ethernet is standard, slower than the 600 Mbit/s max of 802.11n. Getting a Gigabit router and making sure all your connections are gigabit could help. In all fairness though, your actual Internet connection would probably be a lot slower anyway, so that would be the pretty much the limiting factor anyway.

 

Yes its portable. If your friends have an router or switch thats already connected to the internet, you can piggypack your router in to that for WIFI. You might need to change abit of settings in your router though. After all thats done, you just have to connect to your router normally which should already be automatic since youve logged into it before.

The 2.4ghz spectrum has a alot of channels devices can use. Though its possible they could interfere with each other causing you to drop out intermittently.

 

Forget the "Draft N" tag - IEEE is going to finalize and release it in 2009 so it's all but finished anyway.

You need to understand about what "lowest supporting device" means, and the difference between using your Ethernet port vs. a wireless adapter as a couple of your statements lead me to believe you might be confused on how Routers, adapters and Ethernet connections apply to each other in the grand scheme of networking.

Lowest Supporting Device generally applies to wireless devices. Even though a user might have a Router with the latest wireless standard available, it will only process a given system's connection at the system's wireless adapter lowest wireless standard speed. For example, if you have an N router and an adapter with wireless B/G capability, G adapter, the best you can hope to get out of the system with the G adapter is G speeds of 54mbps, even though the Router is capable of processing much higher N speeds of 200mbps +. In this example, the "lowest supported device" is the G standard adapter, as it's the device with the lowest speed. If you apply this to an Ethernet connection (which is slower) it becomes the LSD, but has no bearing on the wireless function of the Router as it's not using the radio - it's connecting via hardwire.

Ethernet and Wireless - There are 2 standards in networking: 802.3, which is Ethernet (wired) and 802.11, which is wireless. You can only be connected through one conduit at a time, either wired or wireless. If you're connecting your system to your Router via Ethernet cable using your Ethernet port, you're not using the wireless function of the Router at all. To answer your question, it has no bearing on the wireless function of the Router because it's a different way of connecting your system altogether. The only way you can use both wired and wireless functions simultaneously is if you have a media adapter - media / gaming adapters are different from regular wireless adapters in that they plug in directly to the system's Ethernet port, but connect wirelessly to the Router. I use them in my network.

To access the Router via wireless you have to use a wireless adapter, normally installed in most laptops today. While you can use the adapter that comes with the system, you'll never get the same performance as using an adapter that's matched to your Router. Wireless is faster BTW - most people don't believe or don't know that, but it's true. Radio moves at lightspeed, where wired connections are limited by how fast electrons can move through a conductor, and many things can affect that speed.

As far as your wireless devices go, they're designed not to interfere with your primary wireless connection (the signal is low since they're literally within a foot or two of the system), whereas the signal between a Router and system adapter is stronger due to the possible distances they may be separated from each other. In any event, N devices use both 2.4 and 5ghz overlapped.

Modems aren't designed to connect to several devices at once, unless they're combination modem/router units, in which case the connections are via the router anyway. You seem to think you have several devices hooked to your modem and only your laptop hooked to your router wirelessly, but from what you've stated everything is connected to your Router via Ethernet and nothing is connect wirelessly. Ethernet connections usually take priority over wireless unless otherwise set in the Network properties of the system.

Also, never assume that your own systems are the only ones connected to your network. Unless you're using encryped security or MAC filtering and do an occasional check, there's always the possibility of some ratfink kid stealing bandwidth from you to cruise p-orn sites. Also the reverse is true - as I've stated many times around here unless you specifically use a unique SSID, you run the risk of connecting to a neighbor's network who has no clue about encrypted security or how to change the SSID on his Router.

Yes, your router is portable, but your location isn't. Just because you might have good performance at home doesn't mean you'll experience the same if you set it up elsewhere. You have no way of knowing what kind of interference you may encounter at another location, or how connecting to a friend's broadband service might affect his own network. Before bringing it along, you need to check first to see if it's okay to do so.

There's a good networking tutorial on the Linksys site that might help you to understand networking better. It's at this URL: http://tinyurl.com/7tpyyy