Cheap 802.11n wireless router
Posted by Frugal on December 5th, 2007
Last night my wireless router is down. I had to connect my laptop directly thru ethernet physically to the wireless router, in order to get onto the internet and blog. Today’s post is therefore late than usual.
I spend some time shopping for wireless routers, and found a really good deal at target.com for the latest and greatest 802.11n router. It’s a D-link 802.11n router, and it’s only $40. If anyone is thinking of getting a new router, this N router is as cheap as other G/A/B router.
For those who are not familiar with 802.11 wireless technologies, 802.11b is the slowest. 802.11g is faster than 802.11b and the most common choice now. 802.11a is the least compatible and rare. And the new 802.11n is about 5X faster than 802.11g, and will be the next generation wireless technology for everyone’s home. Using 802.11n, one can probably transfer big files wirelessly at a very fast speed. More importantly, I believe in the next 2 to 3 years, you can watch HD TV wireless “everywhere” in your home. The speed of 802.11n is sufficiently to support multiple MPEG2 HD quality channels (not to mention that if you use MPEG4, you get more than double of that). There are still difficulties for wireless TV due to potential intermittent transmission quality. However, I think those problems can easily be solved, if you simply buffer a lot of video by combining the storage capacity of the hard disk from your PVR (personal video recording) system with 802.11n.
Anyway. It’s probably too much tech talk for someone simply looking for a cheap router. And in case if you are interested in the main companies who provide these wireless technologies, they are ATHR, BRCM, MRVL, listed in alphabetical order. I don’t advise buying any of those high-tech stocks however. But if you think of buying them, you may choose ATHR which is a very focused and strong player. Their design seems to be some 40% better in terms of cost than the competitors.
By the way, I wouldn’t worry so much about the “draft” N. 802.11n has been around for at least 1.5 years now, that I think any shipping products should be like 98% compatible with the final approved standard, if not 100%.
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December 5th, 2007 at 10:47 am
11b is rated at 11 megabits/sec, 11g 54 megabits/sec, 11n 300 megabits/sec. But these are purely marketing numbers. In my own experience, 11g is twice as fast as 11b and 11n is twice as fast as 11g. Nowhere near 5X that they advertise on the box. I did my testing with the router and client in the same room.
$40 is a great price for a brand-name 11n router though although you can easily beat that if you go with the Airlink’s at Fry’s. Airlink is a Fry’s in-house brand.
December 5th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
I never understood why most households would need the speed that the new 802.11n provides. Your internet connection is likely limited to something like 4 Mbit/s. So unless it is several times that limit, or you communicate wirelessly with servers on your home network, or do multi-PC gaming wirelessly on your home network, you will never be able to use more speed than 802.11g offers. Did I miss something?
December 6th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
One day (possibly soon) you can play your archived video on your home computer hard-drive wirelessly on your TV with a single push of remote control button. But of course, you will need 802.11n for that.
It’s actually doable today. And obviously I don’t understand why they’re not available yet.