[tb2]

I am about to purchase an upgrade for my 802.11b access point/router to a faster 802.11g unit to get quicker transfers over my lan. I will be using built in airport extreme on my 17" 1.33ghz Powerbook.

I was also thinking of getting a gigabit switch to speed up wired computers. Is there a combo I can find with an integrated 802.11g (or better) wireless access point and 4 (or more) port gigabit switch with router/firewall capabilities?

If there is not good unit as described above, what would you consider a good and inexpensive set of units? i.e. "Company Wireless AP123" & "Company Gigabit Switch Router/Firewall"?

Thanks for any input!

[ghporter]

I don't know of any gigabit wired/802.11g wireless routers. (I don't know everything, but I think I'd have seen something about such a "Gee Whiz" product.) You can find a lot of different "G" wireless routers that include a 100BaseT switch.

Speeding up connections between your wired computers, even computers with gigabit cards, doesn't take a (potentially very expensive) gigabit switch. You can realize big speed gains by just replacing your network cables with new, very high quality cables.

Go for Cat6 cables as close as possible to the length of run you need, or have them custom made to fit your needs (this is actually cheaper if you're getting several cables made). Most people don't realize that the basic cables you buy at the store can be anywhere from basic Cat5 to the highest quality Cat5; most people don't even look at the labels to see what spec the cable is.

[tooki]

Well, I don't think people should be buying el-cheapo anything, but if a cable meets Ethernet's signalling and interference-rejection needs, it will work at full speed. Anything beyond that will have null effect. Considering that Cat 6 isn't even an official standard yet (it's still a "proposed" standard), I don't think it's necessary, as no networking standards have yet to be designed with Cat 6 as a requirement! If the cable says on it "Cat 5", then it meets all common ethernet standards -- none of them (not even Gigabit) require Cat 5e, even! The only part where there may be a difference is the connector: not all places use Cat 5 rated connectors.

Obviously a damaged cable may cause speed problems (more likely, just general unreliability), and a higher-category cable will reject greater levels of interference, but I can't believe for a second that you will gain speed from using higher-cost cables than necessary.

If you already have decent cables in good shape, there's no need to replace them.

tooki

[ghporter]

Tooki,

I guess I've just run into poorer cables than you have. And in spite of what the package says, you can often find cables that don't really meet 568 A or 568 B standards. The cables that come packaged with home networking products are seldom marked to say they are verified to meet standards, and users often use them without thinking about how well they meet standards. I've actually seen a small network go from slow and laggy to pretty fast just by replacing "non-brand" jumpers with high quality, verified cables (throughout, of course).

I recommended Cat 6 cable only because it's starting to come down in price and it will usually meet (proposed) standard requirements; there aren't nearly as many hack-companies selling shoddy cable that says "Cat 6" on it as there are selling counterfeit "Cat 5" cable.

Of course you know me; I spout opinions pretty liberally. Given the same situation, I'd start by using benchmark tools to speed-test my network, then replace all cables I hadn't made myself (and maybe some that I had). If the next benchmark numbers didn't show enough improvement, I'd start looking at my switch.

[ginoledesma]

I haven't seen an 802.11g+GigE hybrid yet. The most "gee whiz" products I've seen so far (with regards to wireless) is the 108Mbps variants which require both card+AP (from same company) to work.

I jumped from b to g because I wanted faster file transfer, too. So far, my file transfer speeds (FTP/AFP/SMB) have gone from 600KBps (Netgear MR814v2) to 1.8MBps (Netgear WGR614v4). Good enough for me.

I don't have a GigE Mac, but I've seen a couple of workstations at work with GigE network cards in PCs. However, for the price that we got them (including the switch), they had better perform like that all the time. I don't know how the "cheap-o" NICs fare, but I doubt I'd be seeing dramatic improvements over 100BaseT.