OT: Wireless--and a vendor NOT to use.

[Fairlight]

Hullo,

You know, a few years back I got a D-Link card in my last system and a
matching D-Link wireless router.  I've always had a real problem with
latency, whether it's just typing on the LAN, or going outbound to games.

Just put in a new server, and I had a Linksys card put in it.  I tested it
at three locations with hotspots, and I -knew- it was good and rock solid.
Got it home, and again with the latency issues.

Only now games like Call of Duty 4 and Crysis are really ultra-picky about
latency (and it doesn't even help WoW or just plain typing in ytalk across
the LAN when a half a line shows up at once after lag).  I had finally had
enough.  I thought, "Okay...new Linksys card, proven good at three
locations over two weeks.  Home...bad latency bursts.  Might be the
router."

Last night I bought a DIR-615 in the vain hope that it would improve.
Managed to get the signal up to 4 of 5 bars and 54Mbit, but even with that
-not changing-, the router had issues--the log wasn't displaying after the
firmware upgrade, and it swore it had different numbers for my connection
rate than my PC was telling me.  PC said 54, router claimed 24, which was
rubbish.

I also noticed that with the Linksys card, I had no problems using the
Linksys wireless monitor at hotels, but at home on D-Link routers I had to
disable that and turn it over to WinXP's monitor.  Something didn't add up.

I just got a lovely Linksys WRT54GR, and I can say that the latency issues
have been cut by 99.9% given what I've seen in the last hour and a half.
Stronger signal, consistent 54Mbit, and best of all--I've only had -two-
incidents of that latency, and it was for probably under 1/30th of a
second, compared to up to 5 second with the D-Link, which would do this
roughly 30-50 times in the same period.  And I'm back to using the Linksys
monitor, as well.

Seems to me that if you have a Linksys card and you can't use the Linksys
monitor (what happens is that you'll connect to the access point but be
unable to route IP traffic -at all-), it's a red flag.  That's an educated
guess based on my experiences to date.

But I -can- say that the Linksys performance blows away both D-Link routers
I had.  About the only minor nit is that the firewall was a bit more
versatile in the D-Links.  For the performance boost, I'll live!

Still...if I can save anyone a headache, there you go.  This stuff'll drive
you mad, I swear.  I'd just avoid D-Link from here on out, myself.

mark->
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