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[kitz]

>> I seem to remember some whinges about Broadcom and Vista

Forget to mention did try looking for some updated Vista drivers but didnt have much joy there either.
The card is actually BT one (freebie someone made a mistake)  but they are broadcoms.

[guest]

PM me with your address & I'll send you a couple of the old 10Mbps DLAN adaptors. They're never going to be used here again (we are now GigE on all wall ethernet sockets).

Provided your MCE box and the source is on the same ring main you'll get 8Mbps throughput which should be enough for anything bar HD. If you are doing (or trying) HD then wired is a pre-requisite IMHO as 802.11n (and associated QoS) is the attempt to get 2 HD streams running concurrently with wireless. I wouldn't put a penny on them ever getting it to work myself - in the lab/test facility then yeah of course. Real world? Hmmm.

Edit - the 10Mbps DLANs were better than 802.11g (54Mbps) I found. Obviously its not a patch on 100Mbps - or GigE as we have on our Terastations

[mr_chris]

With a bit of patience and a lot of energy, wired would be possible... I have some cable.. unfortunately it's bright blue, wouldn't exactly blend in if you left a little bit showing, would it!!

[guest]

Personally I just drill holes to the outside world and run the cables that way. We live in a detached house but on one side there's only 1.5m or so between us and the next house so I run cabling that way. You can only see it if you are down the side of the house and it's all 4m up the wall anyway so no probs about accidental damage.

I doubt kitz has either an SDS drill or a drill bit long enough for that though

[mr_chris]

lol... wouldn't be any good for this particular scenario anyway... she could always drill into next door's living room and run the cable through there

[guest]

Hmm. Do neither of you know a friendly sparky (electrician) then? If you give him the cable and ask him to pull the cable through the walls (but not do the wiring) then he ought to be charging no more than 50 quid. Money for old rope for him really as all he's doing is using his experience to find a way to route the cable. You guys can then crimp/terminate/whatever the cable in sockets as and when needed.

[kitz]

Its just unfortunate I guess - that of all the places in the house to actually  run some CAT 5 cable to it would be there.  I cant really re-locate - since media centre = under the tv.   I thought wireless would have been ok since it seems to be elsewhere in the house and the lappy does ok.
Theres no outside wall nearby - in a corner against the kitchen and next doors lounge.

Until I can test it with a length of CAT 5 then Im not sure yet if its a Vista thing or Vista/wireless card.  Using the arial extension thing it is better and now sees speeds at around 2-4 Mb, but it does sometimes fluctuate to even less.
Tried all the usual stuff - moving router around, changing chans, searching for drivers.  I'm not really moving much stuff to and from other PCs atm - but it obviously is something I'd like to do in the future.

CAT5 would have to go from this room up to the loft and then down between a cavity in the wall between mine and next door. Dunno which way you were thinking chris - otherwise down the stairs, hall, across/round the room to far corner.

btw pic - yeah I know need to sort the wires lol.. and the thing at the front sticking up front of the tv is the ariel extender for the wireless - thats the best position so if anyone touches it theyre dead.

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[guest]

2-4Mbps?

If that wasn't a typo then forget it. Really.

Edit - As always I assume people know things they have no need to. Apologies.


If you refer to your wireless connection as connecting at 2-4Mbps then halve the connection speed and then take 15% off that kitz. That will be what your connection can SUSTAIN. You will see far higher peaks but the connection will not sustain speeds above that.

Wi-Fi advertising simply proves that anything goes Like "unlimited" but lets not go there Again. and .....

[mr_chris]

I think 2 - 4 Mbps is sustained data transfer speed rather than the actual connection speed....

[kitz]

>> I think 2 - 4 Mbps is sustained data transfer speed rather than the actual connection speed....

correct.  Yet on the lappy in the same location I can easily get around 11Mbps.  The lappy will rock steady max out my adsl connection... as does Chris's lappy when round here.

[guest]

Good

Not that good though. Its not an acceptable rate for DivX/Xvid unless you NEVER FF or RW.

Really I think kitz your problems are bandwidth based.

Eg I have a Linksys bridge which will sustain 18Mbps and the family think FF/RW is rubbish. LAN speed = just works. Its obvious why when you think about how 802.11g works.

Edit - I guess maybe its not obvious. 802.11g = 54Mbps. Now divide by 2 = 27Mbps. Then take the wireless and TCP/IP overheads and you're down to about 24Mbps but of course then anyone can use your wireless connection so we must encrypt it. Ths results in a maximum throughput of about 21-22Mbps

[roseway]

In that situation I would use a powerline connection - no wires and no wireless problems. But of course it's not particularly cheap.

[guest]

Powerline stuff only really works it its all on the same ring main. Worth mentioning I feel.

[kitz]

I'd decided about a month or so ago that it was likely to be the best solution.

Re the same ring main... that obviously concerned me since like most households I have an upstairs and downstairs, and it was the first time Id heard mention of it.


Ive just been doing a bit of reading up and it doesn't always seem to clear.. but I have found many refs where people have used them successfully this way.  Digital spy has a good debate on them http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=477821

Its all a bit academic though right now and will have to wait as a few other things have priority :/

[guest]

Heh our house was built by morons. It is the only explanation as to why they split the ring mains down the middle of the house. Seriously there are two sockets in the hall and they are on seperate ring mains - I found this out the hard way

I have run the DLAN stuff on seperate ring mains but I lost 60% of the speed. It does radiate beyond your meter too, regardless of what they claim - maybe it doesn't in Germany but it does in the UK. No big problem really - unless lots of people are using them in your area I guess? Just like wireless in that respect probably.