Wireless router upgrade ideas

I'm hoping for some knowledge on upgrading my Verizon westell 7501 model.

My PS3 is wirelessly connected..it works just always wanted something not standard.. to see if I get any better performance.

Any thoughts on a <$50 range..?

I have very low knowledge of this area. I'm a plug and play here, but I can access the router via IP, and set up some configs.

Thank you-

I'm pretty much in the same boat, except my router is from linksys. (it was about $50 back when I purchased it)

you connect to it on a wired connection through IP (unless you allow for wireless access)

I don't think there's much better than you can with in $50 range. The only upgrade that is worth while today is to get the wireless N router, but with only my new laptop being capable of using the band, it's not worth the money for me.

oh yeah, I've heard these are very handy if you don't want to use wireless. Don't know if they got any cons.

see the funny thing I find about these numbers people give 54mbps and 20 mbps (I've seen anywhere from 10 to 27.5 being stated as "realistic" ) but the problem is I've never seen a wireless download speed higher than 2mbps, sure speedtest.net might tell me otherwise, but I tend to only care if it's extremely small. If my connection gets rated anywhere above 1500kbps upload you should have little trouble.

I'm currently in the process of upgrading my router. I went down the Linksys WRT54GL path.

The wireless coverage seems to be far better then my old netgear dg834g and as I've installed Tomato on it I can boost it even more should I feel the need.

Right now I'm configuring the QoS which if successful should allow me to upload to youtube while gaming online without my ping increasing.

You will NEVER see 6.75MBps on a wireless G router. 54mbps is the theoretical MAX. There is quite a bit of overhead in transferring wirelessly. As you should have some form of WPA encryption setup, that add overhead. The wireless packets also add overhead. So when it comes down to it I believe the realistic max flutters around 20mps. I think that also depends on whether it is TCP or UDP traffic. TCP traffic would probably be less than 20mbps. So even at 20mbps that is only 2.5MBps. There you have it, why you don't see more than 2MBps.

BTW, Steam uses MBps. I watched it download about 5 new games I purchased over the holidays.

Sure thing. Those wireless router upgrade usually are driven by your internet connection. A good way to test is connect your machine to the switch portion of the router and test your downloads. Then run it wirelessly. I currently only have a 6mpbs without speedboost Comcast connection so the wireless G really doesn't hinder it. However, a while back I had the 6mbps with speed boost and I was testing with speakeasy.net. My connection on my PC was 22mpbs, and my wireless laptop was only 16mbps. It wasn't a big deal to me, but just an example.

The biggest thing you might see with wireless is response time and latency. Going through another device (wireless access point portion of your router) would introduce more latency. Wireless also depends on distance and obstructions. It may have to resent packets if it is not received. This will probably only be an issue for multiplayer online games if you are a distance or have thick walls between you and your wireless point.

looks nice, one thing to keep in mind, wireless N requires all devices to be compatible with it in order to work. if you got wireless G devices, then it will run all devices on wireless g. (it can't switch from g to n and back selectively for each device) That's what i've read back when wireless N first appeared on horizon