HD200/300 and Wireless N Question

[BobbyDing]

Hi folks,
I have an HD200 (soon to add a 300) which I use as an extender and sometimes stand alone. It is presently wired through my router and works great. Because of the lightning in my area at times (Florida, and the SageTV server is on OTA antennas), I thought I would try going wireless for the extenders to add some isolation in case of a hit. I've purchased the Encore USB n device from Sage, and as expected it chokes on HD content because my present router is only g. I want to upgrade the router to an n. Or add another n router just for the extenders.

So my first question is, if I replace my g with an n router, will the Encore connect to an n router at n speeds even though I have other devices in the house that are still g (wii, PS3, etc..)? In other words, will a decent n router mix g and n faithfully, or will the router default to the slower g because all the other devices are connecting at g speeds?

Second question... I thought about attaching an n router to an available connector on the g router (which is the main router for the house) and use the n as a dedicated AP for the HD200/300 connections only. Is this feasible? If so, would I need to open some or all of the n routers ports so the sage server can be seen by the n devices? Hope that makes sense.

Thanks for any help,

Bobby

[Protoman]

Wireless will go as fast as the slowest speed client that is connected to it. So yes your N speed clients will go as fast as G speeds when a G client is active. This is also true for wireless B as well.

The best suggestion I have seen is from smallnetbuilder.com and he suggested having two different wireless networks one of G clients and one for N clients.

When my power supply on my previous router died (DGL-4300) I took the opportunity to upgrade. I upgraded to the Netgear WNDR3700, which has dual band (B/G/N and A/N) and two radios (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz). The B/G/N network is used by my laptops. the A/N network is used by my D-Link DAP-1522 and D-Link DWA-160 Rev. B1, which are both used for my Sage Extenders 2 HD200 and a HD300.

So with this setup everything is happuly running at its full potential.

Hope this helps,
Protoman

[BobbyDing]

Thanks for the reply. I'll got check out smallnetbuilder.com. I'm thinking now of getting a new router and setting it up as a WAP (no DHCP), attached to my present router. This should give me both g (via main router) and n (new WAP). And the Sage server should be readily available at the WAP for the extenders to use (?). At least that's what I'm hoping for.

I'll see what smallnetbuilder.com has that may help too.

Thanks Again !

Bobby

[BobbyDing]

Just adding an update should anybody else have similar questions in the future. I ended up purchasing a Netgear WNR3500L because it's easy to update the firmware to Tomato or dd-wrt in the future. I set it up as an wireless access point (link to how-to below) and connected it to an available port on my Linksys. Now I use the Netgear for Sage devices using n, and all the remaining devices (wii, ps3, laptops) that use g connect to my Linksys. Works great.

Thanks!

http://forum1.netgear.com/showthread.php?t=3301

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by Protoman

Wireless will go as fast as the slowest speed client that is connected to it. So yes your N speed clients will go as fast as G speeds when a G client is active. This is also true for wireless B as well.

For the record, this is not technically correct. Different types of clients can run on the same access point, and still send frames at their respective speeds (i.e. 802.11n clients on 802.11n routers will still sent 802.11n speed frames).

However, there are a couple of situations that will impact performance of the faster clients:

1. Shared media access: Any given non-overlapping channel can only have one device transmitting at a time, and slower devices take much longer to transmit the same ammount of data. So, faster clients have to wait longer if slower clients are transmitting. This isn't a big deal for 802.11n clients since they can cram multiple frames together into an "aggregate frame", and largely alleviate the bandwidth loss by effectively sending more data once they get their turn.

2. 802.11b protected mode: 802.11b devices can't "hear" 802.11g or 802.11n frames on the air, so they will freely transmit on top of them (and corrupt them). To prevent this, access points will go into a protection mode where the preface every transmission with a CTS (clear-to-send) packet sent at 802.11b rates so the 802.11b clients know to shut up and not transmit on top of the upcoming data.


#1 only comes into play if the clients are actively transmitting and therefore using the air. #2 comes into play by the mere presence of 802.11b clients on the access point, or on neighboring access points.


If you don't have any 802.11b in the house it should work fine. Most modern access points will do some sort of "air-time-fairness" priority queuing, which will give the faster clients priority over slower clients.

Keep in mind, your neighbors network will affect you the same way. I greatly prefer 5GHz for WiFi because there is almost no interference, but it has less "reach" than 2.4GHz.

[oajungen]

Originally Posted by Protoman

Wireless will go as fast as the slowest speed client that is connected to it. So yes your N speed clients will go as fast as G speeds when a G client is active. This is also true for wireless B as well.

The best suggestion I have seen is from smallnetbuilder.com and he suggested having two different wireless networks one of G clients and one for N clients.

When my power supply on my previous router died (DGL-4300) I took the opportunity to upgrade. I upgraded to the Netgear WNDR3700, which has dual band (B/G/N and A/N) and two radios (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz). The B/G/N network is used by my laptops. the A/N network is used by my D-Link DAP-1522 and D-Link DWA-160 Rev. B1, which are both used for my Sage Extenders 2 HD200 and a HD300.

So with this setup everything is happuly running at its full potential.

Hope this helps,
Protoman

Do I understand that the HD200 or HD300 is compatible with the D-Link DWA-160 at it's usb port? If so I am going to buy a dual-n adapter for the HD300.

[Protoman]

I have tested the DWA-160 Rev. B1 on both the HD200 and HD300 and I am able to stream Blu-Ray from my WHS Server. The key is to have Rev. B1 due to the chipset that is in it.