> Linksys or Netgear ...which is better? > Do I need "n" ? > What else?
I prefer Netgear over Linksys, but either will be fine. You can generally find good refurbed Netgear equipment on eBay. I've had very good results with Justdeals on eBay, who typically has a good supply of refurbed Netgear equipment, at a very nice discount over buying new. No duds yet. I have a "G" access point (NOT a router--my firewall is my router) and cards and that's fine with me. The MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output) variety tend to have better coverage than non-MIMO. I picked up a Level 1 internal MIMO wireless card for my desktop (to go with my Netgear MIMO access point) at Microcenter for $29. Works great. Don't buy anything that offers only WEP encryption. WPA2 is the best encryption standard and most hardware out now will support that, but I still see a lot for sale that is WEP-only. Don't worry about not broadcasting your SSID; that offers very little in the way of security. Just make the SSID something meaningless and enable WPA or WPA2 encryption; make sure your passcode is long enough to be difficult to crack. I generally use a phrase that I can remember, but isn't commonly known. I think mine is 26 characters long, with both letters and numbers. Oh, and *change the default password* to the router admin console! ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
