Ever since the move I’ve debated about bringing cable into the office. This past weekend I decided it was time to do something about it. After checking the outlet in the bedroom, it was split with cable running on the floor, it did not come from the attic. That pretty much told me I needed to go wireless.

Yes I did not want to split, run up the wall and through the attic then back down to the other side.

So it was off to Curcuit City for a new router with wireless and a wireless PCI for the work PC. An important less I forgot here was do some research first before these kinds of purchases it can save you time and money.

The selections to choose from were Linksys, D-Link, Netgear and Belkin.

My current router is a Netgear MR314, it has served me well for the last 5 year but I figured if I was going wireless on the work PC I should be current. I decided on Linksys’s WRT300N and their WMP300N PCI card. I would later learn one of those choices was not the best. I was able to move the cable modem, router and the test server out of the office which was another reason for going wireless. Setup was quick and initial tests with VPN into the office were good.

But then, after about 5 minutes, the PC froze. A hard reset was the only choice and after coming back up it repeated. The uptime would vary between 5 to 15 minutes depending on internet usage. Like I said do some research first cause a quick google took me to the Linksys forums and problems with the WMP300N. No need to go into all the specifics but a driver problem with the Broadcom chipset seems to be the root of it and no update from Linksys at this point in time. So back to the store for another card and we are up and running, no freezes. Signal strength is not as good as the Linksys, as the external antenna of the WMP300N does help, but after a full day of using it I don’t see a difference from wired.