Newbie Question

Hi. and please bear with for this question.

I am fairly new to wireless networking, although fairly 'lit' with PC's.

I have a fairly simple questions that I hope someone could answer for me.......

I have a desktop PC running Windows XP Pro, connected to a USB Modem and BT Broadband( yeah i know and i will be changing ISP soon!!!). I also have a Belkin 54Mbps 802.11g PCI card installed. I am connecting to my laptop which has an older PCMCIA 11Mpbs 802.11b card installed.

The network is fine, I can see both machines and share files and printing, they can both surf the net, however, the bandwidth the laptop seems to be receiving is much less and this makes surfing on the laptop seem like dial-up sometimes, and when watching streaming tv, the broadcast seems to stop and start.

I was wondering if there was an incompatibility between the 802.11g and the

802.11b card and if I was to put an 802.11g in the laptop would it make a difference?

I look forward to receing some help form someone soon!

Cheers

David snipped-for-privacy@NOSPAMdesigndeal.co.uk

Cheers from state side.

That's a lot of fairlys. LOL

So your computer is connected directly to your modem through usb? Do you also go out of the house with your fly down?

Using internet connection sharing from within XP?

If the answer to the above question is yes, then that would be becuase you are running everything through the desktop first. There is a software overhead involved.

It would make a difference for file sharing between the two, but depending on what the speed of your internet connection is it would most likely not speed up web browsing on the laptop.

The 802.11b is rated for a top speed of 11mb/s right? So, unless you have a broadband connection faster then that your bottleneck will still be your cable/dsl modem.

You would be better served to buy yourself a wifi router and run your modem into it and let it serve the two computers.

Ryan @ his e-mail address