Using Vista + Wireless on same machine with the router?

Here is my setup. I am running Vista Utlimate, and I have the Linksys WRT300N v1.1 router for my DSL connection. My computer is a mid-tower. Lately, my ISP has had a few outages, so I was thinking of buying either the Linksys Wireless-N USB Network Adapter (model WUSB300N) or the Linksys Wireless-N PCI Adapter (model WMP300N) and installing it on the SAME computer.

You may ask, why do I want to do this? Well, I live in a large apartment building, and 1/2 of the people use Cable as their internet connection. So if my DSL fails, I can then try to "connect" to one of my neighbors (yes, with permission) via the wireless connection and it until my DSL line comes back. Again, this is really for emergency situation, as my DSL is up 99.9% of the time.

My questions are:

1) How can I make sure that when I am using the HARDLINE (normal, DSL) connection that my Wireless adapter does not keep trying to take over the and connect me via the Cable (wireless)?

2) The reason I am choosing between the 2 models mentioned for the wireless network adapter, is that they are already 802.11n draft 2.0 ceritifed by the Wi-Fi alliance. Meaning that when "N" becomes more prevelant, I won't need to change my hardware. I realize that for now I should only worry about the 802.11g, as thats what 99% are still using.

3) Any advantage having the PCI version over the USB version wireless adapter? Remember, I am not using a laptop, and I want to get the adapter/antenna with the strongest signal. Is there another brand that I should consider (as long as it's 802.11n draft 2.0 certified)?

Anything else I need to worry about?

All input is much appreciated

Thanks for the detailed description.

Easy. Windoze does it for you. Start -> Run -> cmd route print Note the right hand column titled "metric". That's the packet priority. The lower the number, the higher the priority. If you install multiple network connections, Windoze sets the priority according to it's preset rules, or you can set it manually with the "route" command. You can have multiple default gateways, so that's not a problem either.

See:

formatting link

None of the manufacturers are promising any forwards compatibility for

802.11n. Details if you want them.

Yep.

Some USB wireless adapters will not recover if they are unplugged and reinserted. Only a few USB adapters allow an external antenna connection.

It really depends on how much cable you are going to put between your computah and the antenna. 16ft is the maximum for USB. If you have some extra cash, look into a wireless access point that can act as a client and use ethernet.

Get permission from the owners of the cable modem systems before using their network.

Note that there are several mutations of the Draft-N rev 2 standard. one is for beam forming access points using Atheros chips. Others use spacial multiplexing using Airgo chipsets (True MIMO). These are radically different technologies under one conglomerated standard.