I've had a Linksys router for several years with no problem and I really like it. It's a wireless G router. My notebook computer uses a wireless card to connect to the internet via the router. I knew little about this stuff and my husband didn't either. He bought the wireless card and router the guy at the store recommended and it turned out the wireless card was wireless B but it was compatible with the router and I never had a problem with it for several years until recently when I noticed it started dropping the connection and I figured it must need replacing. I looked up some info on the wireless routers and cards and thought I might get a wireless G card since the router is wireless G and I read that's better if they're both the same and you'd get a faster connection. Well apparently not so. In the past I didn't know about the encryption, even though the router supports that, and so I had no WEP or WPA set up on my connection. The new wireless G card supports WPA so I set that up with the router and I switched the channel to channel 8 for broadcasting since I read it's better to not be on the common channel 6 if there are a lot of people in your area on that channel, because then you'd get a slower connection. Well I guess not a lot of people know about wireless security since all the neighbors around here are still broadcasting SSID and everyone's on channel 6 so that why I switched. I don't know if the new card is just a crappy card or what but I've never had more internet connection issues than I've had lately. It's a linksys brand card as well and is a wireless G card with "speed booster" but I swear my computer is actually running slower with this new card for some reason and the connection drops seemingly every other minute and pauses for about a minute and that cases the browser window to free too (not the computer just the browser window) for the same duration. It's completely frustrating. Everything I read on the wireless said wireless G is faster than B and that it was better to be on another channel because a lot of neighborhood traffic on the same channel would cause you to get a slow connection. I had no compatibility problems with my other card (also linksys brand) so I can't understand why this new card causes the computer to be slow now and seems to conflict with my browser. It also does not re-connect if the computer was on standby and I want to use the computer again. My old card would always automatically reconnect but this new card doesn't. I have to select to unplug the card and then take the card out of the slot and push it back in. Sometimes it will reconnect when I do that. Most times it will just instantly freeze the computer and I'll have to restart. So is this just a really sucky card or does setting up wireless security or changing the signal broadcast channel somehow cause a slower connection?
