wireless router advice needed

[ProfessorChaos]

okay, i have a netgear WNR2000 and it's worked just fine with my 360 for a year at my apartment. recently, i purchased a wii (built-in wifi) and a laptop. almost as soon as i got those new devices up and running (picked them up within a week of one another), my laptop works fine, but on both my wii and 360 i have to reset the connection settings most every start-up. and when i went to play some halo online, i was lagging like crazy, getting dropped, and couldn't even watch save films in the theater mode cuz of connection problems with XBL. anyone have any idea of why this could be? can routers get "overloaded" by having too many devices connected? do i need one that puts out a stronger signal? anybody very familiar with these things or had a problem similar to this?

[AcesandEights]

Not sure about your other questions but... can routers get "overloaded" by having too many devices connected? do i need one that puts out a stronger signal? anybody very familiar with these things or had a problem similar to this? Pretty sure I've read, upon having occasional problems myself, that some consumer grade routers get overloaded with too many simultaneous connections and everything stops working until you reset. What the typical limits are etc. I'm unsure and this is not an expert opinion, rather something I've come across on searches I did on the occasions I had slow downs, or connection drops from my wireless router

[ProfessorChaos]

i hooked the wii up first, and after playing it and downloading a few games, i shut it off and the next time i went to play my xbox, i had to fix the settings. haven't bothered with online gaming just playing DR2 case 0, limbo, and I MA3D A GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES 1NN1T (or however you spell that). every time i switch between wii and the xbox these days, i gotta reset the settings. and then when i did play XBL halo, i was having all sorts of connection issues. fucking irritating, let me tell ya. i'm thinking i may need a better router. thanks for the help, though doug. that's kinda what i'd been suspecting.

[Trancelikestate]

I know i watched a microsoft tutorial on xbox live and it says the recommend a G router or whatever the highest data exchange one is. Also, what kind of connection do you have? verizon was really dropping the ball for me last week but it's magically better now. And i know you have a new laptop, my (now ex fiance) has a new laptop and it's a data hog. as soon as she would shut it off the connection went through the roof. try playing with your laptop off.

[Neil]

Can I suggest homeplugs? I have a homeplug connected to my router in the study, and a four way homeplug in my lounge with everything connected to it, and it works perfectly. I've got:- Zyxel PLA401v2 (v3 out now) Zyxel PLA470v2

[ProfessorChaos]

what exactly are homeplugs, neil? i'm quite unfamiliar with some of today's technology.

[Eyebiter]

Finally got disgusted trying to get good gaming performance off wireless. Bought 100ft of Cat 5 cable and ran a direct link from the router. Works great and speed is much higher than over the air.

[MikePizzoff]

verizon was really dropping the ball for me last week but it's magically better now. Hey, you know what? Me too. Must be doing work in on the servers in our part of the country. Prof - I think I've read somewhere that laptops can change something in a router to suit their network card, which would explain you having to reset it.

[Neil]

what exactly are homeplugs, neil? i'm quite unfamiliar with some of today's technology. They simply pass your network traffic between them over your mains power cable. So my router is in my study, but I want to have ethernet (network) access in my lounge for X devices. So I plug a Zyxel PLA401 in the study, and plug an ethernet cable between it and my router. I then plug a Zyxel PLA470 in my lounge. Network traffic can now go to/from my router to the unit in my lounge over my mains cable. In my case the PLA470 has four ethernet sockets so I can plug upto four devices (in the lounge) into it, giving all them access to my network. Network speed varies depending upon you quality/length of the mains cable inbetween the devices, but in my case I get a good 60mbps. Standard ethernet is 100mbps at best. ps: I have another PLA401 as well, which I plug into a socket in the garage and I stream media (films/tv) over it to watch when I'm exercising out there.

[ProfessorChaos]

thanks for the tip, neil. i may end up looking into that, sounds cheaper (and probably more reliable and consistent as far as signal goes) than buying a new fancy-ass router.