I just saw this on newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833127158
It's advertising gigabit ethernet ports and 108Mbps total "Data Rate". And it's nearly $75 more than the Linksys 802.11b/g wireless router...
First off, gigabit ethernet is a HUGE pipe that will absolutely not be utilized no matter what LAN gaming environment you're running. The only time you'll see gigabit ethernet filled up is with a very busy server in a medium to large sized corporate environment, or in inter-switch uplinks in a corporate environment. I don't know exactly what kind of bandwidth games eat up online, but you know that dude next to you in CS:S is on dial-up so it isn't exactly bandwidth-intensive. The whole gigabit NIC craze just cracks me up for enthusiast motherboards anyways...even if you have a local router that negotiates to 1000/Full your cable modem uplink is going to be like 2Mbps, so you can do the math.
Secondly, what's this whole "108Mbps total data rate" thing about? Is that the total bandwidth of the backplane on the router? If that's the case, then the gigabit ethernet is yet again a total sham. Does it mean the total aggregate wireless bandwidth? If that's the case, then that means you can only have a max of 2 802.11g associations at one time -- 54mbps x 2 = 108mbps. Or maybe they mean that's a single .11g connection at 54mbps full duplex, which = 108mbps aggregate. Which if that's the case, then duh, it's like saying my memory bandwidth is 400Mhz when it's actually 200Mhz but in dual-channel mode (2x200=400). Both are true, and to advertise a computer as 400mhz external clock would be misleading to someone who wasn't in the know. Just like this is misleading.
Anyhow, networking hype gets to me quite a bit and I wanted to throw this out there in case anybody felt differently about this product. Seems like a big waste to me...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833127158
It's advertising gigabit ethernet ports and 108Mbps total "Data Rate". And it's nearly $75 more than the Linksys 802.11b/g wireless router...
First off, gigabit ethernet is a HUGE pipe that will absolutely not be utilized no matter what LAN gaming environment you're running. The only time you'll see gigabit ethernet filled up is with a very busy server in a medium to large sized corporate environment, or in inter-switch uplinks in a corporate environment. I don't know exactly what kind of bandwidth games eat up online, but you know that dude next to you in CS:S is on dial-up so it isn't exactly bandwidth-intensive. The whole gigabit NIC craze just cracks me up for enthusiast motherboards anyways...even if you have a local router that negotiates to 1000/Full your cable modem uplink is going to be like 2Mbps, so you can do the math.
Secondly, what's this whole "108Mbps total data rate" thing about? Is that the total bandwidth of the backplane on the router? If that's the case, then the gigabit ethernet is yet again a total sham. Does it mean the total aggregate wireless bandwidth? If that's the case, then that means you can only have a max of 2 802.11g associations at one time -- 54mbps x 2 = 108mbps. Or maybe they mean that's a single .11g connection at 54mbps full duplex, which = 108mbps aggregate. Which if that's the case, then duh, it's like saying my memory bandwidth is 400Mhz when it's actually 200Mhz but in dual-channel mode (2x200=400). Both are true, and to advertise a computer as 400mhz external clock would be misleading to someone who wasn't in the know. Just like this is misleading.
Anyhow, networking hype gets to me quite a bit and I wanted to throw this out there in case anybody felt differently about this product. Seems like a big waste to me...