Okay, let me start by saying I set up a wired network in my small business with 3 pc's and 1 printer using a Netgear router hooked to our basic DSL connection. Now I'm fairly familiar with compters but have very limited knowledge of networking. My business computers all seem to have basically the same speed capabilites when it comes to internet usage. So now to my question, I want to set up a small network at home using 2 pc's on 1 DSL connection. My problem is that my son and I both play online shooter games on the one pc we currently have connected to our DSL and I want to avoid any degredation of speed. If I got a wireless router, but hooked our main gaming computer directly to it (wired) could I maintain our current internet speeds? Or is that even possible? Would the second pc that would have the wireless connection be much slower that a direct connection? Also, if I go the wireless route, what brand/model would you recommend for gaming comptuers without breaking the bank?
I really would appreciate any help I can get on this!
Thanks
Tom

In most instances it won't matter how your connect the computers. The bandwidth will be shared. If you get a router that does QoS you can setup games to have priority. You usually need to know what internet ports the game uses to set that up.

-Foxxz

ETA-Linksys is pretty much standard as is netgear. I don't know much about any QoS capability that they may have. Don't forget to secure your wireless connection using WPA.

Thanks for the info!

Again, I know very little about wireless, are some routers faster than others? Isn't there some kind of speed rating like 802b or g or something? Do you know of a website that might explain the basics to me?

Thanks again!
Tom

linksys makes a gaming router....  link


what they do is label one the "gaming" port   the other 3 they enable qos on.     gaming port gets the full bandwidth the 3 others are limited.   since you have 2 systems thats gonna be a little more difficult.   either way   with only two systems on the network,   i don't see how its going to efffect gaming that much.   your pings will be higher but the overall gaming experience should be that bad.  


i used to do a lan game of quake III and duke dukem on less than a tier 1 and it played fine  

QoS is what you'll be wanting if you want to prioritize certain packets or ports... the above posters are absolutely right.

Otherwise, everything is shared, and nothing necessarily gets priority over anything else.  Unless you're really 1337 and playing FPS's, I doubt the slight difference in ping (unless somebody in the house is flogging your internet pipe with a bunch of bitorrents) from normal surfing will be noticeable.