Wireless router recommendations with PS3

[taimosely]

Howdy everyone,

I've been trying to research which wireless modem to start my home network with, however, it seems my PS3's 802.11 b/g standard would slow down a "N" wireless network. The basic premise of my network would be to have gaming/streaming multimedia functionality. My network would consist of 2 computers (1 being a laptop), printer, PS3, PSP, and Slingbox or Sony's Location Free.

- The computer will be running Windows Media Center (which I hope to upgrade from XP for the multimedia purposes)

- A printer server would be ideal, but not necessary.

- I want to use my PS3 to stream video from PC to TV as well as gaming. I do some P2P sharing but not often, so I don't know what speeds or "throughputs" to be looking for

- Lastly, the Slingbox/Location Free to stream TV/DVR to my PSP when I'm on the move.

At this point I'm totally confused as to what I need to be looking for in order to determine which router would suite me best. Or which brands, ease of setup, etc. It seems all the 802.11 b/g routers are slow and outdated, but why would I upgrade just for the PS3 to slow the entire network down?? Is it possible to find what I'm looking for under $100 bucks? If not, then what are my two best options?

THANKS in advance!

 

[taimosely]

Correction . . .

I'm really just more concerned about the overall setup than I am my PS3.

Nobody has any suggestions??

 

[jdabbs]

Will any clients be wired?

 

[scotty]

A good G router should do it for you. You can go with N, but it seems as though running it in mixed N/G mode, it will suffer a decent performance hit. I've done a fair bit of streaming with my PS3 over plain-jane G and it seems to run fine. You could always just get an N router if you can find one within your budget, and run it in G only mode, saving the N for later.

I can't recommend any specific models under the $100 mark, besides perhaps a WRT54GL. I've always been a fan of Linksys' routers, although their recent WRT54G v5 and up routers have totally cheaped out on hardware. With the L version, you can run all sorts of alternative firmwares which will give you all sorts of neat features.

But you should be able to achieve what you need to over G.

P.S. You could always get a little fancier and throw in something like pfsense as your router, and simply use a wireless router as an AP. Pfsense is the most popular BSD-Linux based firewall, it's free and very easy to configure (all web based, no linux knowledge needed). It offers some good traffic shaping features which could help ease the streaming along and make sure things that need priority have it. You can throw pfsense on virtually any old box you have lying around (you might need to add an extra NIC or two). Wireless aside, pfsense offers the features of $2000+ firewalls for free.