US Wireless kit works in Ireland?

wheresmybeaver

Hey guys,

Hope this hasnt been asked before, but will American 802.11b wireless routers and pc cards, laptop cards etc work properly in Ireland? I'm in the US for the summer and when I go home I want to set up a wireless network in my house for a new broadband connection. Prices here are a lot cheaper..

I suspect they may operate on different frequesncies, and this may even be illegal.. but that aside, would different frequencies matter if I'm only working within my own system and not planning on buying more wireless equipment from Ireland? (My system should be a router connected to the broadband box, connecting to a PC using a PCI card, and also to a laptop using a PCMCIA card; dont want a dirty cable running all the way to the home PC!)

If all this sounds very dodgy, then whats the cheapest solution for setting up a wireless network in Ireland? I see that Eircom offer a cheap E50 wireless router as part of their broadband kit, although they dont specify on the website if its b or g or whatever.

On a sidenote, is 802.11b fast enough for a broadband connection and for moving around small amounts of files? Is the real-world speed comparable, say USB 2 or USB 1.1 or somewhere in the middle?

So many questions!

Thanks a lot for any help!

David

Peanut

They will work fine - just remember that if the power supply with them doesn't take 110v-220v then you will have to get a suitable one here.

The American frequencies for 802.11b are a subset of (most of the) European ones, in practical terms they are virtually the same.

At ~5mbit/sec, .11b is well fast enough for broadband and moving medium size files, and eg streaming audio. It's not so hot if you want to stream high-res video, but you can do that also to an extent. I think USB 1.1 is around 10mbit so it's roughly half that.

Stephen

BigEejit

802.11b is fine anywhere .... that 2.4Ghz band is the same everywhere ... the only restrictions on it being power outputted by the equipment AFAIK

Peanut

Some countries like France have more excessive restrictions on what channels you can use in the 2.4ghz range, in effect, there is only 1 available non-overlapping channel there, whereas there are 3 available to use in the rest of Europe.

wheresmybeaver

Ok thanks, sounds good!

If the frequencies are the same then I might get a laptop wireless card here (cheap off amazon) and combine it with the wireless kit supplied by Eircom (I checked their broadband support; its b format and it looks like a good box, so should be no problems)

Streaming audio will be handy too.

Cheers guys