Who knows stuff about networking?

[Electric Rain]

Hey, so, I haven't created a thread here in a while, but, I figured there might be someone with some insight here. Even if you don't know much about networking, just give me your opinion anyway. It's kind of a logic question too.

Here's the situation... I have a client with 12 computers. Almost all of them are wireless. All but I think just one of the desktops (why the other three desktops are wireless when they're 10 feet away from the router is beyond me), but the others are laptops and netbooks. This is an office environment. Their wireless router is nothing special at all; just a basic home router. I think this may be the root of the problem.

Here's my problem: I've tried two different LAN chat programs, because they want to be able to communicate between each other for various reasons. They're both very... buggy. In one of the programs, certain users wouldn't get messages from certain other users, or some users couldn't send messages to other users. There was no obvious pattern. Totally random failage.

The second program automatically creates a user list based on all of the computers it sees on the network... but the user list is different for every computer. Certain computers won't show up on certain computers. Refresh the user list, and it finds a different set of users each time, but rarely will it actually show ALL 12 USERS on the network at once. Totally OCD, again. No pattern.

My only guess is that because it's trying grab data simultaneously from 10 other computers wirelessly from a poor little wireless home router, there's some major packet clashing going on, and some of them are just getting dropped. What do you guys think? I'm thinking about buying a set of 3FT Cat6 cables from Monoprice, bringing my 8-port switch to their office and hooking up all those laptops and netbooks to it. If everything is solid then, they may need a new WAP.

[Basement_Modder]

I'd say get a better router or just more of them on one network. It may help to set up a small server for them, too. I'm not too good with networks, but I know this would help.

[Electric Rain]

Yeah, twelve computers all running a P2P chat client may be the issue. As much as I was trying to avoid this, a dedicated chat server might be the way to go...

[bicostp]

Hardwire the desktops. Seriously. WiFi is like a big hub, there's no intelligent switching so it acts like one big collision domain. Also, every device is stuck running at the same speed as the slowest device. If you're running everything with a peer-to-peer chat, then there's a good chance the devices running the service are flooding the network. Have them use something like Skype or MSN Messenger.

Upgrade to a real router, switch, and a real access point. Not a dinky home router or some piece of crap running DD-WRT. They're not designed for heavy traffic loads. You can get used Cisco 1200 APs that will keep up with their needs all day and night at a decent price.

If they need server software, Windows Home Server is relatively inexpensive (as compared to 2k3 and 2008R2), and is designed for home and small business use. It's just Server 2003 tarted up with a pretty remote GUI anyway; the biggest thing it's missing is Active Directory, which you don't really need for a dozen devices. They'll get the benefit of a central backup solution and file server, especially if you put a bunch of 7200 RPM Barracudas in hardware RAID 5. (But remember that RAID is not a backup, it's uptime insurance.) A small WHS NAS device, either store-bought or homemade, could sit in the corner backing files up, act as a print server, and could also serve the chat system if you don't go with an outside solution.